federal employee

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in San Francisco on Tuesday indefinitely barred the Trump administration from firing federal employees during the government shutdown, saying that labor unions were likely to prevail on their claims that the cuts were arbitrary and politically motivated.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston granted a preliminary injunction that bars the firings while a lawsuit challenging them plays out. She previously issued a temporary restraining order against the job cuts that was set to expire Wednesday.

Illston, who was nominated by former President Clinton, has said she believes evidence will show the mass firings were illegal and in excess of authority.

Federal agencies are enjoined from issuing layoff notices or acting on notices issued since the government shut down Oct. 1. Illston said her order does not apply to notices sent before the shutdown.

The Republican administration has slashed jobs in education, health and other areas it says are favored by Democrats. The administration also said it will not tap roughly $5 billion in contingency funds to keep benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to as SNAP, flowing into November.

The American Federation of Government Employees and other labor unions sued to stop the “reductions in force” layoffs, saying the firings were an abuse of power designed to punish workers and pressure Congress.

“President Trump is using the government shutdown as a pretense to illegally fire thousands of federal workers — specifically those employees carrying out programs and policies that the administration finds objectionable,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement thanking the court.

The White House referred a request for comment to the Office of Management and Budget, which did not immediately respond.

Lawyers for the government say the district court does not have the authority to hear personnel challenges and that President Trump has broad authority to reduce the federal workforce as he pledged to do during his campaign.

“The president was elected on this specific platform,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Velchik said. “The American people selected someone known above all else for his eloquence in communicating to employees that you’re fired; this is what they voted for.”

Trump starred on a long-running reality TV series called “The Apprentice” in which his signature catchphrase was telling candidates they were fired.

About 4,100 layoff notices have gone out since Oct. 10, some sent to work email addresses that furloughed employees are not allowed to check. Some personnel were called back to work, without pay, to issue layoff notices to others.

The lawsuit has expanded to include employees represented by additional labor unions, including the National Treasury Employees Union, the American Federation of Teachers, and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. All Cabinet departments and two dozen independent agencies are included in the lawsuit.

Democratic lawmakers are demanding that any deal to reopen the government address expiring health care subsidies that have made health insurance more affordable for millions of Americans. They also want any government funding bill to reverse the Medicaid cuts in Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts bill passed this summer.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to negotiate with Democrats until they agree to reopen the government.

This is now the second-longest shutdown in U.S. history. The longest occurred during Trump’s first term over his demands for funds to build the Mexico border wall. That one ended in 2019 after 35 days.

Har writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The government shutdown, already the second-longest in history, with no end in sight, is quickly becoming an additional way for President Trump to exercise new command over the government.

It wasn’t always this way. In fact, it all started with an attempt to tighten Washington’s observance of federal law.

The modern phenomena of the U.S. government closing down services began in 1980 with a series of legal opinions from Atty. Gen. Benjamin Civiletti, who was serving under Democratic President Carter. Civiletti reached into the Antideficiency Act of 1870 to argue that the law was “plain and unambiguous” in restricting the government from spending money once authority from Congress expires.

In this shutdown, however, Trump has used the funding lapse to punish Democrats, as he tried to lay off thousands of federal workers and seized on the vacuum left by Congress to reconfigure the federal budget for his priorities.

“I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity,” the Republican president posted on his social media platform at the outset of the shutdown.

Democrats have only dug into their positions.

It’s all making this fight that much harder to resolve and potentially redefining how Washington will approach funding lapses to come.

Why does the U.S. government even have shutdowns?

In the post-Watergate years, Civiletti’s tenure at the Department of Justice was defined by an effort to restore public trust in Washington, sometimes with strict interpretations of federal law.

When a conflict between Congress and the Federal Trade Commission led to a delay in funding legislation for the agency, Civiletti issued his opinion, later following it up with another that allowed the government to perform essential services.

He did not know that it would set the groundwork for some of the most defining political battles to come.

