WASHINGTON—Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought confirmed Friday on X that his team has begun terminating federal employees as the government shutdown rounds out its second week.
“The RIFs have begun,” Vought said, referencing “reductions in force,” the technical term for federal government layoffs. Daily Wire’s White House Correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan confirmed the reductions are “substantial.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) reacted to the news on X, accusing the Trump administration of sowing “deliberate chaos.”
“Russell Vought just fired thousands of Americans with a tweet. Let’s be blunt: Nobody’s forcing Trump and Vought to do this,” Schumer wrote. “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,” he continued.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump announced his intention to use a potential government shutdown to continue his administration’s efforts to reduce the size and scope of the federal government. Speaking to reporters this week, Trump said that “Because of the shutdown,” his team would be “able to take out billions and billions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse,” saying that Democrats “made a big mistake” by keeping the government closed.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) on Friday told reporters the White House has for 10 days “laid off doing anything in hopes that enough Senate Democrats would come to their senses and do the right thing and fund the government.”
But after another failed Senate vote Thursday night, Thune signaled the administration would take action.
“That’s what a shutdown does. You put the administration and this presidency in a position where they’re gonna have to make some hard decisions,” Thune said.
Now that federal employees are going to start to miss paychecks, “this gets real,” he said.
“I just think that the White House, my expectation is, yes, they’re going to start making some decisions about how to move money around, which agencies and departments are going to be impacted, which programs are going to be impacted, which employees are going to be impacted,” Thune said.
Not all Republicans are united behind the White House’s RIF effort.
“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 caused by Senator Schumer,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Friday.
“Regardless of whether federal employees have been working without pay or have been furloughed, their work is incredibly important to serving the public.”
Collins said, “Arbitrary layoffs result in a lack of sufficient personnel needed to conduct the mission of the agency and to deliver essential programs, and cause harm to families in Maine and throughout our country.”
The American Federation of Government Employees — a union that represents more than 800,000 workers in the federal government and the District of Columbia — is suing to block the Trump administration from “illegally” firing thousands of federal employees.
“Federal workers are tired of being used as pawns for the political and personal gains of the elected and unelected leaders,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said. “It’s time for Congress to do their jobs and negotiate an end to this shutdown immediately.”