Here's an update on Russ Vaught's “mass layoffs” and the threats he and Trump made before the shutdown. As far as I can tell, this looks like a version of what we described yesterday: a relatively small number of layoffs aimed primarily at allowing the White House to say that it has followed through on its threat (call it the anti-TACO practice) to focus firmly on a few agencies or departments that are personally dissatisfied with President Trump. The most specific figure I've seen is for 4,200 employees across seven departments and agencies. This is a big event for people losing their jobs. This is also a very small number compared to what we saw in the spring. New York Post offers (famous last words, I know) that up to a third of these layoffs could come from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which has been at the center of Trump's ire since 2021, when its then-director Chris Krebs disputed Trump's claims of hacking in the 2020 election. I have received more specific reports that at least a quarter of these layoffs are at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) alone, which is focused on core public health work. STAT News reports this. almost all the staff The CDC's weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report has been discontinued. (Essentially, this is the publication that the CDC uses to disseminate the latest information on the spread of diseases in the country.) Other targeted offices appear to be related to clean energy projects and other black animals. As one source put it, this is not a “force reduction.” These are ideological attacks aimed at specific offices and parts of the government that Trump has long been angry about.
Meanwhile, published “RIF” notices suggest that OMB (which is effectively prohibited from conducting RIFs) reserves the right to change these numbers before they take effect in early December. I've seen some people say that, essentially, two months after these layoffs, the White House is playing for time. Perhaps they are counting on it. But I think the law actually requires 60 days under these RIFs.
Overall, I believe the driving force behind this announcement and these numbers (which are still vague and only indirectly confirmed) was the need to check the “we did it” box.
