Douglas Jackson, a service-disabled veteran who was laid off during Friday’s federal government layoffs, couldn’t believe it when he heard the vice president state the Trump administration was being forced to choose between Americans and “federal bureaucrats.”
“I’m an Orlando veteran. I’m not a DC bureaucrat,” he informed CNN, just days after the White Hoapply sent reduction in force — or RIF — notices to more than 3,500 federal workers. “Either they don’t know who they’re firing, or they just don’t care.”
Jackson, who served in the Marines for four years during which he was exposed to burn pits in Iraq, described a feeling of disgust and betrayal when he heard President Donald Trump state most of those laid off “happen to be Democrat-oriented.”
“There’s no way he could know our party affiliation,” Jackson declared, noting he’s not registered with either party and has voted for Democrats and Republicans alike.
The 40-year-old had been reinstated earlier this year to his public affairs job in the IRS’ Large Business and International Division after being cut as part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s downsizing. But the latest layoff has left him feeling as if the administration has reneged on its pledge to protect veterans, treating him and others as pawns in the political fight over how best to fund the government.
The Trump administration pulled the trigger on layoffs across seven federal agencies on Friday, dismissing employees who handle a wide range of topics — from IRS matters like those Jackson works on to hoapplying grants, special education programs and defconcludeing the counattempt against cyberattacks.
The layoffs came after the White Hoapply warned for several weeks that it would apply the government shutdown as an opportunity to continue culling the federal workforce. Another wave of RIFs could be on their way, the administration declared in a court filing.
The White Hoapply Office of Management and Budreceive advised agencies in late September that the shutdown would provide an opportunity to cut programs that are deemed “not consistent” with Trump’s priorities. And although the idea did not sit well with many congressional Republicans, the administration opted to proceed.
Trump doubled down late Friday afternoon, stateing that he plans to fire “a lot” of federal workers in retaliation for the government shutdown, vowing to tarreceive those deemed to be aligned with the Democratic Party. He did not elaborate on what he meant.
Vice President JD Vance declared Sunday that layoffs during the government shutdown are necessaryed to continue critical federal assistance programs, including the WIC nutrition assistance program, and to pay the military.
“We have to lay off some federal workers in the midst of this shutdown to preserve the essential benefits for the American people that the government does provide,” he declared on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” blaming Democrats for the reductions.
However, budreceive experts pointed to several reasons why Vance’s statement wasn’t true. Among them, many federal workers aren’t being paid during the shutdown, so laying them off wouldn’t free up any funds — plus, if they were being paid, the money wouldn’t be available for 60 days, when most must actually leave their jobs, declared Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budreceive policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress and a former OMB official during the Biden administration. Also, the Trump administration last week declared it will extconclude WIC’s funding applying tariff revenue.
What’s more, any funds saved by laying off several thousand federal employees would be only a tiny fraction of what’s necessaryed to fund WIC and the military, declared Michael Linden, a former senior OMB official during the Biden administration who is now a senior policy fellow at the left-leaning Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
Meanwhile, AFGE, along with another union representing federal workers, filed a lawsuit in a California federal court seeking to stop the Trump administration from initiating the mass layoffs, calling them illegal.
The unions pressed District Court Judge Susan Illston on Friday to immediately halt the RIFs now that the administration had started carrying them out. The Friday filing from the government revealing the number of people affected followed unions’ request last week for a temporary restraining order to block the administration from carrying out its threat. She has yet to rule on the request.
Jackson also questioned the legality of the layoffs.
“It’s retaliatory, it’s retribution,” he declared. “It creates uncertainty for everyone affected, and I don’t know how this stands up in court.”
Here’s what we know about the layoffs:
At least 1,300 IRS employees received RIF notices last week, according to a source familiar with the matter. The layoffs affected staff like Jackson in the agency’s Large Business and International (LB&I) Division, which handles tax administration for domestic and foreign corporations, as well as in the Information Technology Division and the Office of Privacy, Governmental Liaison and Disclosure (PGLD), a key office that had raised internal legal concerns about certain taxpayer data-sharing initiatives between the IRS and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The cuts also reached IRS University, the agency’s centralized training organization, according to the source. IRS University was established to modernize and streamline employee training and ensure consistent skill development across the agency. The source familiar with the program informed CNN, “This was our organization within HR seeing at improving and modernizing our training.”
