White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday that thousands of federal workers will likely lose their jobs due to the government shutdown.
The White House had previously said that mass layoffs were “imminent” and could result in people permanently losing their jobs within days. President Donald Trump on Wednesday called on congressional Republicans to use the shutdown as an “opportunity” to cut wasteful spending.
“Republicans must use this opportunity of Democrat forced closure to clear out dead wood, waste, and fraud,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Billions of Dollars can be saved. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Trump took to Truth Social again Thursday to say: “I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.”
Rather than pass a clean 7-week continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open, Democrats submitted an alternative CR demanding the reinstatement of Medicaid funding for illegal aliens and other non-citizens, as well as the restoration of the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB), and other left-wing priorities, totaling nearly $1.5 trillion.
The clean Republican bill passed in the House but has failed three times to secure the 60 votes needed to pass in the Senate. The next vote has been scheduled for Friday.
“There’s nothing to negotiate. There’s nothing we can pull out of this bill to make it any leaner or cleaner than it is,” Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on Wednesday.
The White House announced Wednesday that $18 billion will be withheld for infrastructure projects in New York City, the home city of the Democrat leaders Rep. Hakeem Jeffreys and Senator Chuck Schumer.
As the shutdown entered its second day, Thursday, Leavitt told reporters that the Office of Budget and Management (OMB) was “unfortunately” having to work on trimming the federal workforce.
When asked how many federal workers would be fired, Leavitt said, “it’s likely going to be in the thousands.”
“These discussions, these conversations, these meetings would not be happening if the Democrats had voted to keep the government open,” she said.
The press secretary also called out Democrats for lying about wanting to give tax-payer benefits to illegal aliens.
“Roll the tape. You can see time and time again, Democrats have supported that, they voted for that and they did it under Joe Biden, and we stopped it!” she exclaimed. “The president stopped it with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, and now they want to undo the president’s very popular policy to ensure that taxpayer funded healthcare benefits only go to tax-paying, law-abiding American citizens.”
Trump posted on Truth Social Thursday that he had in fact met with OMB Director Russ Vought “to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent.”
Trump added: “I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity. They are not stupid people, so maybe this is their way of wanting to, quietly and quickly, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
In a separate post, the president said: “THE DEMOCRATS WANT TO GIVE YOUR HEALTHCARE MONEY TO ILLEGAL ALIENS AND OPEN OUR BORDERS TO THE CRIMINALS OF THE WORLD, A DEADLY COMBINATION BECAUSE EVERYBODY WILL COME!”