The Trump administration is preparing to cut at least 4,100 additional federal employees during the ongoing partial government shutdown, according to court documents filed Friday in California.
The filing came in response to a lawsuit by federal employee unions seeking to halt the shutdown-related layoffs. The projected reductions are in addition to earlier agency personnel cuts or furloughs unrelated to the shutdown.
The filing came in response to a lawsuit by federal employee unions seeking to halt the shutdown-related layoffs.
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, asked Judge Susan Illston, a Clinton appointee, to block what the plaintiffs called unlawful reductions in force that the administration announced earlier in the day.
In industry jargon, they are called RIFs.
The filing provided the first concrete breakdown of expected cuts across several major agencies, including the departments of Commerce, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and Treasury.
The firings are part of a broader strategy to pressure Senate Democrats, who have so far blocked a House-passed stopgap spending bill to fund the government through Nov. 21.
President Donald Trump has warned that failure to end the shutdown will trigger permanent cuts if the impasse continues.
In a sworn declaration, Stephen Billy, a senior adviser at the Office of Management and Budget, estimated the following number of employees received notices on Friday: Commerce Department, 315; Education, 466; Energy, 187; Environmental Protection Agency, 20–30; HHS, 1,100–1,200; Housing and Urban Development, 442; DHS, 176; and Treasury, 1,446.
That totals between 4,152 and 4,262 positions potentially affected.
Billy wrote additional agencies are “actively considering whether to conduct additional layoffs,” but no final decisions have been made.
“Other defendant agencies are making pre-decisional assessments regarding offices and subdivisions that may be considered for potential RIFs based on the criteria outlined by OMB,” Billy wrote. “But those assessments remain under deliberation and are not final.”
Billy added that although some offices are conducting early planning as part of excepted shutdown activities, no new notices have yet been issued. Agencies, he said, are still reviewing their options and adjusting plans as the shutdown continues, with any preliminary numbers “tentative and subject to change.”
The unions’ lawsuit argued that the administration lacks authority to conduct layoffs during a lapse in appropriations, citing the Antideficiency Act and OMB’s own shutdown guidance. The administration countered that the layoffs are “lawful, necessary, and fiscally prudent” amid prolonged congressional gridlock.
Illston is expected to rule within days on whether to grant an injunction halting the layoffs. A decision could affect operations across multiple Cabinet agencies as the shutdown enters its third week, with thousands of federal employees already furloughed or working without pay.
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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