“WASHINGTON -- The White House said Friday that it began conducting mass layoffs of federal employees in response to the government shutdown, an unprecedented step that follows through on weeks of threats meant to increase pressure on Democrats.
"The RIFs have begun," White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought posted on X, using an abbreviation for reductions in force. An OMB official characterized the retrenchment as "substantial," and a White House official said it would affect "thousands of federal workers."
"It will be a lot and it will be Democrat-oriented," Trump said in the Oval Office. "They started this thing."
More than 4,000 employees at agencies across the federal government were issued layoff notices, according to a filing late Friday by the administration in a San Francisco federal court. Layoffs hit the Departments of Health and Human Services, Energy, Homeland Security, Education, Treasury, Commerce, and Housing and Urban Development.
The move marks a major escalation in Trump's efforts to force a resolution to the partisan standoff on Capitol Hill and tests the limits of his executive power to trim the federal workforce. Congress has been at a standstill since the shutdown started Oct. 1, and many federal workers and military service members are set to miss their first full paychecks this coming week.
More than 1,100 workers at HHS across several divisions received reduction-in-force notices on Friday. Some of the people who lost their jobs were deemed "at odds with the Trump administration's Make America Healthy Again agenda," said Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the department.
Hundreds of thousands of government workers are currently furloughed, while others deemed essential are working without pay. But layoffs hadn't been part of past shutdowns, and Democrats said the White House had no reason to fire employees, while also questioning their legality.
Reductions in force "are not a new power these bozos get in a shutdown," said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, on social media. "We can't be intimidated by these crooks."
As the White House moves to cut jobs, the Trump administration is also exploring possible legal maneuvers and other options for moving funds around to ensure that troops don't miss a paycheck during the shutdown, according to a senior White House official. A recent Congressional Budget Office memo said that some funds from Trump's tax-and-spending package, signed into law in July, potentially could be used to pay active-duty personnel during a shutdown.
Ahead of the shutdown, OMB instructed agencies to design reduction-in-force plans for employees who work for programs that have no current funding and have no outside funding source, and that are "not consistent with the President's priorities." But it hadn't been clear whether the White House would make good in its threats.
Two unions representing government workers filed a motion for a temporary restraining order this past week, aiming to block the administration's plans to fire federal workers en masse because of the shutdown. The motion was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, union officials said.
"It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers," said Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees.
To resolve the impasse on Capitol Hill, Democrats want talks on restoring and extending hundreds of billions of dollars in healthcare spending, while Republicans said they won't negotiate until Democrats agree to pass the GOP's short-term spending bill, which would keep the government funded through Nov. 21.
After the shutdown began, the White House started cutting funding for Democratic-run states and cities. Vought put on hold $18 billion in federal funds for New York City infrastructure work and froze $2.1 billion allocated for Chicago.
Trump, a Republican, has cast the moves as an effort to impose pain on Democratic programs and constituencies, while using the shutdown to follow through on a longstanding goal of shrinking the size of the government and firing federal workers. Earlier this month, his social-media account posted an AI-generated video of Vought as the grim reaper in Washington.
"We'll be cutting some popular Democrat programs that aren't popular with Republicans, frankly, because that's the way it works," Trump said Thursday at a cabinet meeting.
Republican leaders, for their part, have been lukewarm on firing federal workers. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) and other senior GOP lawmakers had quietly advised the White House not to move forward with mass layoffs and sharp cuts to government assistance programs, citing people familiar with the matter. But leaders have also expressed exasperation with the lack of progress as the shutdown headed into its second weekend.
"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 to fund the government," Thune said Friday.
Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine), the head of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee who has clashed with Vought all year, blamed the shutdown on Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the chamber's Democratic leader, but said the layoffs would "cause harm to families in Maine and throughout our country."
Schumer said Republicans "would rather see thousands of Americans lose their jobs than sit down and negotiate with Democrats to reopen the government."
GOP congressional leaders have said they think all workers should receive back pay, whether or not they had to work during the shutdown. The White House argued in a recent memo that furloughed workers weren't guaranteed back pay, despite a federal law designed to ensure that they are made whole.” [1]
1. White House Starts Federal Layoffs. Andrews, Natalie; Thomas, Ken; Linskey, Annie. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 11 Oct 2025: A1.
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