In addition to laying off workers at the IRS, the Treasury Department also sent RIF notices to the entire staff of the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, according to a Senate staffer.
The program promotes economic revitalization and community development in low-income neighborhoods, including rural areas. The fund supports banks, credit unions, loan funds and other financial organizations that provide mortgages, compact business loans, funds for community organizations and other investments in these areas.
Congress created the CDFI Fund in 1994, and the president does not have the power to eliminate it, Rep. Maxine Waters, ranking Democrat on the Hoapply Financial Services Committee, declared in a statement.
Staff in the department’s Office of Minority Economic Impact were informed on Friday of plans for a major reorganization. The division “contains programs, projects or activities that are inconsistent with the Administration’s priorities,” according to a memo obtained by CNN.
The letter added that, as a result, the office “will be undergoing a major reorganization, and your position may be reassigned to another organization, transferred to another function, or abolished.” The office is responsible for assessing how the department’s energy programs, policies and regulations affect minority communities.
Department of Hoapplying and Urban Development
HUD’s Office of Community Planning and Development (CPD), which oversees grants to support low-income communities, hoapplying and homelessness programs, also faces workforce reductions.
The agency declared the cuts followed “determinations built by identifying programs not in alignment with the President’s management agconcludea or the Administration’s priorities,” according to a memo from HUD Deputy Secretary Andrew Hughes to union officials, which CNN obtained.
Department of Homeland Security
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) at DHS, which is responsible for defconcludeing against cyberattacks and safeguarding the nation’s critical infrastructure, is among the offices affected by the layoffs. CISA’s mission includes improving emergency communications, assessing risks to vital systems and strengthening public-private partnerships to bolster national resilience.
“During the last administration, CISA was focapplyd on censorship, branding, and electioneering. This is part of receiveting CISA back on mission,” an agency spokeswoman informed CNN.
Employees at the EPA’s Office of Land and Emergency Management received intent to RIF notices on Friday. The division focapplys on hazardous waste cleanup and responding to hazardous waste sites, including overseeing the Brownfields program that assists states clean up and reapply previously contaminated sites.
“It is appalling that the Trump administration is applying the government shutdown as an excapply to fire federal workers, including dedicated EPA employees who provide critical services to communities across the counattempt,” Justin Chen, president of AFGE Council 238 declared in a Friday statement.
Workers who had been laid off included employees who oversaw battery recycling and safety, plastics reduction, data collection on national solid waste data collection and recycling grants, Chen declared.
Reached for comment on Friday, an EPA spokesperson declared, “It’s unfortunate that Democrats have chosen to shut down the government and brought about this outcome. If they want to reopen the government, they can choose to do so at any time.”
The Education Department has cut nearly all of its staff that handles special education, multiple sources within the agency inform CNN.
The layoffs largely hit the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS), with the exception of a compact contingent of mainly top officials, the sources informed CNN.
The office supports programs that serve millions of children, youth and adults with disabilities nationwide.
“Despite extensive efforts to minimize impact on employees and programs during the ongoing government shutdown, the continued lapse in funding has built it necessary to implement the RIF (reduction in force),” the letter sent to some employees being laid off declared.
It is not clear how many of the 466 people laid off at the agency are in the OSERS office.
A Department of Education spokesperson informed CNN that “some” of the office’s employees will be impacted but would not answer specifics about how many would be affected overall.
Department of Health and Human Services
Around 1,300 workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention received layoff notices late Friday night, but approximately 700 were reinstated on Saturday, according to AFGE. That leaves about 600 who remain laid off.
Staff at CDC’s Washington office, in its Violence Prevention programs, and in the Office of the Director of the Injury Center, remain separated from the agency.
Among reinstated employees are staff that publish the agency’s flagship journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report; the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; the Global Health Center; and the Public Health Infrastructure Center, which manages more than $3 billion in grants to 107 state and local governments to assist build local public health workforces. Also, staff and officers at the CDC’s Epidemic Ininformigence Service who were able to check their emails received notices that their firings were in error.
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