Trump Takes Advantage of Schumer Shutdown, Fires Entire Agency In One Fell Swoop
The White House began a sweeping series of layoffs on Friday as the government shutdown entered its second week, including the full elimination of a Treasury Department bureau that had been accused of pushing left-wing social agendas with taxpayer money.
Every employee at the Community Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI) — 102 in total — received termination notices, an administration official confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation. The move fulfills repeated warnings from White House officials that President Donald J. Trump’s administration would begin permanent reductions in force if Democrats continued to block government funding.
“The RIFs have begun,” wrote Russ Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, in a post on X, referring to “reductions in force.” Vought, a longtime advocate for cutting bureaucratic waste, indicated that additional layoffs are expected across multiple federal departments in the coming weeks.
The CDFI Fund was originally created to “expand economic opportunity for underserved people and communities,” but administration officials say it morphed into a politically driven entity, unlawfully allocating funds based on race and pushing radical climate and gender ideology.
President Trump’s March executive order limited federal agencies to their legally mandated functions and directed an internal review to identify “unnecessary” or “ideologically driven” programs for closure. The CDFI Fund, officials said, fit that description perfectly.
The program had awarded millions of dollars to controversial organizations, including $4.9 million to the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, which has published content condemning “whiteness” in community development, and $6.7 million to Clearinghouse CDFI, which hosted a fashion show promoting transgenderism. It also funded LGBTQ clinics providing “gender-affirming hormone therapy” to clients “of any age.”
Before the October 1 funding deadline, the Office of Management and Budget instructed all federal agencies to prepare layoff plans targeting programs without a current funding source or that conflicted with the president’s stated priorities.
While Democrats and federal employee unions are decrying the moves, the administration maintains that the cuts are both legal and necessary to restore fiscal sanity after decades of runaway government growth.
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) — the largest federal employee union — called the layoffs “disgraceful,” accusing the Trump administration of using the shutdown “as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers.” The AFGE has already filed lawsuits attempting to block the reductions.
The shutdown began after Senate Democrats rejected a bipartisan spending bill that would have kept the government open. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has reintroduced the same measure six times, but Democrats have refused to budge, demanding $1.5 trillion in new spending and restrictions on the president’s ability to rescind funds.
Republicans have declared that proposal dead on arrival.
President Trump made clear this week that his administration is focused on cutting Democrat-backed programs.
“We’re only cutting Democrat programs, I hate to tell you, but we are cutting Democrat programs,” the president said during a Cabinet meeting. “We will be cutting some very popular Democrat programs that aren’t popular with Republicans, frankly.”
The administration has already eliminated $7 billion in Biden-era energy projects, frozen $18 billion in New York City infrastructure spending, and halted $2 billion in Chicago initiatives tied to progressive green policies.
House Speaker Mike Johnson praised the president’s actions in an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation, saying the layoffs reflect long-overdue government downsizing.
“The great irony is that it is [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer that is delivering that opportunity,” Johnson said. “I have always believed, said, and acted accordingly that the federal government is too large, it has too many things, and it does almost nothing well.”
“It gives us a real opportunity, a very rare opportunity, to scale down the size and scope of government,” he continued. “And I expect that’s what you will see in short order.”
Democrats, however, have accused the White House of deliberately sowing “chaos.” Schumer posted on social media Friday, “This is deliberate chaos.”
Yet for many conservatives, what Democrats call “chaos” looks more like long-awaited accountability.