Donald Trump has instructed US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to pay military salaries despite the federal government shutdown.
On Saturday, the president said Hegseth must ensure that military personnel do not miss regular paychecks scheduled for Wednesday. The directive comes as other government employees have already had part of their salaries withheld, while others are being fired.
“I will not allow the Democrats to hold our military and the entire security of our nation HOSTAGE with their dangerous government shutdown,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The Republican and Democratic parties blame each other for failing to agree on a spending plan to reopen the government.
Trump's message asks Hegseth to “use every available means to pay our troops” on Oct. 15, when military personnel will be withheld for the first time since the shutdown began Oct. 1.
Many U.S. military personnel are considered “essential,” meaning they must still report for duty without pay. About 750,000 other federal employees (about 40%) were furloughed or sent home, also without pay.
By law, furloughed employees should receive back pay once the shutdown ends and they return to work, but the Trump administration has hinted that may not happen.
“The Radical Left Democrats must OPEN THE GOVERNMENT so we can work together to solve health care and the many other things they want to destroy,” Trump tweeted on Saturday.
Democrats refused to vote for the Republican spending plan that would reopen the government after a nearly 12-day shutdown, saying any resolution must preserve expiring tax breaks that would slash health insurance costs for millions of Americans and reverse Trump's cuts to Medicaid, a health care program for seniors and low-income people.
Republicans blame Democrats for the unnecessary government shutdown and blame them for the spillovers caused by the federal government shutdown.
Finding a way to pay military salaries could help reduce some of the political risks for congressional leaders if the shutdown drags on.
In an attempt to put pressure on Democrats, the Trump administration has also begun laying off thousands of government workers, an unprecedented move during the shutdown.
“The RIFs have begun,” White House Office of Management Director Russell Vought said in a post on X Friday morning, referring to the acronym for “force reduction.”
Later Friday, the administration said seven agencies had begun laying off more than 4,000 people, fulfilling the president's repeated threats to use the shutdown to achieve his long-held goal of cutting the federal workforce.
The cuts affected dozens of employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the BBC's American partner CBS news reports, citing sources familiar with the situation.
The agency's entire Washington, D.C., office was laid off, sources told CBS, adding that the laid-off employees included those who worked on the CDC's Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report, the agency's Ebola response and immunizations. There have also been cuts in the human resources department, they said.
Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, told CBS that laying off workers is not necessary and that “HHS continues to shut down wasteful and duplicative organizations, including those that run counter to the Trump administration's Make America Healthy Again agenda.”
Employees from the Treasury Department and the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were also among those laid off Friday, those agencies confirmed.
The American Federation of Government Employees and the AFL-CIO, two major unions representing federal workers, filed a lawsuit in northern California asking a judge to temporarily block the layoff orders.
“It is disgraceful that the Trump Administration used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally lay off thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country,” said AFGE President Everett Kelly.
A spokesman for the White House Budget Office told the BBC on Saturday that the layoffs were just the beginning.
“These FIR numbers from the court file are just a snapshot in time,” he said. “More RIFs are coming.”
In a lawsuit challenging the unions' request for a temporary restraining order, the Justice Department said departments such as the departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce and Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency could also face staff cuts.
Government lawyers said the unions failed to prove that their members would suffer irreparable harm as a result of the layoffs, which is necessary for a judge to issue a restraining order. But they said a restraining order would “irreparably harm the government.”
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