House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) is hammering President Trump’s budget director for promising mass firings if the government shuts down.
Jeffries said the threat from Russell Vought, the head of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), won’t cow Democrats into supporting a GOP spending bill they deem a danger to public health.
He didn’t mince words.
“Listen Russ, you are a malignant political hack,” Jeffries posted Wednesday night on the social platform X. “We will not be intimidated by your threat to engage in mass firings.
“Get lost.”
Vought, a key player in the Project 2025 effort to gut the federal workforce, is directing federal agencies to ready mass firings in the event that Congress doesn’t extend federal funding beyond Sept. 30, causing large parts of the government to shut down. In a new memo, the OMB instructed department leaders to “use this opportunity to consider reduction in force (RIF) notices for all employees in programs, projects, or activities” that meet several specific criteria.
Among those considerations, a program might be on the chopping block if it’s deemed to be not “consistent with the president’s priorities.”
The threat raises the pressure on Democratic leaders in Congress to support a Republican spending bill to keep the government running through Nov. 21. Indeed, it was the peril facing the federal workforce that had influenced the decision by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to support a similar short-term funding bill last March, which prevented a shutdown but also sparked a backlash from Democrats both inside and outside the Beltway.
This time around, Schumer and Jeffries are both dug in — at least for the moment — against the Republicans’ bill.
Schumer, in his own statement, called the OMB memo “an attempt at intimidation.”
“Donald Trump has been firing federal workers since day one — not to govern, but to scare. This is nothing new and has nothing to do with funding the government. These unnecessary firings will either be overturned in court or the administration will end up hiring the workers back, just like they did as recently as today,” Schumer said in a statement late Wednesday.
The GOP legislation passed through the House last week, with almost every Democrat opposing it. But it was sunk in the Senate, where Schumer rallied Democrats to reject the bill almost unanimously, denying Republicans the 60 votes they needed to defeat a filibuster.
Amid the impasse, Trump and GOP leaders have refused to negotiate with Democratic leaders on a bipartisan compromise that can pass through both chambers and reach the president’s desk. They’re banking that Schumer will either reverse course and support the GOP bill, or that Democrats will be blamed for the shutdown scheduled to occur if no deal is reached.
Heightening the pressure on Senate Democrats — and increasing the odds of a shutdown — House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) canceled two days next week, Sept. 29 and 30, when the House was previously scheduled to be in session.
Without congressional action, the government will shut down Wednesday.