I was kinda wondering, if your goal is to knee-cap the government, why even re-open? Can it just be in perpetual shutdown?

NASA contracts are a huge part of SpaceX’s business. I don’t think a complete shutdown is what they want.

If you are a businessman trying to curry favor with countries like China, snarling the US could be very valuable.

Would you elaborate how you arrive at this viewpoint? From my point of view I seem to be missing some crucial information.

I think it may be we are all missing some crucial information.

I'd like to elaborate that makes sense you what information you lack. In general, competition between adversaries always exists, and in the same way that you might compensate a spy, you'd compensate a saboteur. In specific, China has a market and raw materials that are of great interest to some businessmen, Russia has materials and geopolitical connections.

unfortunately for holiday travelers, the TSA will be one of those agencies that keeps working :/

on a more serious note, this would be terrible for Americans at all levels (including, but not only, the Federal employees themselves), but sounds very much like a page out of Musk's book