Stephen Lepore writes for the Daily Mail about the president’s unprecedented approach toward the government shutdown.
Donald Trump began his promised mass purge of federal workers Friday, as more than 4,100 people were laid off as the government shutdown rolls on.
The president previewed the pink slips in a press conference in the Oval Office earlier Friday, blaming them and the shutdown on the Democrats.
‘It’ll be a lot and it’ll be Democrat-oriented because we figure they started this thing. It’ll be a lot of people, all because of the Democrats,’ Trump said.
It’s the biggest set of firings in government since Elon Musk’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) purge early in Trump’s second term.
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 as the government shutdown continues.
Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on the social platform X that the ‘RIFs have begun,’ referring to reduction-in-force plans aimed at reducing the size of the federal government.
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 could apply for federal programs whose funding would lapse in a government shutdown, is otherwise not funded and is ‘not consistent with the President´s priorities.’
In a court filing, the budget office said well over 4,000 employees would be fired, though it noted that the funding situation was ‘fluid and rapidly evolving.’
The firings would hit the hardest at the departments of the Treasury, which would lose over 1,400 employees; Health and Human Services, with a loss of over 1,100; and Housing and Urban Development, set to lose over 400.
