Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), speaks to members of the media outside the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, July 24, 2025.
Aaron Schwartz | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The Trump administration began laying off federal workers on Friday, the 10th day of the U.S. government shutdown, administration budget chief Russell Vought said in a social media post.
“The RIFs have begun,” Vought wrote on X, using the acronym for “Reductions in Force.”
The Office of Management and Budget, which Vought leads, soon after confirmed that “RIFs have begun and are substantial.”
No other details of the layoffs were immediately released.
The announcement comes four days after National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett warned in a CNBC interview that President Donald Trump could “start taking sharp measures” if the shutdown continued due to the lack of a stopgap funding deal approved by Congress.
Hassett said that “any government worker who loses their job” will have Democrats to blame for their layoff.
While many federal workers have been furloughed because of the shutdown, it is not the normal practice in shutdowns to permanently lay off government employees.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said, “Russell Vought just fired thousands of Americans with a tweet.
“Let’s be blunt: nobody’s forcing Trump and Vought to do this,” Schumer said in a statement. “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.”
“Here’s what’s worse: Republicans would rather see thousands of Americans lose their jobs than sit down and negotiate with Democrats to reopen the government,” Schumer said.
Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, in a statement said, “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 caused by Senator Schumer.”
“Regardless of whether federal employees have been working without pay or have been furloughed, their work is incredibly important to serving the public,” Collins said. “Arbitrary layoffs result in a lack of sufficient personnel needed to conduct the mission of the agency and to deliver essential programs, and cause harm to families in Maine and throughout our country.”
A spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department, in a statement to CNBC, said, “HHS employees across multiple divisions have received reduction-in-force notices as a direct consequence of the Democrat-led government shutdown.”
“HHS under the Biden administration became a bloated bureaucracy, growing its budget by 38% and its workforce by 17%,” department spokesman Andrew Nixon said.
“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,” Nixon said.
A number of Treasury Department employees also have received RIF notices.
A union representing federal workers, the American Federation of Government Employees, quickly replied to Vought’s tweet, writing, “The lawsuit has been filed.” AFGE, the largest federal employee union, represents 820,000 workers, some of whom work for the District of Columbia.
“America’s unions will see you in court,” the AFL-CIO said in its own tweet.
Since the shutdown began last week, Vought has announced in tweets decisions by the Trump administration to freeze and cut billions of dollars in federal funding for projects in states and cities controlled by Democratic elected officials.
The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have repeatedly sought to blame Democrats for the government shutdown and any negative fallout from it.
Democratic senators have largely refused to vote for a Republican stopgap funding plan that would reopen the government, saying that any such resolution must include an agreement to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits.
Those tax credits lower the cost of Obamacare health insurance plans purchased by millions of Americans from government-run ACA marketplaces.
Dueling Republican and Democratic funding resolutions failed to pass in the Senate for the seventh time on Thursday.
The shutdown is expected to continue until at least early next week because the Senate is not due to resume business until Tuesday.
Although Republicans hold majorities in both the Senate and House, they need the votes of at least some Democratic senators to pass a funding bill because of the 60-vote threshold in the Senate required to avoid filibusters blocking legislation.
