Trump administration begins laying off federal workers amid shutdown

The Trump administration began laying off federal workers Friday as the government shutdown stretched into its 10th day, fulfilling threats from President Donald Trump to take advantage of the closure to shave off more parts of the federal workforce he dislikes. “The RIFs have begun,” White House budget director Russell Vought posted on X on Friday afternoon, using an acronym for reductions in force. The administration told a federal judge in California on Friday night that seven agencies — Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security and Treasury — had issued RIF notices to a total of more than 4,100 workers. Lawyers for the government added that the Environmental Protection Agency had also told about 20 to 30 employees that they might be affected by a RIF in the future and other agencies are “actively considering whether to conduct additional RIFs related to the ongoing lapse in appropriations,” according to the court filing.Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday that the administration deliberately moved to lay off “people that the Democrats want.” “It’ll be Democrat-oriented because we figure, you know, they started this thing,” he said. “So they should be Democrat-oriented. It’ll be a lot.” As the dismissals unfurled Friday, they did appear to mostly target offices that do work typically out of line with Trump administration priorities, including a unit within the Department of Health and Human Services focused on family and community policy and an office focused on fair and equal housing within the Department of Housing and Urban Development, according to several federal employees familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Also nixed was an Education Department division focused on improving academic achievement for K-12 students, a half-dozen staffers said.Employees will have at least 30 days, and many will have at least 60 days, before any dismissals take effect, according to federal guidance. The shutdown layoffs are the culmination of years of groundwork laid by Vought, an architect of the Project 2025 playbook for Trump’s second term, which outlined a drastically reduced federal bureaucracy. Vought’s office had threatened mass dismissals during the shutdown, perhaps even stretching into the hundreds of thousands, but it also told agencies that layoff plans might need to be revised after the government reopens. Trump told reporters before the shutdown that he might fire “a lot” of people, and once the shutdown began, Vice President JD Vance and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt likewise indicated that cuts were coming. The size of the federal workforce is unrelated to the government’s ability to pay its bills during a shutdown, though White House officials have falsely suggested otherwise. The Washington Post previously reported that the dismissals were likely to total fewer than 16,000. The layoffs run counter to recent internal warnings from senior government officials that such dismissals are legally questionable. In the first days of the shutdown, officials privately counseled agencies against conducting reductions in force while the government lacks funding, because it would probably violate the law, The Post reported this month.