White House: Shutdown Layoffs Will Be ‘North Of 10,000’

White House Budget Director Russ Vought warned Wednesday that more than 10,000 federal employees could lose their jobs as part of the ongoing government shutdown — a move he described as an effort to permanently reduce Washington’s bloated bureaucracy.

Speaking on The Charlie Kirk Show, Vought confirmed that agencies began issuing reduction-in-force (RIF) notices late last week and said the administration intends to “continue the RIFs” in the coming days.

“We want to be very aggressive where we can be in shuttering the bureaucracy — not just the funding, but the bureaucracy — and we now have an opportunity to do that,” Vought said.

Court filings show that roughly 4,000 federal workers have already been terminated, according to Politico, though Vought expects the number to rise past 10,000 once agency-level reviews are completed.

The layoffs are targeting agencies that have operated as political arms of the Democratic Party for years — including environmental justice programs at the Department of Energy and EPA, the Minority Business Development Agency, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which has come under scrutiny for its role in online censorship efforts during the 2020 and 2022 elections.

The announcement came just one day after President Donald Trump vowed to issue a new list of federal programs slated for elimination if the shutdown continues through the week.

“We’re closing up programs that are Democrat programs that we were opposed to,” President Trump said Tuesday. “And they’re never going to come back in many cases.”

Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) cautioned Wednesday that the administration’s temporary fix to ensure military families receive paychecks cannot hold much longer if Democrats continue blocking government funding.

Speaking at the Capitol, Johnson credited President Trump for using executive authority to reroute unspent Pentagon research funds to cover active-duty military pay, but warned the maneuver has limits.

“In spite of President Trump’s heroic efforts to make sure they get paid, that is a temporary fix,” Johnson said. “The executive branch’s help is not permanent. It can’t be.”

“If the Democrats continue to vote to keep the government closed as they have done so many times, then U.S. troops are going to risk missing a full paycheck at the end of this month,” he added.

The administration’s reallocation of unspent Department of Defense R&D funds ensured that service members were paid on October 15 — but another payday looms without guaranteed funding.

The Republican-led House passed a short-term continuing resolution (CR) on September 19 to keep the government operating through November 21, giving Congress additional time to finalize a longer-term spending deal for fiscal year 2026.

However, Senate Democrats, led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), have repeatedly blocked the measure in pursuit of partisan demands, including the restoration of Obamacare subsidies and new funding for illegal immigrant health care.

So far, only three Senate Democrats — John Fetterman (PA), Catherine Cortez Masto (NV), and independent Angus King (ME) — have broken with Schumer to vote with Republicans to reopen the government.

“We’re at the point where Democrats are choosing to protect their pet programs over paying our troops,” a senior GOP aide told The Federalist. “It’s disgraceful.”