The Trump administration is moving forward with plans to punish federal workers at agencies thought to be favored by Democrats with unnecessary mass layoffs in order to force Senate Democrats to vote for an end to a government shutdown that is quickly moving towards a third week without end in sight.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought announced the move in a post on X, writing that “the RIFs” — meaning Reductions in Force or mass firings — had “begun.”
Vought, a right-wing activist who was a chief architect of the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” plan for weaponizing the federal government against Democrats and centralizing power in Republican political appointees at the expense of nonpartisan civil servants, had previewed the administration’s intention to use a government shutdown as an excuse to fire more federal workers en masse in a memorandum to agency heads sent last month.
The agencies, according to the memo, should consider reductions in employees in programs that don’t have another source of funding, and are “not consistent with the President’s priorities.”
The agencies, according to the memo, should consider reductions in employees in programs that don’t have another source of funding, and are “not consistent with the President’s priorities.”
A White House official told The Independent that the number of workers who may receive notification of their impending termination could number in the “thousands.”
Typically, non-emergency employees are furloughed, meaning they’re instructed not to report for work and are not paid during the shutdown. There is no reason why a shutdown would necessitate firings.
But last week, President Donald Trump said his administration planned to make use of the lapse in government funding that began on October 1 to target civil servants as a way of punishing Democrats in Congress.
“We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them, like cutting vast numbers of people and cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like,” Trump said last Tuesday during a media availability in the Oval Office. “They’re taking a risk by having a shutdown.”
On Sunday, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CNN that Trump would authorize the layoffs if he “decides that the negotiations are absolutely going nowhere.”
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