“I couldn’t have ever imagined these shutdowns would last this long of a time and would be used as a political gambit,” Civiletti, who died in 2022, told the Washington Post six years ago.

How shutdowns evolved

For the next 15 years, there were no lengthy government shutdowns. In 1994, Republicans retook Congress under House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia and pledged to overhaul Washington. Their most dramatic standoffs with Democratic President Clinton were over government shutdowns.

Historians mostly agree the shutdowns did not work, and Clinton was able to win reelection in part by showing he stood up to Gingrich.

“The Republicans in the Gingrich era, they do get some kind of limited policy victories, but for them overall it’s really kind of a failure,” said Mike Davis, adjunct professor of history at Lees-McRae College.

There was one more significant shutdown, in 2013, when tea party Republicans sparred with Democratic President Obama. But it was not until Trump’s first term that Democrats adopted the tactic of extended government shutdowns.

How is this shutdown different?

During previous funding lapses, presidential administrations applied the rules governing shutdowns equally to affected agencies.

“A shutdown was supposed to close the same things under Reagan as under Clinton,” said Charles Tiefer, a former acting general counsel for the House and a professor emeritus at the University of Baltimore School of Law. He said that in this shutdown, the Trump administration has used “a kind of freewheeling presidential appropriation power, which is contrary to the whole system, the original Constitution, and the Antideficiency Act.”

The administration has introduced a distinctly political edge to the funding fight, with agencies updating their websites to include statements blaming Democrats for the shutdown. The Department of Defense has tapped research and development funds to pay active-duty service members. (And a private donor has helped out.) Trump has tried to initiate layoffs for more than 4,000 federal employees who are mostly working in areas perceived to be Democratic priorities.

During a luncheon at the White House with GOP senators last week, Trump introduced his budget director Russ Vought as “Darth Vader” and bragged how he is “cutting Democrat priorities and they’re never going to get them back.”

Democrats have only been emboldened by the strategy, voting repeatedly against a Republican-backed bill to reopen the government. They argue that voters will ultimately hold Republicans accountable for the pain of the shutdown because the GOP holds power in Washington.

Democrats are confident they have chosen a winning policy demand — opposing big rate hikes in healthcare plans offered under Affordable Care Act marketplaces — but there is an undercurrent that they are also fighting to halt Trump’s expansion of presidential power.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) acknowledged that his state has more to lose than perhaps any other due to the large number of federal employees and activity based there. But he argued that his constituents are fed up with a “nonstop punishment parade” from Trump that has included layoffs, cancellation of money for economic development projects, pressure campaigns against universities and the dismissal of the U.S. attorney for Virginia.

“It kind of stiffens folks’ spines,” Kaine said.

Democratic resolve will be tested in the coming week. Federal employees, including lawmakers’ own staffs, have now gone almost an entire month without full paychecks. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which helps about 1 in 8 Americans buy groceries, faces a potential funding cliff on Nov. 1. Air travel delays threaten to only grow worse amid air traffic controller shortages.

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said he hopes his colleagues start negotiating quickly to end the impasse.

He said he’s been one of the few members of the Democratic caucus to vote for ending the shutdown because “it empowers the president beyond what he would be able to do otherwise, and it damages the country.”

Groves writes for the Associated Press.

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge blocked the Trump administration Wednesday from firing thousands of government workers based on the ongoing federal shutdown, granting a request from employee unions in California.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston issued the temporary restraining order after concluding that the unions “will demonstrate ultimately that what’s being done here is both illegal and is in excess of authority and is arbitrary and capricious.”

Illston slammed the Trump administration for failing to provide her with clear information about what cuts are actually occurring, for repeatedly changing its description and estimates of job cuts in filings before the court, and for failing — including during Wednesday’s hearing in San Francisco — to articulate an argument for why such cuts are not in violation of federal law.

“The evidence suggests that the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, and the Office of Personnel Management, OPM, have taken advantage of the lapse in government spending and government functioning to assume that all bets are off, that the laws don’t apply to them anymore,” Illston said — which she said was not the case.

