The Trump administration is moving forward with plans to punish federal workers at agencies thought to be favored by Democrats with mass layoffs in order to force Senate Democrats to vote for an end to the government shutdown.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought announced the long-threatened move in a post on X, writing that “the RIFs” — meaning Reductions in Force or mass firings — had “begun.”
The OMB said in a court filing more than 4,000 employees would be fired, including over 1,400 at the Treasury Department and 1,100 at the Health and Human Services Department. But the budget office did say the funding lapse is a “fluid and rapidly evolving” situation.
Vought is a right-wing activist who was a chief architect of the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” plan for weaponizing the federal government against Democrats and centralizing power in Republican political appointees at the expense of nonpartisan civil servants.
He had previewed the administration’s intention to use a government shutdown as an excuse to fire more federal workers en masse in a memorandum to agency heads sent last month.
The agencies, according to the earlier memo, should consider reductions in employees in programs that don’t have another source of funding, and are “not consistent with the President’s priorities.”
A White House official told The Independent that the number of workers who may receive notification of their impending termination could number in the “thousands.”
Typically, non-emergency employees are furloughed, meaning they’re instructed not to report for work and are not paid during the shutdown. There is no reason why a shutdown would necessitate firings. Typically, furloughed employees return to work - with back pay - when shutdowns end.
But last week, Trump said his administration planned to make use of the lapse in government funding that began on October 1 to target civil servants as a way of punishing Democrats in Congress.
“We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them, like cutting vast numbers of people and cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like,” Trump said last Tuesday during a media availability in the Oval Office. “They’re taking a risk by having a shutdown.”
Earlier this week, he said layoffs would target what he described as “very popular Democrat programs.” It’s unclear what that means, since federal government programs service all Americans.
Virginia congressman Don Beyer, a Democrat whose district includes one of the largest percentages of federal employees in the country, called the administration’s decision “cruel, illegal, and yet another attack on our economy” in a statement.
He accused Trump and Vought of “illegally firing more workers, hurting essential services for the American people, and damaging our economy in Virginia and across the country.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York also condemned Vought’s announcement, which he described as firing “thousands of Americans with a tweet.”
“Let's be blunt: nobody's forcing Trump and Vought to do this. They don’t have to do it; they want to. They're callously choosing to hurt people—the workers who protect our country, inspect our food, respond when disasters strike. This is deliberate chaos,” Schumer said.
He added that Republicans “would rather see thousands of Americans lose their jobs than sit down and negotiate with Democrats to reopen the government” and called on the GOP to “come to the table, negotiate, and reopen the government.”
“Until Republicans get serious, they own this—every job lost, every family hurt, every service gutted is because of their decisions,” he said.
Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, slammed the administration’s move in a statement, calling it “disgraceful” that the White House “has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country.”
“These workers show up every day to serve the American people, and for the past nine months have been met with nothing but cruelty and viciousness from President Trump. Every single American citizen should be outraged,” Kelley said. He added that Congress should “do their jobs and negotiate an end to this shutdown immediately.”
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees president Lee Saunders also hit out at the administration’s plans for mass layoffs in a separate statement, calling them “illegal” and predicting they would have “devastating effects on the services millions of Americans rely on every day.”
“Whether it’s food inspectors, public safety workers, or the countless other public service workers who keep America running, federal employees should not be bargaining chips in this administration’s political games,” Saunders added.
A group of labor unions that had sued to block the mass firings immediately filed papers with a California federal court asking for a temporary restraining order preventing the administration from proceeding with any reductions in force. A hearing in the case is scheduled for October 16.
Rachel Dobkin contributed to this reporting.
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