More than 4,000 federal employees were given layoff notices Friday as part of the Trump administration’s broad effort to reshape the government while it remains shutdown, according to a court filing Friday.
The filing provides greater insight into an announcement from President Donald Trump’s budget chief earlier in the day that the administration had begun government-wide reductions in force that had been anticipated since federal funding lapsed on October 1.
“The RIFs have begun,” Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought posted on X, without elaborating on how many federal workers had received RIF – or reduction in force – notices.
As of Friday evening, RIF notices had gone out to employees at the departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security and Treasury, according to department spokespeople, union representatives and sources directly impacted.
Treasury and HHS saw the highest number reductions, with more than 1,000 workers laid off at each department, according to the filing in a lawsuit brought by two federal employee unions seeking to stop the layoffs.
Congressional Republicans and the White House have in recent days raised the threat of mass job cuts as they’ve looked to maximize pressure on Democrats to supply the votes needed to break a logjam in the Senate and reopen the government. But more than a week into the government shutdown, both parties on Capitol Hill have remained entrenched in their positions on what is needed to strike a funding deal, even for a short time.
Earlier Friday, an OMB spokesperson said that the layoffs would be “substantial,” adding: “We regret that the Democrats have shut down the government and forced workers to be put in this position.”
While the White House has repeatedly placed blame on congressional Democrats for not reopening the government, it is initiating layoffs during this shutdown by choice – administrations are not required to cut jobs when government funding lapses. The layoffs are separate from the furloughs that always occur when government funding runs out.
Democrats on Capitol Hill swiftly criticized the move.
“Once again: if President Trump & Russ Vought decide to do more mass firings, they are CHOOSING to inflict more pain on people. ‘Reductions in force’ are not a new power these bozos get in a shutdown,” Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democratic appropriator in the Senate, wrote on X. “We can’t be intimidated by these crooks.”
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer also argued that “nobody’s forcing Trump and Vought to do this. They don’t have to do it; they want to,” calling the layoffs “deliberate chaos.”
Immediate information on the layoffs Friday was sparse, with the White House declining to provide specifics. But several agencies told CNN that they had started conducting the reductions.
“HHS employees across multiple divisions have received reduction-in-force notices as a direct consequence of the Democrat-led government shutdown,” an agency spokesperson told CNN. “All HHS employees receiving reduction-in-force notices were designated non-essential by their respective divisions. HHS continues to close wasteful and duplicative entities, including those that are at odds with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.”
Initially, the Trump administration promised to swiftly roll out mass layoffs of federal workers with the start of the government’s lapse in funding, but – as CNN reported – the White House then appeared to shift strategy, holding off on doing so a bit longer as an increasing number of Republican lawmakers and Trump administration officials acknowledged the potential political perils of the move. Friday’s announcement came on day 10 of the shutdown.
Some furloughed workers have questioned how they would know they’ve been laid off since they have limited access to work email during the shutdown.
Administration officials said employees impacted by the layoffs would also be notified by the US Postal Service, which remains operating during the government shutdown.
The White House said furloughed employees can use government-issued equipment for purposes related to a shutdown, which include “checking for any Reduction in Force (RIF) updates.”
Agencies must inform employees affected by a RIF at least 60 days before their termination date.
Federal employee unions vow court fight
The American Federation of Government Employees called the administration’s move “disgraceful.”
“In AFGE’s 93 years of existence under several presidential administrations – including during Trump’s first term – no president has ever decided to fire thousands of furloughed workers during a government shutdown,” Everett Kelley, the union’s national president, said in a statement.
AFGE, along with another union representing federal workers, filed a lawsuit in a California federal court seeking to stop the Trump administration from initiating the mass layoffs, calling them illegal.
The unions pressed District Court Judge Susan Illston on Friday to immediately halt the RIFs now that the administration had started carrying them out. The Friday filing from the government revealing the number of people affected followed unions’ request last week for a temporary restraining order to block the administration from carrying out its threat.
“We will see you in court,” Skye Perryman, CEO of Democracy Forward, which is representing the unions, posted on X in response to Vought’s post.
Illston has not ruled on the requests but earlier this week ordered OMB to provide the status of RIF notices that were planned or in progress by Friday evening.
Max Stier, CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, previously told CNN that the shutdown does not give the administration additional power to downsize the federal workforce. “There is no extra legal authority on their part to conduct RIFs on the basis of a shutdown,” he said Tuesday.
In a statement Friday, Stier criticized the Trump administration for using “civil servants as hostages in this ongoing breakdown of our public institutions.”
“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,” he said.
Long planned reductions
The Trump administration has been planning for – and at some agencies, already conducting – widespread reductions in force since soon after the president took office. The layoffs were part of a multipronged effort to downsize the workforce that also included multiple incentive programs to convince employees to depart voluntarily.
More than 2 million people work for the federal government. As of September 23, more than 201,000 civil servants had already left federal service, according to the Partnership’s tracker.
Trump had campaigned on overhauling the federal government and its workforce, whom he viewed as interfering with his ability to carry out his priorities during his firm term.
In February, Trump signed an executive order telling department officials to begin preparations for sweeping layoffs. The OMB and Office of Personnel Management followed up with a memo instructing agencies to submit two-part plans to carry out the reorganization – including submitting lists of agency divisions and employees performing functions not mandated by law or regulation who are not considered essential employees during government shutdowns.
Federal employee unions sued, but in July, the Supreme Court allowed agencies to proceed with their RIF plans, putting on hold a lower court order that had temporarily blocked Trump from taking those steps without approval from Congress.
Some agencies, including HHS, have already laid off sizeable portions of their staff, while others walked back some of their plans. And still other departments found they had to rehire some workers in order to carry out necessary functions.
This headline and story have been updated with additional developments.
CNN’s Adam Cancryn, Matt Egan, Sunlen Serfaty, Arlette Saenz and Jeff Zeleny contributed to this report.
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