She said the government justified providing inaccurate figures for the number of jobs being eliminated under its “reduction in force” orders by calling it a “fluid situation” — which she did not find convincing.

“What it is is a situation where things are being done before they are being thought through. It’s very much ready, fire, aim on most of these programs,” she said. “And it has a human cost, which is really why we’re here today. It’s a human cost that cannot be tolerated.”

Illston also ran through a string of recent comments made by President Trump and other members of his administration about the firings and their intentionally targeting programs and agencies supported by Democrats, saying, “By all appearances, they’re politically motivated.”

The Trump administration has acknowledged dismissing about 4,000 workers under the orders, while Trump and other officials have signaled that more would come Friday.

Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought said Wednesday on “The Charlie Kirk Show” that the number of jobs cut could “probably end up being north of 10,000,” as the administration wants to be “very aggressive where we can be in shuttering the bureaucracy, not just the funding,” and the shutdown provided that opportunity.

Attorneys for the unions, led by the American Federation of Government Employees, said that the figures were unreliable and that they feared additional reduction in force orders resulting in more layoffs, as promised by administration officials, if the court did not step in and block such actions.

Illston, an appointee of President Clinton, did just that.

She barred the Trump administration and its various agencies “from taking any action to issue any reduction in force notices to federal employees in any program, project or activity” involving union members “during or because of the federal shutdown.”

She also barred the administration from “taking any further action to administer or implement” existing reduction notices involving union members.

Illston demanded that the administration provide within two days a full accounting of all existing or “imminent” reduction in force orders that would be blocked by her order, as well as the specific number of federal jobs affected.

Elizabeth Hedges, an attorney for the Trump administration, had argued during the hearing that the order should not be granted for several procedural reasons — including that the alleged harm to federal employees from loss of employment or benefits was not “irreparable” and could be addressed through other avenues, including civil litigation.

Additionally, she argued that federal employment claims should be adjudicated administratively, not in district court; and that the reduction in force orders included 60-day notice periods, meaning the layoffs were not immediate and therefore the challenge to them was not yet “ripe” legally.

However, Hedges would not discuss the case on its actual merits — which is to say, whether the cuts were actually legal or not, which did not seem to sit well with Illston.

“You don’t have a position on whether it’s OK that they do what they’re doing?” Illston asked.

“I am not prepared to discuss that today, your honor,” Hedges said.

“Well — but it’s happening. This hatchet is falling on the heads of employees all across the nation, and you’re not even prepared to address whether that’s legal, even though that’s what this motion challenges?” Illston said.

“That’s right,” Hedges said — stressing again that there were “threshold” arguments for why the case shouldn’t even be allowed to continue to the merits stage.

Danielle Leonard, an attorney for the unions, suggested the government’s positions were indefensible and directly in conflict with public statements by the administration — including remarks by Trump on Tuesday that more cuts are coming Friday.

“How do we know this? Because OMB and the president relentlessly are telling us, and other members of the administration,” Leonard said.

Leonard said the harm from the administration’s actions is obvious and laid out in the union’s filings — showing how employees have at times been left in the dark as to their employment status because they don’t have access to work communication channels during the shutdown, or how others have been called in to “work without pay to fire their fellow employees” — only to then be fired themselves.

“There are multiple types of harm that are caused exactly right now — emotional trauma. That’s not my word, your honor, that is the word of OMB Director Vought. Let’s cause ‘trauma’ to the federal workforce,” Leonard said. “And that’s exactly what they are doing. Trauma. The emotional distress of being told you are being fired after an already exceptionally difficult year for federal employees.”

Skye Perryman, president and chief executive of Democracy Forward, which is co-counsel for the unions, praised Illston’s decision in a statement after the hearing.

“The statements today by the court make clear that the President’s targeting of federal workers — a move straight out of Project 2025’s playbook — is unlawful,” Perryman said. “Our civil servants do the work of the people, and playing games with their livelihoods is cruel and unlawful and a threat to everyone in our nation.”

