White House signals federal layoffs have begun during shutdown

WASHINGTON >> The White House announced today that it had started to conduct another round of layoffs targeting federal workers, forging ahead with President Donald Trump’s threats to cut agencies and cull the government workforce during the shutdown.

The administration did not immediately specify how many workers would be terminated, prompting widespread confusion at a moment when hundreds of thousands are furloughed and still others must report for duty without pay.

But early indications suggested that the cuts could be deep and broad. Officials at a wide range of agencies, including the Homeland Security and Health and Human Services departments, independently confirmed that they would be conducting layoffs.

Russell Vought, the White House budget director, said in a social media post that the “RIFs have begun,” referring to the reduction-in-force notices to federal employees about pending dismissals. A White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, described the forthcoming cuts as substantial.

By seeking to fire federal workers during a shutdown, Trump risked a costly escalation in a fiscal stalemate that has no end in sight. Rather than negotiate a resolution with Democrats, the president has embraced the government closure as a political advantage, using it as an opportunity to rearrange the federal budget and exact revenge against his political foes.

The administration has canceled or frozen tens of billions of dollars in federal aid that had primarily benefited Democratic-led cities and states. Trump has also threatened to slash what he described as “Democrat agencies,” reducing spending perhaps on a permanent basis without explicit approval from Congress.

“We’ll be cutting some very popular Democrat programs that aren’t popular with Republicans, frankly,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, adding that he would give Democrats a “little taste of their own medicine.”

Unions representing federal workers preemptively challenged the legality of any mass firings this month, claiming that the government cannot conduct them simply because federal funding has lapsed. They told the federal judge reviewing the case today that they believed the layoffs could be significant, citing one agency — the Treasury Department — where they believed officials were working to issue 1,300 terminations.

The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A federal judge had ordered the Trump administration to respond in the case today, at which point the government was supposed to offer an explicit accounting of the layoffs it was seeking.

“It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country,” said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, one of the unions suing the administration.

Democrats and Republicans did not seem anywhere close to a resolution that might reopen the government as of this afternoon. Congress has left Washington for the weekend.

Democrats continue to reject a Republican plan to reopen federal agencies into next month as they seek to extend a set of expiring subsidies that help millions of Americans afford health insurance.

“I think to their credit, the White House has now for 10 days laid off doing anything in hopes that enough Senate Democrats would come to their senses and do the right thing and fund the government,” Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, told reporters Friday.

But, he added, that could soon change.

“That’s what a shutdown does,” Thune said. “You put the administration and this presidency in a position where you have to make some hard decisions.”

———

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2025 The New York Times Company