Through Daniel Johnson
October 11, 2025
Trump has also publicly mused about firing Democratic workers.
More than 4,000 federal employees received layoff notices on October 10 following multiple reports indicating that the administration had chosen not to return wages to laid-off federal employees classified as “non-essential” workers following the government shutdown due to the inability of the Democrats and the Republican Party, who control all the instruments of power, to reach a compromise.
According to CNNThe layoffs represent Donald Trump making good on a threat to lay off workers if Democrats disagree with his strong bargaining tactics and agree to a budget largely dictated by the Republican Party.
To that end, Trump has not only blamed Democrats for the shutdown but also publicly mused that the workers to be laid off are Democrats.
“We think they started this, so they have to be Democratic-leaning,” Trump said in reference to federal employees, whom he noted he would lay off “many” of them. Like Trump, the White House and Republican leaders have blamed the shutdown on the Democratic Party.
This is what an OMB spokesperson said CNN on October 10: “We regret that Democrats have shut down the government and forced workers into this position.”
However, the layoffs are not the Democratic Party’s fault; that decision rests entirely with the party in power, i.e. the Republicans.
As Sen. Patty Murray, (D-WA), the top Democratic appropriator in the Senate, noted in a message to her Twitter ( are intimidated by these thugs.”
Similarly, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer indicated that “no one is forcing Trump and Vought to do it. They don’t have to do it; they want to.” Schumer said the layoffs are “intentional chaos.”
The American Federation of Government Employees called the Trump administration’s actions disgraceful in its own statement, noting that the move to lay off laid-off workers is unprecedented in American history.
“In AFGE’s 93 years of existence under various presidential administrations — including during Trump’s first term — no president has ever decided to lay off thousands of furloughed workers during a government shutdown,” said Everett Kelley, the union’s national president.
While it is unknown how many of the workers the Trump administration has laid off are black, if Trump’s threat on that front is even credible, both government workers and Democrats are camps that black Americans often find themselves in.
Additionally, according to Max Stier, CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a government shutdown does not give an administration additional power to declare a reduction in force, the tactic the Republican administration is using to further shrink the federal government.
“There is no additional legal authority on their part to conduct RIFs on a shutdown basis,” he said CNN on October 7.
Stier noted in an additional statement on October 10 that the administration is trying to use the employment status of federal employees as a kind of hostage situation.
The Trump administration, he said, is using “public officials as hostages in this ongoing collapse of our public institutions. These unnecessary and misguided reductions in force will further erode our federal government, deprive it of critical expertise and hinder its ability to effectively serve the public.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) reiterated the point about using government officials as hostages in a conversation with VoxSean Rameswaram on a recent episode of the outlet’s “Today Exploreed” podcast.
She told him, “He’s saying, ‘We think the Democrats care about the federal workers, about the people who do your food inspection, about the people who keep planes flying, about those people. And the threat is that we’re going to fire them.’ Why? Out of spite. I just have to stop and say about this: what kind of person does that? What kind of person says he is president of the United States, and his plan to run the government is to punish people who do the job for his own political reasons? That is not someone who looks out for America.”
RELATED CONTENT: The Trump administration is threatening no back pay for laid-off workers during the shutdown
#Trump #lays #federal #employees #shutdown