Illston asked the two parties to confer on the best date, probably later this month, for a fuller hearing on whether she should issue a more lasting preliminary injunction in the case.

“It would be wonderful to know what the government’s position is on the merits of this case — and my breath is bated until we find that,” Illston said.

After the hearing, during a White House news conference, Trump said his administration was paying federal employees whom “we want paid” while Vought uses the shutdown to dismiss employees perceived as supporting Democratic initiatives.

“Russell Vought is really terminating tremendous numbers of Democrat projects — not only jobs,” Trump said.

Fort Lauderdale, Fla. — Some airports around the country are refusing to play a video with a message from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in which she blames Democrats for the federal government shutdown and its impacts on TSA operations because of its political content.

Airports in Las Vegas, Charlotte, Atlanta, Phoenix, Seattle and more say the video goes against their airport policy or regulations that prohibit political messaging in their facilities.

Various government agencies, in emails to workers and on websites, have adopted language that blames Democrats for the shutdown, with some experts arguing it could be in violation of the 1939 Hatch Act, which restricts certain political activities by federal employees.

The shutdown has halted routine operations and left airports scrambling with flight disruptions. Democrats say any deal to reopen the government has to address their healthcare demands, and Republicans say they won’t negotiate until they agree to fund the government. Insurance premiums would double if Congress fails to renew the subsidy payments that expire Dec. 31.

In the video, Noem says that TSA’s “top priority” is to help make travel pleasant and efficient while keeping passengers safe.

“However, Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government, and because of this, many of our operations are impacted, and most of our TSA employees are working without pay,” she continues.

The Transportation Security Administration falls under the Department of Homeland Security. Roughly 61,000 of the agency’s 64,130 employees are required to continue working during the shutdown. The Department said Friday that the video is being rolled out to airports across the country.

A DHS spokeswoman responded to a request for comment restating some of the message from Noem’s video.

“It’s unfortunate our workforce has been put in this position due to political gamesmanship. Our hope is that Democrats will soon recognize the importance of opening the government,” spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said.

The Harry Reid International Airport, in Las Vegas, said it had to “remain mindful of the Hatch Act’s restrictions.”

“Per airport regulations, the terminals and surrounding areas are not designated public forums, and the airport’s intent is to avoid the use of the facility for political or religious advocacy,” the statement said.

Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins said the county north of New York City won’t play the video at its local airport. In a statement, he called the video “inappropriate, unacceptable, and inconsistent with the values we expect from our nation’s top public officials,” and said its tone is “unnecessarily alarmist” as it relates to operations at Westchester County Airport.

“At a time when we should be focused on ensuring stability, collaboration and preparedness, this type of messaging only distracts from the real issues, and undermines public trust,” he said.

Even in red states, airports weren’t showing the video for various reasons. Salt Lake City International Airport wasn’t playing the video because state law prohibits using city-owned property for political purposes, said airport spokesperson Nancy Volmer.

The airport in Billings, Mont., “politely declined” even though it has screens that could show the video with audio, assistant aviation director Paul Khera said Tuesday.

“We don’t want to get in the middle of partisan politics,” Khera said. “We like to stay middle of the road, we didn’t want to play that video.”

Gomez Licon writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Rio Yamat in Las Vegas and Mead Gruver in Fort Collins, Colo. contributed to this report.

Vice President JD Vance said Sunday there will be deeper cuts to the federal workforce the longer the government shutdown goes on, adding to the uncertainty facing hundreds of thousands who are already furloughed without pay amid the stalemate in Congress.

Vance warned that as the federal shutdown entered its 12th day, the new cuts would be “painful,” even as he said the Trump administration worked to ensure that the military is paid this week and some services would be preserved for low-income Americans, including food assistance.

Still, hundreds of thousands of government workers have been furloughed in recent days and, in a court filing Friday, the Office of Management and Budget said well over 4,000 federal employees would soon be fired in conjunction with the shutdown.

