The Trump administration has begun laying off thousands of federal workers in an effort to pressure Democrats amid the ongoing government shutdown.

“The RIFs have begun,” White House Office of Management Director Russell Vought announced in a post on X on Friday morning, referring to an acronym for “reductions in force”.

A spokesman for his office confirmed the cuts had started and were “substantial”. Their size and scope began coming into focus later on Friday, when the administration disclosed seven agencies had started laying off more than 4,000 workers.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to use the shutdown to further his long-held goal of reducing the federal workforce.

By law, the federal government must give its workers at least 30-days notice that it is laying them off.

After Vought’s tweet, major departments such as Treasury and Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed they were issuing notices to employees, and Homeland Security, where many of its employees are considered essential, said it would lay off workers at its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

But exact details were scarce.

Two major unions, the American Federation of Government Employees and AFL-CIO, had filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of Vought’s announced plans to carry out layoffs during the shutdown.

On Friday, once he said the process had begun, they asked a federal court in Northern California to temporarily block the move.

“It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country,” AFGE president Everett Kelley said.

In its opposition to the temporary restraining order, lawyers for the OMB revealed which agencies and how many of their employees would be affected first, indicating an estimated 4,600 employees would receive RIF notices starting on Friday.

“The President, through OMB, has determined that agencies should operate more efficiently and has directed them to consider steps to optimize their workforces in light of the ongoing lapse in appropriations,” the justice department attorneys argued in the filing.

More than a quarter of the cuts would be made at the Treasury Department, where notices were being sent to approximately 1,446 employees.

HHS was notifying between 1,100 and 1,200 employees, the filing said.

The Department of Education and Department of Housing and Urban Development intended to lay off at least 400 employees apiece, while the Departments of Commerce, Energy, Housing and Urban Development and Homeland Security each planned cuts ranging between 176 to 315 employees, according to the filing.

There was no indication about how many notices the agencies issued on Friday.

The filing also said that 20 to 30 at the Environmental Protection Agency were issued “intent to RIF” notice on Friday, notifying them that they may be affected in the future. Other federal agencies might also make cuts.

The government lawyers said the labour unions had failed to establish that their members would be irreparably harmed by the layoffs, which is needed for the judge to grant the restraining order. But they said a restraining order would “irreparably harm the government”.

A temporary restraining order would prevent agencies “determining how best to organize their workforces”, they argued, noting that the government has traditionally been granted the widest latitude in the “dispatch of its own internal affairs

(BBC)