back pay

WASHINGTON — Sidelined by political appointees, targeted over deep state conspiracies and derided by the president, career public servants have grown used to life in Washington under a constant state of assault.

But President Trump’s latest threat, to withhold back pay due to workers furloughed by an ongoing government shutdown, is adding fresh uncertainty to the beleaguered workforce.

Whether federal workers will ultimately receive retroactive paychecks after the government reopens, Trump told reporters on Tuesday, “really depends on who you’re talking about.” The law requires federal employees receive their expected compensation in the event of a shutdown.

“For the most part, we’re going to take care of our people,” the president said, while adding: “There are some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way.”

It is yet another peril facing public servants, who, according to Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director, Russ Vought, may also be the target of mass layoffs if the shutdown continues.

The government has been shut since Oct. 1, when Republican and Democratic lawmakers came to an impasse over whether to extend government funding at existing levels, or account for a significant increase in healthcare premiums facing millions of Americans at the start of next year.

White House officials say that, on the one hand, Democrats are to blame for extending a shutdown that will give the administration no other choice but to initiate firings of agency employees working on “nonessential” projects. On the other hand, the president has referred to the moment as an opportunity to root out Democrats working in career roles throughout the federal system.

Legal scholars and public policy experts have roundly dismissed Trump’s latest efforts — both to use the shutdown as a predicate to cut the workforce, and to withhold back pay — as plainly illegal.

And Democrats in Congress, who continue to vote against reopening the government, are counting on them being right, hoping that courts will reject the administration’s moves while they attempt to secure an extension of healthcare tax credits in the shutdown negotiations.

If the experts are wrong, thousands of government workers could face a profound cost.

“Senior leaders of the Trump administration promised to put federal employees in trauma, and they certainly seem intent on keeping that promise,” said Don Moynihan, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy.

“According to a law that Trump himself has signed, furloughed employees are entitled to back pay,” Moynihan said. “There is no real ambiguity about this, and the idea only some employees in agencies that Trump likes would receive back pay is an illegal abuse of presidential power.”

A day after the shutdown began, Trump wrote on social media that he planned on meeting with Vought, “of Project 2025 fame,” to discuss what he called the “unprecedented opportunity” of making “permanent” cuts to agencies during the ongoing funding lapse.

A lawsuit brought in California against Vought and the OMB, by a coalition of labor unions representing over 2 million federal workers, is challenging the premise of that claim, arguing the government is “deviating from historic practice and violating applicable laws” by using government employees “as a pawn in congressional deliberations.” But whether courts can or will stop the effort is unclear.

Sen. John Thune, the majority leader and a Republican from South Dakota, said last week that Democrats should have known the risk they were running by “shutting down the government and handing the keys to Russ Vought.”

“We don’t control what he’s going to do,” he told Politico.

The White House has sent mixed messages on its willingness to negotiate with Democrats since the shutdown began. Within a matter of hours earlier this week, the president’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters that there was nothing to negotiate, before Trump said that dialogue had opened with Democratic leadership over a potential agreement on healthcare.

Donald Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, taught and trained prospective public servants for 45 years.

“What is happening is profoundly discouraging for young students seeking careers in the federal public service,” he said. “Many of the students are going to state and local governments, nonprofits, and think tanks, but increasingly don’t see the federal government as a place where they can make a difference or make a career.”

“All of us depend on the government, and the government depends on a pipeline of skilled workers,” Kettl added. “The administration’s efforts have blown up the pipeline, and the costs will continue for years — probably decades — to come.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s administration warned on Tuesday of no guaranteed back pay for federal workers during a government shutdown, reversing what has been long-standing policy for some 750,000 furloughed employees, according to a memo being circulated by the White House.

Trump signed into law after the longest government shutdown in 2019 legislation that ensures federal workers receive back pay during any federal funding lapse. But in the new memo, his Office of Management and Budget says back pay must be provided by Congress, if it chooses to do so, as part of any bill to fund the government.

The move by the Republican administration was widely seen as a strong-arm tactic — a way to pressure lawmakers to reopen the government, now in the seventh day of a shutdown.

“There are some people that don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way,” Trump said during an event at the White House.

He said back pay “depends on who we’re talking about.”

Refusing retroactive pay to the workers, some of whom must remain on the job as essential employees, would be a stark departure from norms and practices and almost certainly would be met with legal action.

While federal workers — as well as service members of the military — have often missed paychecks during past shutdowns, they are almost always reimbursed once the government reopens.

“That should turn up the urgency and the necessity of the Democrats doing the right thing here,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said at a news conference at the Capitol.

Johnson, a lawyer, said he hadn’t fully read the memo but “there are some legal analysts who are saying” that it may not be necessary or appropriate to repay the federal workers.

But Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington blasted the Trump administration as defying the law.

“Another baseless attempt to try and scare & intimidate workers by an administration run by crooks and cowards,” said Murray, who is the ranking lawmaker on the Senate Appropriations Committee. “The letter of the law is as plain as can be — federal workers, including furloughed workers, are entitled to their back pay following a shutdown.”

Asked a second time about back pay for furloughed federal workers given that the requirement is spelled out in law, Trump said: “I follow the law, and what the law says is correct.”

In a single-page memo from Trump’s Office of Management and Budget under Russ Vought, first reported by Axios, the office’s general counsel seeks to lay out a legal rationale for no back pay of federal workers.

The memo explains that while the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019 says workers shall be paid after federal funding is restored, it argues the action is not self-executing. Instead, the memo says, repaying the federal workers would have to be part of legislation to reopen the government.

The OMB analysis draws on language familiar to budget experts by suggesting that the 2019 bill created an authorization to pay the federal workers but not the actual appropriation.

Congress, it says, is able to decide whether it wants to pay the workers or not.

For now, Congress remains at a standstill, with neither side — nor the White House — appearing willing to budge. Democrats are fighting for healthcare funds to prevent a lapse in federal subsidies that threaten to send insurance rates skyrocketing. Republicans say the issue can be dealt with later.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Will Weissert, Kevin Freking, Joey Cappelletti and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.