“The longer this goes on, the deeper the cuts are going to be,” Vance said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” “To be clear, some of these cuts are going to be painful. This is not a situation that we relish. This is not something that we’re looking forward to, but the Democrats have dealt us a pretty difficult set of cards.”

Labor unions have already filed a lawsuit to stop the aggressive move by President Trump’s budget office, which goes far beyond what usually happens in a government shutdown, further inflaming tensions between the Republicans who control Congress and the Democratic minority.

The shutdown began Oct. 1 after Democrats rejected a short-term funding fix and demanded that the bill include an extension of federal subsidies for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. The expiration of those subsidies at the end of the year will result in monthly cost increases for millions.

Trump and Republican leaders have said they are open to negotiations on the health subsidies, but insist the government must reopen first.

For now, negotiations are virtually nonexistent. Dug in as ever, House leaders from both parties pointed fingers at each other in rival Sunday appearances on “Fox News Sunday.”

“We have repeatedly made clear that we will sit down with anyone, anytime, anyplace,” said House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York. “Republicans control the House, the Senate and the presidency. It’s unfortunate they’ve taken a my-way-or-the-highway approach.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) blamed Democrats and said they “seem not to care” about the pain the shutdown is inflicting.

“They’re trying their best to distract the American people from the simple fact that they’ve chosen a partisan fight so that they can prove to their Marxist rising base in the Democratic Party that they’re willing to fight Trump and Republicans,” he said.

Progressive activists, meanwhile, expressed new support for the Democratic Party’s position in the shutdown fight.

Ezra Levin, co-founder of the leading progressive protest group Indivisible, said he is “feeling good about the strength of Dem position.” He pointed to fractures in the GOP, noting that Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene publicly warned last week that healthcare insurance premiums would skyrocket for average Americans — including her own adult children — if nothing is done.

“Trump and GOP are rightfully taking the blame for the shutdown and for looming premium increases,” Levin said. “Their chickens are coming home to roost.”

And yet the Republican administration and its congressional allies are showing no signs of compromise on Democratic demands or backing away from threats to use the opportunity to pursue deeper cuts to the federal workforce.

Thousands of employees at the departments of Education, Treasury, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services as well as the Environmental Protection Agency are set to receive layoff notices, according to spokespeople for the agencies and union representatives for federal workers.

“You hear a lot of Senate Democrats say, well, how can Donald Trump possibly lay off all of these federal workers?” Vance said. “Well, the Democrats have given us a choice between giving low-income women their food benefits and paying our troops on the one hand, and, on the other hand, paying federal bureaucrats.”

Democrats say the firings are illegal and unnecessary.

“They do not have to do this,” said Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “They do not have to punish people that shouldn’t find themselves in this position.”

Peoples writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — It has been four months since Elon Musk, President Trump’s bureaucratic demolition man, abandoned Washington in a flurry of recriminations and chaos.

But the Trump administration’s crusade to dismantle much of the federal government never ended. It’s merely under new management: the less colorful but more methodical Russell Vought, director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget.

Vought has become the backroom architect of Trump’s aggressive strategy — slashing the federal workforce, freezing billions in congressionally approved spending in actions his critics often call illegal.

Now Vought has proposed using the current government shutdown as an opportunity to fire thousands of bureaucrats permanently instead of merely furloughing them temporarily. If any do return to work, he has suggested that the government need not give them back pay — contrary to a law Trump signed in 2019.

Those threats may prove merely to be pressure tactics as Trump tries to persuade Democrats to accept spending cuts on Medicaid, Obamacare and other programs.

But the shutdown battle is the current phase of a much larger one. Vought’s long-term goals, he says, are to “bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will” and “deconstruct the administrative state.”

He’s still only partway done.

“I’d estimate that Vought has implemented maybe 10% or 15% of his program,” said Donald F. Kettl, former dean of the public policy school at the University of Maryland. “There may be as much as 90% to go. If this were a baseball game, we’d be in the top of the second inning.”

