Firings of federal workers begin as White House seeks to pressure Democrats in government shutdown
By: President Donald (Yahoo Finance)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Firings of federal workers begin as White House seeks to pressure Democrats in government shutdown
Seung Min Kim And Stephen Groves Fri, October 10, 2025 at 7:22 p.m. EDT 6 min read
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House budget office said Friday that mass firings of federal workers have started, an attempt by President Donald Trump's administration to exert more pressure on Democratic lawmakers as the government shutdown dragged into a 10th day.
Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on the social media site X that the "RIFs have begun," referring to reduction-in-force plans aimed at reducing the size of the federal government.
A spokesperson for the budget office said the reductions are "substantial" but did not offer more details.
Employees at the departments of Education, Treasury, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, were set to receive the notices, according to spokespeople for the agencies and union representatives for federal workers.
The aggressive move by Trump's budget office goes far beyond what usually happens in a government shutdown and escalates an already politically toxic dynamic between the White House and Congress. Talks to end the shutdown are almost nonexistent.
Typically, federal workers are furloughed but restored to their jobs once the shutdown ends, traditionally with back pay. Some 750,000 employees are expected to be furloughed during the shutdown, officials have said.
Democrats — and some Republicans — criticize the administration's actions
In comments to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday night, Trump said many people would be losing their jobs, and that the firings would be focused on Democrat-oriented areas, though he didn't explain exactly what that meant.
"It'll be a lot, and we'll announce the numbers over the next couple of days," he said. "But it'll be a lot of people."
Trump said that, going forward, "We're going to make a determination, do we want a lot? And I must tell you, a lot of them happen to be Democrat oriented."
"These are people that the Democrats wanted, that, in many cases, were not appropriate," he said of federal employees, eventually adding, "Many of them will be fired."
Still, some leading Republicans were highly critical of the administration's actions.
"I strongly oppose OMB Director Russ Vought's attempt to permanently lay off federal workers who have been furloughed due to a completely unnecessary government shutdown," said Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, who blamed the federal closure on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski called the announcement "poorly timed" and "yet another example of this administration's punitive actions toward the federal workforce."
For his part, Schumer said the blame for the layoffs rested with Trump.
"Let's be blunt: nobody's forcing Trump and Vought to do this," Schumer said. "They don't have to do it; they want to. They're callously choosing to hurt people — the workers who protect our country, inspect our food, respond when disasters strike. This is deliberate chaos."
Notice of firings has already begun at several federal agencies
The White House had previewed its tactics shortly before the government shutdown began on Oct. 1, telling all federal agencies to submit their reduction-in-force plans to the budget office for its review.
It said reduction-in-force plans could apply to federal programs whose funding would lapse in a government shutdown, are otherwise not funded and are "not consistent with the President's priorities."
On Friday, the Education Department was among the agencies hit by new layoffs, a department spokesperson said. A labor union for the agency's workers said the administration is laying off almost all employees below the director level at the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, while fewer than 10 employees were being terminated at the agency's Office of Communications and Outreach.
Notices of firings have also taken place at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which leads federal efforts to reduce risk to the nation's cyber and physical infrastructure, according to DHS, where CISA is housed. The agency has been a frequent Trump target over its work to counter misinformation about the 2020 presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic. DHS said the layoffs were "part of getting CISA back on mission."
Federal health workers were also being fired, though an HHS spokesman did not say how many or which agencies were being hit hardest. A spokesperson for the EPA, which also has an unspecified number of layoffs, blamed the Democrats for the firings and said they can vote to reopen the government anytime.
Threats of more cuts across the federal workforce
An official for the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents federal workers and is suing the Trump administration over the firings, said in a legal filing Friday that the Treasury Department is set to issue layoff notices to 1,300 employees.
The AFGE asked a federal judge to halt the firings, calling the action an abuse of power designed to punish workers and pressure Congress.
