The government shutdown entered day 13 Monday as Vice President JD Vance warned of “painful” job cuts to the federal workforce the longer the impasse persists.
The Senate will have another chance to pass a short-term funding measure on Tuesday–no votes will be held before then as Monday is the Columbus Day federal holiday.
“The longer this goes on, the deeper the cuts are going to be,” Vance told Fox News on Sunday. “To be clear, some of these cuts are going to be painful. This is not a situation we relish,” he said, adding that the Democrats have “dealt us a pretty difficult set of cards.”
More than 4,000 federal employees may have been laid off on Friday, according to court documents. An estimated 1,446 Treasury employees plus up to 1,200 Health and Human Services workers received reduction-in-force notices, according to documents filed by a senior advisor at the Office of Management and Budget in a California district court.
Employees at the Commerce, Education, and Energy departments also received notices, as did employees at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of Homeland Security. In total at least 4.152 workers received layoff notices, the documents suggested.
However, there’s good news for military personnel as President Donald Trump said that troops will be paid on Oct.15, in a Truth Social post Saturday. “I am using my authority, as Commander in Chief, to direct our Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to use all available funds to get our Troops PAID on October 15th,” he wrote.
Prediction market Polymarket is showing a 48% chance of this shutdown becoming the longest in U.S. history, beating the 35-day impasse between December 2018 and January 2019.