Along the way, Vought (pronounced “vote”) has chipped relentlessly at Congress’ ability to control the use of federal funds, massively expanding the power of the president.

“He has waged the most serious attack on separation of powers in American history,” said Elaine Kamarck, an expert on federal management at the Brookings Institution.

He’s done that mainly by using OMB, the White House office that oversees spending, to control the day-to-day purse strings of federal agencies — and deliberately keeping Congress in the dark along the way.

“If Congress has given us authority that is too broad, then we’re going to use that authority aggressively,” Vought said last month.

Federal judges have ruled some of the administration’s actions illegal, but they have allowed others to stand. Vought’s proposal to use the shutdown to fire thousands of bureaucrats hasn’t been tested in court.

Vought developed his aggressive approach during two decades as a conservative budget expert, culminating in his appointment as director of OMB in Trump’s first term.

In 2019, he stretched the limits of presidential power by helping Trump get around a congressional ban on funding for a border wall, by declaring an emergency and transferring military funds. He froze congressionally mandated aid for Ukraine, the action that led to Trump’s first impeachment.

Even so, Vought complained that Trump had been needlessly restrained by cautious first-term aides.

“The lawyers come in and say, ‘It’s not legal. You can’t do that,’” he said in 2023. “I don’t want President Trump having to lose a moment of time having fights in the Oval Office over whether something is legal.”

Vought is a proponent of the “unitary executive” theory, the argument that the president should have unfettered control over every tentacle of the executive branch, including independent agencies such as the Federal Reserve.

When Congress designates money for federal programs, he has argued, “It’s a ceiling. It is not a floor. It’s not the notion that you have to spend every dollar.”

Most legal experts disagree; a 1974 law prohibits the president from unilaterally withholding money Congress has appropriated.

Vought told conservative activists in 2023 that if Trump returned to power, he would deliberately seek to inflict “trauma” on federal employees.

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work.”

When Vought returned to OMB for Trump’s second term, he appeared to be in Musk’s shadow. But once the flamboyant Tesla chief executive flamed out, the OMB director got to work to make DOGE’s work the foundation for lasting changes.

He extended many of DOGE’s funding cuts by slowing down OMB’s approval of disbursements — turning them into de facto freezes.

He helped persuade Republicans in Congress to cancel $9 billion in previously approved foreign aid and public broadcasting support, a process known as “rescission.”

To cancel an additional $4.9 billion, he revived a rarely used gambit called a “pocket rescission,” freezing the funds until they expired.

Along the way, he quietly stopped providing Congress with information on spending, leaving legislators in the dark on whether programs were being axed.

DOGE and OMB eliminated jobs so quickly that the federal government stopped publishing its ongoing tally of federal employees. (Any number would only be approximate; some layoffs are tied up in court, and thousands of employees who opted for voluntary retirement are technically still on the payroll.)

The result was a significant erosion of Congress’ “power of the purse,” which has historically included not only approving money but also monitoring how it was spent.

Even some Republican members of Congress seethed. “They would like a blank check … and I don’t think that’s appropriate,” said former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

But the GOP majorities in both the House and Senate, pleased to see spending cut by any means, let Vought have his way. Even McConnell voted to approve the $9-billion rescission request.

Vought’s newest innovation, the mid-shutdown layoffs, would be another big step toward reducing Congress’ role.

“The result would be a dramatic, instantaneous shift in the separation of powers,” Kettl said. “The Trump team could kill programs unilaterally without the inconvenience of going to Congress.”

Some of the consequences could be catastrophic, Kettl and other scholars warned. Kamarck calls them “time bombs.”

“One or more of these decisions is going to blow up in Trump’s face,” she said.

“FEMA won’t be capable of reacting to the next hurricane. The National Weather Service won’t have the forecasters it needs to analyze the data from weather balloons.”

Even before the government shutdown, she noted, the FAA was grappling with a shortage of air traffic controllers. This week the FAA slowed takeoffs at several airports in response to growing shortages, including at air traffic control centers in Atlanta, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

In theory, a future Congress could undo many of Vought’s actions, especially if Democrats win control of the House or, less likely, the Senate.