"It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country," AFGE President Everett Kelley said in a statement.
Democrats have tried to call the administration's bluff, arguing the firings could be illegal, and had seemed bolstered by the fact that the White House had not immediately pursued the layoffs once the shutdown began.
But Trump signaled earlier this week that job cuts could be coming in "four or five days."
"If this keeps going on, it'll be substantial, and a lot of those jobs will never come back," he said Tuesday.
Workforce cuts appear unhelpful to bipartisan shutdown negotiations
Meanwhile, the halls of the Capitol were quiet on Friday, the 10th day of the shutdown, with both the House and the Senate out of Washington and both sides digging in for a protracted shutdown fight. Senate Republicans have tried repeatedly to cajole Democratic holdouts to vote for a stopgap bill to reopen the government, but Democrats have refused as they hold out for a firm commitment to extend health care benefits.
Some Republicans on Capitol Hill have suggested that Vought's threats of mass layoffs have been unhelpful to bipartisan talks.
And the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, said in a statement that the "shutdown does not give Trump or Vought new, special powers" to lay off workers.
"This is nothing new, and no one should be intimidated by these crooks," she added.
Still, there was no sign that the top Democratic and Republican Senate leaders were even talking about a way to solve the impasse. Instead, Senate Majority Leader John Thune continued to try to peel away centrist Democrats who may be willing to cross party lines.
"It's time for them to get a backbone," Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said Friday.
The Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan organization that tracks federal service, says more than 200,000 civil servants have left since the start of this administration in January due to earlier firings, retirements and deferred resignation offers.
"These unnecessary and misguided reductions in force will further hollow out our federal government, rob it of critical expertise and hobble its capacity to effectively serve the public," said the organization's president and CEO, Max Stier.
___
AP Education Writer Collin Binkley and AP writers Kevin Freking, Matthew Daly, Rebecca Santana, Mike Stobbe and Will Weissert contributed to this report.
Seung Min Kim And Stephen Groves, The Associated Press
Trolling, taunting, spamming, and off topic comments may be removed at the discretion of group mods. NT members that are known plagiarists, repeat comments, or continue to disrupt/deflect the conversation risk having all of their comments deleted. Please remember to quote the person(s) to whom you are replying to preserve continuity of this seed. Any use of the phrase "Trump Derangement Syndrome" or the TDS acronym in a comment will be deleted. Any use of the term "Brandon", "Traitor Joe", or any variations thereof, when referring to President Biden, will be deleted. Right wing trolls can expect to have their irrelevant questions and comments deleted. Posting debunked lies will be subject to deletion. Use of the terms "leftist" or "lefty" will also be subject to deletion. ©
Tags
Who is online
88 visitors
The Trump regime is continuing its jihad against the United States. Enacting Project 2025 as their guide to dismantling the federal government.
thumpers will pay a horrific price for their support of trump, and I plan on being one of the bill collectors ...
What Trump meant to say is that "a lot of them happen to be democracy oriented", something Trump and his right wing cabal hate with a passion.
As soon as he found out he didnt win the Nobel Peace Prize he started taking it out on government workers. He is insane.
In reality, Trump has been "taking it out" on government workers since Day 1 of his current regime. Let's not forget the mass firings and enormous destruction created by DOGE. This is just more of the same.
And, yes, he is insane.
time to put revolving doors on the OPM. the trump administration has been hiring back the early victims of doge just to keep the gov't functioning. a friend retired last may from the BLM when the gov't sweetened musk's retire or else email, and he's still going to collect his paycheck until 12/31/25, but they can still ask him to come back to work until then ...
SWEET RETRIBUTION!
The Environmental Protection Agency actively lobbied Congress to close my agency. Now let's get the Geological Survey and some of the Indian agencies in the Interior Dept. The payback is long, long overdue.
That's how Republicans run government... into the ground...
Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Newt Gingrich was responsible for closing my agency. Clinton gutted the government before Republicans came along by getting rid of 400,000 Federal workers and gifting the government to the financial sector.
Trump has to destroy much more before matching the damage Bill Clinton caused.
[✘]
Did they fire you because you were a Republican ?
Our agency was not a regulator, worked closely with industry, was focused on engineering rather than science, and tended to be more aligned with conservative Democrats. Our agency had its own revenue stream so we were not furloughed during the shutdown showdowns.
We were a small, successful bit of government. Liberal Democrats and Republicans hated that.
Trump said today he was firing people because the Democrats wanted to keep them.
I do not care why. What I care about is who. As long as EPA, USGS, BIA are cut then the why doesn't matter. Bruce Babbitt didn't care, why should I? The AFL-CIO took our money and did absolutely nothing on our behalf. We were just damned Gubmit workers.
Don't try to gaslight me about the poor, ill treated Federal workers either. I've been there, I've lived it. I lost everything just so Democrats could pander to the political left.
Its all about you? Ok.
All you're telling us is that there was apparently bipartisan agreement with regard to whatever agency you claim you worked for, and because it was allegedly closed you're so bitter you want to destroy the government. That will lead rational people to doubt your credibility.
Okay, you know Newt is a Republican, right?
Sounds like you got caught in the downsizing that happened after the cold war in the 1990's with base closures and other funds being moved from the cold war stance we'd had since the 1950's. Was that Democrats fault? Of course not. Both Democrats and Republicans came together to make those cuts.
You can see the big dip starting in 1992 and not rising much until the 2nd Iraq war. Are you complaining that Americans felt safer and didn't want to spend as much of the GDP on military infrastructure? Sounds like some sour grapes that America was safer. There was a huge logistical network of federal employees left over from the cold war and Clinton did cut 377,000 federal workers which I would think Republicans would be cheering, but apparently, it's a "NIMBY" type thing, or rather an "NMPC" thing. "I like cuts to the federal government that save taxpayers money... as long as it 'Not My PayCheck' that gets cut...".
In this case, yes, it is all about me. I really was a victim.
Bureau of Mines. Sister agency to the Geological Survey under the Dept. of Interior. Established by the Organic Act of 1910 (PL 79).
Closing the Bureau of Mines actually increased government spending. The only parts of the Bureau of Mines that were actually closed were the national laboratories conducting research on mining and industrial related issues. The agency closure was the result of Bill Clinton's policy shift away from an industrial economy and toward a finance based economy regulated by monetary controls. The Bureau of Mines was closed shortly before the repeal of Glass-Steagall limitations on the financial sector.
Newt Gingrich and Al Gore were brothers from different mothers.
No, that is incorrect. The USBM (and me) was caught up in Bill Clinton's efforts to transform the United States economy into a service economy based upon the financial sector, regulated by monetary controls, and dependent upon foreign imports. The Bureau of Mines was the victim of Clinton's Free Trade policy.
The argument was that the United States was not going to need mining any longer. That was the pandering political promise to environmental activists and looney tune naturalists. Bill Clinton killed the industrial economy to save the spotted owl. Didn't you get the memo?
Some air traffic controllers don’t want their jobs. Say, “Bye.”
Not really sure what Democrats thought was gonna happen, but...
Gonna happen?
It's been happening since Trump took office. Decimating the federal workforce is a primary goal of the Trump regime.
It's been happening all along as CEOs tell peons of the need for fiscal responsibility and the maximization of shareholder value.
Hacks aren't immune to financial rules.
Your comment is interesting. Nonsensical, but interesting, as is often the case with non sequiturs.
that's close to what I'll be telling thumpers when their churches start getting destroyed ...
Republicans have absolute control, Congress, Senate, and the Presidency.
They don't need Democrats, they can vote in it on anything they want to happen. Republicans just want to play old tricks of their blame game always blaming Democrats. They blame Dems even for the bad bills they actually did pass.