Firings of US federal employees begin as the White House seeks to pressure Democrats into shutting down the government

The White House Budget Office said on Friday that mass dismissals of federal employees had begun, in an attempt by the administration of US President Donald Trump to put more pressure on Democratic lawmakers as the government shutdown entered its tenth day.

“Regional investment frameworks have begun,” Ross Vaught, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on the social media site

In a File a lawsuitThe budget office said more than 4,000 employees would be laid off, though it noted the funding situation was “fluid and rapidly evolving.”

The dismissals will be hardest hit at the Treasury Department, which will lose more than 1,400 employees, and the Department of Health and Human Services, with the loss of more than 1,100 employees. The Department of Education and Housing and Urban Development will each lose more than 400 employees.

The Departments of Commerce, Energy and Homeland Security, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), were prepared to fire hundreds of additional employees. It was not clear what specific programs would be affected.

The move by Trump’s budget office goes beyond what typically happens in a government shutdown and escalates an already politically tense dynamic between the White House and Congress. Talks to end the lockdown are almost non-existent.

Typically, federal workers are furloughed but restored to their jobs once the shutdown ends, with back wages paid. Officials said that about 750,000 employees are expected to be furloughed during the closure period.

Some prominent Republicans oppose the cuts

In his statements to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday evening, Trump said that many people will lose their jobs, and that layoffs will focus on Democratic-leaning areas, although he did not clarify exactly what that means.

“There will be a lot of people,” he said.

“These are the people the Democrats wanted, and they were not a good fit in many cases,” he said of federal employees, adding in the end: “A lot of them are going to be fired.”

Some prominent Republicans have sharply criticized the administration’s actions.

“I strongly oppose Office of Management and Budget Director Ross Vought’s attempt to permanently lay off federal workers furloughed due to a completely unnecessary government shutdown,” said Susan Collins, chairwoman of the powerful Maine Senate Appropriations Committee, who has blamed the federal shutdown on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski called the announcement “ill-timed” and “another example of this administration’s punitive actions toward the federal workforce.”

For his part, Schumer said that the blame for the layoffs lies with Trump.

“Let’s be honest: No one is forcing Trump and Voight to do this,” Schumer said. “They don’t have to do it; they want to. They callously choose to hurt people — the workers who protect our country, inspect our food, and respond when disasters strike. This is intentional chaos.”

The firing notice has already begun

The White House reviewed its tactics shortly before the government shutdown began on October 1, asking all federal agencies to submit force reduction plans to the Budget Office for review.

She said the force reduction plans could apply to federal programs whose funding would end in the event of a government shutdown, otherwise they would not be funded and “are not consistent with the president’s priorities.”

The Department of Education was among the agencies hit by new layoffs on Friday, a department spokesperson said.

Notices of dismissal were also issued at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which leads federal efforts to reduce risks to the nation’s cyber and physical infrastructure, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where CISA is headquartered. The agency has been a frequent target of Trump because of its work to counter misinformation about the 2020 presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Department of Homeland Security said the layoffs were “part of CISA’s return to its mission.”

Federal health workers were also fired, though a Health and Human Services spokesperson did not say how many or which agencies were hardest hit. A spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency, which also has an unspecified number of layoffs, blamed Democrats for the firings and said they could vote to reopen the government at any time.

Threats of further cuts in the federal workforce

An official with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents federal workers and is suing the Trump administration over the firings, said in a legal filing on Friday that the Treasury Department is set to issue layoff notices to 1,300 employees.

AFGE asked a federal judge to halt the firings, calling the action an abuse of power aimed at punishing workers and pressuring Congress.

“It is outrageous that the Trump administration used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide vital services to communities across the country,” Everett Kelly, president of AFGE, said in a statement.

Democrats have tried to expose the administration’s bluff, saying the firings may be illegal, and they appeared supported by the fact that the White House did not immediately follow up on the layoffs once the shutdown began.

But Trump indicated earlier this week that job cuts could occur within “four or five days.”

“If this continues, it’s going to be big, and a lot of these jobs will never come back,” he said Tuesday.