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.”
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.”
WASHINGTON 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, and Health and Human Services, with a loss of over 1,100. The Education Department and Housing and Urban Development each would lose over 400 staffers. The departments of Commerce, 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.
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.
