By Thursday morning, on the second day of the government shutdown, Trump announced via a Truth Social post that he intended to meet shortly with Russell Vought, his Office of Management and Budget Director, to determine where to initiate federal workforce reductions. He remarked that the shutdown presented an “unprecedented opportunity” to select specific agencies for potential layoffs.
However, a significant hurdle to the President’s proposal is that implementing permanent staffing reductions during a government shutdown might be unlawful under federal statutes. Should Trump proceed with these layoffs, his decision could face prolonged legal challenges.
Last month, Trump and other Administration officials had initiated warnings of extensive federal worker layoffs if a shutdown occurred. On Thursday, Trump appeared to embrace his current situation, asserting that Senate Democrats were withholding the necessary votes for Republicans to maintain government funding. “I am meeting today with Russ Vought, renowned for PROJECT 2025, to ascertain which of the numerous Democrat Agencies, many of which I consider a political SCAM, he advises cutting, and if these reductions will be temporary or permanent,” Trump stated, acknowledging Vought’s primary authorship of Project 2025, a plan for federal government restructuring he has championed since assuming office, despite disavowing it during his campaign. He added, “I am astonished that the Radical Left Democrats afforded me this unparalleled opportunity.”
Questioned about Trump’s reference to “Democrat agencies,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded that the White House was examining “agencies that do not conform with this Administration’s values and that we perceive as squandering taxpayer funds.” The previous day, Leavitt had informed journalists that “we anticipate layoffs are impending.”
Typically, during a shutdown, a substantial segment of the federal workforce is furloughed temporarily until Congress enacts an appropriations bill to resume government operations and provide retroactive pay to employees. Numerous agencies have already released their strategies detailing the number of workers to be temporarily sent home during the current shutdown. Among the agencies projected to furlough the highest proportions of their staff are the Environmental Protection Agency, the Education Department, the Commerce Department, the Labor Department, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Furthermore, Trump opted to cease operations for the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, an entity created by the Inspector General Reform Act of 2008 to enhance vigilance against waste, fraud, and abuse throughout the federal government. By Thursday afternoon, the agency’s websites—including —along with links to its reports, manuals, and training schedules, displayed a blank screen carrying the message: “Due to a lack of apportionment of funds, this website is currently unavailable.” The permanence or temporariness of this office’s cessation of operations remains undetermined.
However, Trump, Leavitt, Vought, and Vice President J.D. Vance have all indicated that certain federal employees might face permanent dismissal while the government lacks funding. During a seldom-seen appearance at the White House press briefing on Wednesday, Vance characterized these potential layoffs, also known as reductions in force (RIFs), as vital for sustaining essential services as the shutdown persists.
Just hours prior to the shutdown’s commencement, the American Federation of Government Employees, alongside other unions representing hundreds of thousands of federal personnel, initiated legal action to prevent Trump from utilizing the shutdown as a means to terminate thousands of federal employees. The legal challenge contends that the Administration lacks the requisite legal authority to permanently dismiss federal employees during a shutdown. The Antideficiency Act, originally enacted in 1870, prohibits the federal government from expending funds not allocated by Congress, thereby dictating a significant portion of permissible and impermissible federal government actions during a shutdown.
Reductions in force, conversely, are governed by regulations derived from the Veterans’ Preference Act of 1944 and other legislative acts, as per the lawsuit, which asserts that these specific statutes are not pertinent during a shutdown.
According to a high-ranking government official, Trump administration officials have received internal advisories suggesting that permanent dismissals during the shutdown might be successfully contested as infringements of appropriations law.
However, budget officials within the Administration remain unconvinced. When questioned about the authority the Office of Management and Budget would invoke to proceed with reductions in force, OMB spokeswoman Rachel Cauley responded via email, stating, “It’s called the Constitution.” Cauley’s statement further clarified: “Implementing RIFs constitutes an excepted activity, exercised to uphold the President’s constitutional mandate to oversee and manage the Executive Branch, akin to the conduct of foreign policy.”
The legal action, lodged by the unions in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, seeks a court order to halt any administrative attempts to enact reductions in force and to rule that the Administration overstepped its powers even in instructing agencies to ready for worker terminations during the shutdown.
Norm Eisen, executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund and one of the legal representatives who filed the lawsuit, declared in a statement, “The Trump administration cannot be permitted to exploit a shutdown as a pretext for another unlawful assault on federal employees.”
