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The Trump administration has begun laying off thousands of federal workers in an effort to pressure Democrats as the government shutdown continues due to Congress’s failure to reach a funding deal.
“The RIFs have begun,” White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought announced Friday on X, using the acronym for “reductions in force.” A spokesman for his office confirmed that the cuts had started and were “substantial.”
Later that day, administration officials disclosed that seven federal agencies had initiated layoffs affecting more than 4,000 employees.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to use the shutdown to advance his long-held goal of shrinking the federal workforce. A senior administration official told NBC News that “those RIFs are a snapshot in time and represent only where things were at the time of the court filing,” suggesting that the situation remains fluid.
According to a Justice Department filing, reduction-in-force notices are being sent to employees across seven departments, with the Treasury Department and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) hit the hardest—together accounting for more than half of the total layoffs.
The filing came in response to a lawsuit from the American Federation of Government Employees and the AFL-CIO challenging the legality of the shutdown-related layoffs.
Other affected agencies include the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS), Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
On Friday alone, notices were issued to an estimated 315 employees at the Commerce Department, 466 at Education, and 187 at Energy. Between 1,100 and 1,200 HHS workers received notices, along with 176 at DHS and 1,446 at Treasury. About 20 to 30 EPA employees were informed that they may be affected by future cuts.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office—part of the Commerce Department—had previously notified 126 employees following the Oct. 1 government shutdown.
Democrats have condemned the layoffs, arguing that a shutdown does not give the president authority to fire workers and accusing the White House of acting vindictively.
A DHS spokesperson said layoffs at the department were concentrated within the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which Trump has targeted since its former director affirmed that he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. “During the last administration, CISA was focused on censorship, branding, and electioneering,” the spokesperson said. “This is part of getting CISA back on mission.”
HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said the department’s cuts were aimed at eliminating a “bloated bureaucracy” created under the Biden administration. “HHS continues to close wasteful and duplicative entities, including those that are at odds with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda,” he said.
AFSCME President Lee Saunders denounced the mass firings as “illegal” and vowed to “pursue every available legal avenue to stop” the administration’s actions.
Federal employee unions had already sued the administration over OMB’s earlier threat to initiate mass layoffs before the shutdown began. On Friday, the plaintiffs filed an emergency motion seeking a temporary restraining order to block the reductions, citing Vought’s post declaring that “The RIFs have begun.”
