The White House Budget Office said Oct. 10 that massive layoffs of federal workers have begun in an attempt to put more pressure on Democratic lawmakers amid the ongoing government shutdown.
Russ Vaught, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on social media X that “RIFs have begun,” referring to downsizing plans aimed at reducing the size of the federal government.
A Budget Office spokesman said the cuts were “substantial” but did not provide further details.
The Education Department is among the agencies hit by the new layoffs, a department spokesman said Oct. 10, without elaborating. The department had about 4,100 employees when Trump took office in January, but its workforce was cut by nearly half due to mass layoffs in the early months of the Republican administration. The company had about 2,500 employees at the start of the closure.
Federal health care workers were also furloughed on Oct. 10, although a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not specify how many or which agencies were hit the hardest.
The White House said it would pursue aggressive layoff tactics just before the government shutdown began Oct. 1, ordering all federal agencies to submit their workforce reduction plans to the budget office for review. It said the reduction plans could apply to federal programs that would lose funding during a government shutdown, otherwise remain unfunded and “not aligned with the president's priorities.”
This goes far beyond what typically happens during a government shutdown, which is that federal workers are furloughed but reinstated to their jobs once the government shutdown ends.
Democrats have been trying to expose the administration, arguing that the layoffs may be illegal, and they appear to have been bolstered by the fact that the White House has not yet carried out the layoffs.
But President Donald Trump said earlier this week that he would soon have more information on how many federal jobs would be cut.
“I'll be able to tell you that in four or five days if this continues,” he said in an Oval Office meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday. “If this continues, it will be significant and many of these jobs will never come back.”
Meanwhile, on October 10, the 10th day of the shutdown, the halls of the Capitol fell silent as both the House and Senate left Washington and both sides began a protracted battle over the shutdown. Senate Republicans have repeatedly tried to persuade Democratic opponents to vote for a stopgap bill to reopen the government, but Democrats have refused as they remain steadfast in their commitment to expand health care benefits.
Some Republicans on Capitol Hill suggested Mr. Vought's threats of massive layoffs had failed to help bipartisan negotiations over funding.
The top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, said in a statement that “the shutdown does not give Mr. Trump or Mr. Vought new, special powers” to lay off workers.
“This is nothing new and no one should be afraid of these scammers,” she added.
However, there was no sign that the Senate's top Democratic and Republican leaders were talking at all about a way to break the impasse. Instead, Senate Majority Leader John Thune has continued to try to weed out centrist Democrats who might be willing to cross party lines as the pain of the shutdown lingers.
“It’s time for them to get some backbone,” Mr. Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, said during a news conference.
This story was reported by the Associated Press. Associated Press education writer Colleen Binkley and Associated Press writer Mike Stobbe contributed reporting to this story.
