The White House budget office said Friday that mass firings of federal workers have started, an attempt by President Donald Trump’s administration to exert more pressure on Democratic lawmakers as the government shutdown dragged into a 10th day.
Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on the social media site X that the “RIFs have begun,” referring to reduction-in-force plans aimed at reducing the size of the federal government.
In a court filing, the budget office said well over 4,000 employees would be fired, though it noted that the funding situation was “fluid and rapidly evolving.”
The firings would hit the hardest at the departments of the Treasury, which would lose over 1,400 employees; Health and Human Services, with a loss of over 1,100; and Housing and Urban Development, set to lose over 400. The departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, and Homeland Security and the Environmental Protection Agency were all set to fire hundreds of more employees. It was not clear which particular programs would be affected.
The aggressive move by Trump’s budget office goes far beyond what usually happens in a government shutdown and escalates an already politically toxic dynamic between the White House and Congress. Talks to end the shutdown are almost nonexistent.
Typically, federal workers are furloughed but restored to their jobs once the shutdown ends, traditionally with back pay. Some 750,000 employees are expected to be furloughed during the shutdown, officials have said.
Democrats — and some Republicans — criticize the administration’s actions
In comments to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday night, Trump said many people would be losing their jobs, and that the firings would be focused on Democrat-oriented areas, though he didn’t explain exactly what that meant.
“It’ll be a lot, and we’ll announce the numbers over the next couple of days,” he said. “But it’ll be a lot of people.”
Trump said that, going forward, “We’re going to make a determination, do we want a lot? And I must tell you, a lot of them happen to be Democrat oriented.”
“These are people that the Democrats wanted, that, in many cases, were not appropriate,” he said of federal employees, eventually adding, “Many of them will be fired.”
Still, some leading Republicans were highly critical of the administration’s actions.
“I strongly oppose OMB Director Russ Vought’s attempt to permanently lay off federal workers who have been furloughed due to a completely unnecessary government shutdown,” said Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, who blamed the federal closure on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski called the announcement “poorly timed” and “yet another example of this administration’s punitive actions toward the federal workforce.”
For his part, Schumer said the blame for the layoffs rested with Trump.
“Let’s be blunt: nobody’s forcing Trump and Vought to do this,” Schumer said. “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.”
