Firings of federal workers begin as White House seeks to pressure
Democrats in government shutdown
[October 11, 2025]
By SEUNG MIN KIM and STEPHEN GROVES
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.
In a court filing, the budget office said well over 4,000 employees
would be fired, though it noted that the funding situation was “fluid
and rapidly evolving.”
The firings would hit the hardest at the departments of the Treasury,
which would lose over 1,400 employees, and Health and Human Services,
with a loss of over 1,100. The Education Department and Housing and
Urban Development each would lose over 400 staffers. The departments of
Commerce, Energy and Homeland Security and the Environmental Protection
Agency were all set to fire hundreds of more employees. It was not clear
which particular programs would be affected.
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.
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Russell Vought, Office of Management and Budget director, listens as
he addresses members of the media outside the West Wing at the White
House in Washington, Monday, Sept. 29, 2025, in Washington. (AP
Photo/Evan Vucci)
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.
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