{"id":292569,"date":"2025-10-10T18:13:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T18:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/292569\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T18:13:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T18:13:10","slug":"budget-office-says-substantial-firings-of-federal-workers-have-started","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/292569\/","title":{"rendered":"Budget office says ‘substantial’ firings of federal workers have started"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The White House budget office said Friday that mass firings of federal workers have started in an attempt to exert more pressure on Democratic lawmakers in the ongoing government shutdown<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Russ Vought<\/a>, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on the social media site X that the \u201cRIFs have begun,\u201d referring to reduction-in-force plans aimed at reducing the size of the federal government.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the budget office said the reductions are \u201csubstantial\u201d but did not offer more immediate details.<\/p>\n

The Education Department is among the agencies hit by new layoffs, a department spokesperson said Friday without providing more details. The department had about 4,100 employees when Trump took office in January, but its workforce was nearly halved amid mass layoffs in the Republican administration\u2019s first months. At the start of the shutdown, it had about 2,500 employees.<\/p>\n

Federal health workers were also being fired Friday, though a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman did not say how many or which agencies were being hit hardest.<\/p>\n

The White House previewed that it would pursue the aggressive layoff tactic 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 for federal programs whose funding would lapse in a government shutdown, are otherwise not funded and are \u201cnot consistent with the President\u2019s priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

This goes far beyond what usually happens in a government shutdown, which is that federal workers are furloughed but restored to their jobs once the shutdown ends.<\/p>\n

Democrats have tried to call the administration\u2019s bluff, arguing the firings could be illegal, and seemed bolstered by the fact the White House had yet to carry out the firings.<\/p>\n

But President Donald Trump had said earlier this week that he would soon have more information about how many federal jobs<\/a> would be eliminated.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll be able to tell you that in four or five days if this keeps going on,\u201d he said Tuesday in the Oval Office as he met with Canada\u2019s prime minister<\/a>, Mark Carney. \u201cIf this keeps going on, it\u2019ll be substantial, and a lot of those jobs will never come back.\u201d <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the halls of the Capitol were quiet<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Some Republicans on Capitol Hill have suggested that Vought\u2019s threats of mass layoffs have been unhelpful to bipartisan talks on the funding standoff.<\/p>\n

The top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, said in a statement that the \u201cshutdown does not give Trump or Vought new, special powers\u201d to layoff workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is nothing new, and no one should be intimidated by these crooks,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

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 as the shutdown pain dragged on.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s time for them to get a backbone,\u201d Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said during a news conference.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP Education Writer Collin Binkley and AP writer Mike Stobbe contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The White House budget office said Friday that mass firings of federal workers have started…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":292570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[64,2147,12785,84,69,57,2055,49089,8121,606,18809,50,27130,80,18464,89,121682,43831,322,67,132,68,93],"class_list":{"0":"post-292569","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-dc-wire","12":"tag-district-of-columbia","13":"tag-donald-trump","14":"tag-general-news","15":"tag-government-and-politics","16":"tag-government-shutdown","17":"tag-john-thune","18":"tag-labor","19":"tag-mark-carney","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-patty-murray","22":"tag-politics","23":"tag-russell-vought","24":"tag-u-s-democratic-party","25":"tag-u-s-government-shutdown","26":"tag-u-s-office-of-management-and-budget","27":"tag-u-s-republican-party","28":"tag-united-states","29":"tag-unitedstates","30":"tag-us","31":"tag-washington-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115351231587397357","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}