Thousands of federal employees could face layoffs during closure

The head of the Management and Budget Office (OMB), Russell Vought, and President Donald Trump are in the process of mapping the federal government’s discounts after the Capitol Hill legislators do not reach a funding agreement early Wednesday morning.

Trump prepared the ground in the delivery of the closure that the federal government is likely to see the staff and the programs’ discounts during the closure, adding a message to Truth Social Thursday that many federal agencies are a “political scam”.

“I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, that of the renown of the 2025 project, to determine which of the many Democratic agencies, most of which are a political scam, it recommends being cut, and if these cuts will be or not temporary or permanent,” said Trump.

Here is what Trump wants to reshape the federal government during the closure

“I cannot believe that the radical democrats on the left gave me this unprecedented opportunity. They are not stupid people, so maybe it is their way of wanting, quietly and quickly, making America again!”

The head of management and budget Russell Vought and President Donald Trump are mapping the cuts to the federal government after the Capitol Hill legislators had not reached a funding bill. (Alex Brandon / The Associated Press)

Fox News Digital spoke with Richard Stern, the director of the Grover Mr. Hermann Center for the federal budget on Thursday morning, to discuss the agencies that the head of the OMB would probably aim for personnel cuts and if such cuts would be permanent.

How a stop allows cuts

Stern explained to Fox Digital that there are a pair of overlapping problems that lead to the size of government staff. Agencies are held by various laws to provide certain services to citizens. And, separately, credit bills establish financing floors on the amount of money, one agency available to spend on personnel pay.

During a closure, however, there is an end of funding period, which means that agencies do not have “payroll floors of the financing bill”, leaving the executive power in discretion on how to continue to provide the required services to citizens, he explained.

“Because financing bills have established effective floors by salary expenditure, which tends to dictate the number of people working for agencies.

The White House is preparing for “imminent” federal dismissals after the Democrats force the government’s closure

“They simply say, you know:” There is a subsidy program that must be released by the XYZ settings. “Thus, in the event of a financing parade, this means that the administration … can establish a plan saying:” Hey, look, you know, we think that the Ministry of Education, for example, could do everything that is legally necessary to do, but do it with 10% of the workforce, “he continued.

If the administration determines that an agency can carry out its legally required services to citizens with fewer people, it will subsequently send the advice of power reduction, called rifs, to staff members. (Kevin Lamarque / Reuters)

If the administration determines that an agency can carry out its legally required services to citizens with fewer people, it will subsequently send the advice of power reduction, called rifs, to staff members.

“If the funding was there, and if the financing law required these levels of personnel, you could not rif,” he said. “But in the financing parade, it gives the White House this opportunity.”

The permanent changes of the government are however in a gray area, because the RIFs could only take effect after 60 days.

“Once the RIF’s opinions have come out, you … you must legally wait 60 days before Rif’s opinions can be promulgated,” continued Stern. “Really, the closure should last 60 days, beyond that, to act on the rifs.”

The expert in the Heritage Foundation, who is also the acting director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies conservative reflection group, stressed that any endowment cup is not an example of “workforce reduction”.

Trump’s White House agencies cared for mass layoffs before potential closure

“This does not reduce agency activities,” he said. “This does not reduce what they provide, the services they provide. This simply reduces the workforce that offers the same level and the same amount of services.”

Headquarters of the environmental protection agency in Washington, DC (Getty)

What agencies could be targeted for cuts?

The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told a group of journalists on Thursday that “thousands” of federal employees could be dismissed during the closure.

“Listen, it’s going to be in thousands of people. This is a very good question. And it is something on which the management and budget office and the whole White House team here, once again, must unfortunately work today,” said Leavitt.

Stern underlined a handful of agencies that will probably be targeted for dismissals, invoking agencies that have “the refined mission” their possible on regulatory issues, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as other agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, which manage the drafting of subsidies for programs.

“The ED ministry is probably, in a way is the poster on it,” he said. “They talked, they literally only need about 10% on the staff.”

He also noted that the EPA, the Interior Department and the Ministry of Labor could face cuts due to the “mission of the different agencies are slipping into many regulations which are quite harmful to the economy, which are quite harmful to American families”.

The White House tells the federal agencies to prepare dismissal plans while the government closure is looming

“EPA in … about a decade, the mission has competence the competence in increasingly regulatory affairs, that EPA simply does not have under statutory capacity,” he said. “They regulate apart from the limits, the accusation which was made to them by law by the Congress. Thus, the EPA is another of those where it makes a lot of sense to reduce a lot of work there. Then, in the HUD and in the Labor Department, you have similar things.”

Stern has said that the administration is probably also considering agencies such as National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities and certain aspects of the Department of Housing and Urban Development which are responsible for “management programs which write subsidies when there is a huge amount of legal power on which gets the grant”.

President Donald Trump said the closure had presented the opportunity for the administration to carry out layoffs as part of a mission continues to eliminate the federal government. (Alex Brandon / The Associated Press)

“These subsidies do not serve a critical role, or frankly,” he said, adding that subsidies often land in the hands of universities and promoted a “left” ideology on subjects, such as transgender and climate change.

What does Trump say on federal cuts?

Trump said that during various public remarks on Tuesday, while the deadline clock started to dry, the closure presented him to the administration of carrying out layoffs within the framework of a continuous mission to cool the federal government and to get rid of excessive and fraud expenses. Trump, however, has repeatedly stressed that he does not support the closure, noting the blame on the Democrats.

The White House is preparing for “imminent” federal dismissals after the Democrats force the government’s closure

“We don’t want it to stop because we have the biggest period of time,” Trump said at the Oval Office on Tuesday. “I tell you that 17 dollars have invested. So the last person who wishes to close is us.

“Now, that being said, we can do things during the closure that are irreversible, which are bad for them and irreversible by them, like cutting a large number of people, cutting things they love, cutting programs they love,” he continued.

The Republicans have pinned the closure blame on the Democrats, arguing that they refused to finance the budget to try to restore medical benefits funded by taxpayers for illegal immigrants. The Democrats have at the end of this assertion as a “lie” and thrown the blame for the closure of the Republicans.

“Lots of good closings can get off,” added Trump on Tuesday. “We can get rid of many things we didn’t want, and they would be democratic things. But they want open borders. They want men to play in female sports. They want transgender for everyone. They never stop. They don’t learn. We have won an election in a landslide.”

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Trump’s second administration highlighted the size of the federal government as swollen since the day of the inauguration, including the president launching the Ministry of Government efficiency to eliminate potential fraud, excessive expenses and corruption and offering federal employees voluntary redemptions in January to leave their posts before deploying other RIF initiatives through various organizations.

Fox News Digital contacted the Omber Office to comment on the planned cuts but did not immediately receive an answer.

Elizabeth Elkind of Fox News Digital and Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.