President Donald Trump initiated mass layoffs of federal workers Friday, terminating more than four thousand one hundred employees as the government shutdown continues, in what administration officials described as the biggest set of firings since the Department of Government Efficiency purge early in Trump’s second term.
The president previewed the terminations during a press conference in the Oval Office earlier Friday, blaming them and the shutdown on Democrats. “It’ll be a lot and it’ll be Democrat-oriented because we figure they started this thing. It’ll be a lot of people, all because of the Democrats,” Trump said.
Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, announced on the social platform X that the “RIFs have begun,” referring to reduction-in-force plans aimed at reducing the size of the federal government. The White House budget office said the mass firings were intended to exert more pressure on Democratic lawmakers as the government shutdown continues.
In a court filing, the budget office said well over four thousand employees would be fired, though it noted that the funding situation was “fluid and rapidly evolving.”
The firings hit hardest at the Treasury Department, which lost over fourteen hundred employees, the Department of Health and Human Services, with a loss of over eleven hundred, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, set to lose over four hundred. The departments of Commerce, Education, Energy and Homeland Security and the Environmental Protection Agency were all set to terminate hundreds 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 seven hundred fifty thousand employees are expected to be furloughed during the shutdown, officials have said.
The White House had previewed its tactics shortly before the government shutdown began October 1, telling all federal agencies to submit their reduction-in-force plans to the budget office for review. It said reduction-in-force could apply for federal programs whose funding would lapse in a government shutdown, is otherwise not funded and is “not consistent with the President’s priorities.”
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.” He described federal employees as “people that the Democrats wanted, that, in many cases, were not appropriate,” eventually adding, “Many of them will be fired.”
Some leading Republicans were highly critical of the administration’s actions. Maine Senator Susan Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said she “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.” Collins blamed the federal closure on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski called the announcement “poorly timed” and “yet another example of this administration’s punitive actions toward the federal workforce.”
Schumer said 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.”
The Education Department was among agencies hit by new layoffs Friday, a department spokesperson confirmed. A labor union for the agency’s workers said the administration is laying off almost all employees below the director level at the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, while fewer than ten employees were being terminated at the agency’s Office of Communications and Outreach.
Notices of firings also went out at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which leads federal efforts to reduce risk to the nation’s cyber and physical infrastructure, according to the Department of Homeland Security, where CISA is housed. The agency has been a frequent Trump target over its work to counter misinformation about the 2020 presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic. DHS said the layoffs were “part of getting CISA back on mission.”
Federal health workers were also being fired, though an HHS spokesman did not say how many or which agencies were being hit hardest. An EPA spokesperson blamed Democrats for the firings and said they can vote to reopen the government anytime.
An official for the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents federal workers and is suing the Trump administration over the firings, said in a legal filing Friday that the Treasury Department is set to issue layoff notices to thirteen hundred employees.
The AFGE asked a federal judge to halt the firings, calling the action an abuse of power designed to punish workers and pressure Congress. “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,” AFGE President Everett Kelley said in a statement.
Democrats have tried to call the administration’s bluff, arguing the firings could be illegal, and had seemed bolstered by the fact that the White House had not immediately pursued the layoffs once the shutdown began.
But Trump signaled earlier this week that job cuts could be coming in “four or five days.” He said Tuesday that if the shutdown continues, “it’ll be substantial, and a lot of those jobs will never come back.”
The unprecedented scale of permanent layoffs during a government shutdown represents a significant departure from historical precedent. Previous administrations have generally maintained furloughed workers on temporary status with the expectation they would return once appropriations were restored.
The Justice Manual guidelines for federal workforce management do not typically contemplate permanent reductions-in-force during funding lapses, making the legality of the administration’s actions uncertain. Legal challenges are expected to focus on whether the president has authority to permanently eliminate positions during a temporary funding gap rather than implementing traditional furloughs.