But rebuilding agencies that have been radically shrunken would take much longer than cutting them down, the scholars said.

“Much of this will be difficult to reverse when Democrats come back into fashion,” Kamarck said.

Indeed, that’s part of Vought’s plan.

“We want to make sure that the bureaucracy can’t reconstitute itself later in future administrations,” he said in April in a podcast with Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who was slain on Sept. 10.

He’s pleased with the progress he’s made, he told reporters in July.

“We’re having fun,” he said.

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 — A president looking to seize power beyond the executive branch. A Congress controlled by Republican lawmakers unwilling to directly defy him. And a minority party looking for any way to fight back.

The dynamic left Washington in a stalemate Thursday — the ninth day of the government shutdown — and lawmakers openly venting their frustration as they tried to gain traction without the trust that is typically the foundation of any bipartisan deal.

“To have good-faith conversations, you have to have trust. There’s a real challenge of trust,” said Rep. Brad Schneider, chair of the New Democratic Coalition, a pragmatic group of House Democrats.

Groups of lawmakers — huddled over dinners, on phone calls, and in private meetings — have tried to brainstorm ways out of the standoff that has shuttered government offices, kept hundreds of thousands of federal employees at home and threatened to leave them without a scheduled payday. But lawmakers have found themselves running up against the reality that the relationship between the two parties is badly broken.

The frustration was evident this week as House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, on separate occasions, engaged in tense exchanges in the Capitol hallways with members of the opposing party.

“We’re in an environment where we need more than a handshake,” said Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat who has engaged in talks with Republicans.

President Trump and Republicans have so far held to the stance that they will only negotiate on Democratic demands around health care benefits after they vote to reopen the government. They also say Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer is beholden to the left wing of his party and only staging the shutdown fight to stave off a primary challenge.

Schumer, a New York Democrat, told Punchbowl News in an interview that Democrats were winning the shutdown fight, saying, “Every day gets better for us.”

Republicans quickly seized on those comments, arguing it showed that Schumer is approaching the shutdown with purely political motives.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune stood on the Senate floor flanked by a poster printed with Schumer’s words.

“This isn’t a political game. Democrats might feel that way, but I don’t know anybody else that does,” said Thune, a South Dakota Republican. “The longer this goes on, the more the American people realize that Democrats own this shutdown.”

Schumer, in his own floor speech, responded that it was Trump and Republicans who are “playing with people’s lives.”

“Every day that Republicans refuse to negotiate to end this shutdown, the worse it gets for Americans and the clearer it becomes who is fighting for them,” said the New York senator.

When a handshake deal is not enough

Democrats have insisted they can’t take Trump at his word and therefore need more than a verbal commitment for any deal.

Conflicts over spending power had already been raging before the shutdown as the White House pushed to assert maximum power over congressionally approved budgets. The White House budget office had canceled scores of government contracts, including cutting out the legislative branch entirely with a $4.9 billion cut to foreign aid in August through a legally dubious process known as a “pocket rescission.”

That enraged Democrats — and disturbed some Republicans who criticized it as executive overreach.

“I hate rescissions, to be honest with you, unless they’re congressionally approved,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican.

Matt Glassman, a fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University, said the president’s use of rescissions was “blowing up the underlying dynamic of the bargaining” because it inserts intense partisanship into the budget appropriations process that otherwise requires compromise, particularly in the Senate.

Then, as the government entered a shutdown, Trump’s budget director Russ Vought laid out arguments that the president would have even more power to lay off workers and even cancel pay due to furloughed federal workers once the funding lapse is solved. Vought has also announced that the administration was withholding billions of dollars for infrastructure projects in states with Democratic senators who have voted for the shutdown.

Trump has cast Vought’s actions as the consequences of Democratic obstruction, even sharing a video that depicted him as the grim reaper. But on Capitol Hill, there has been an acknowledgment that the hardball tactics are making it harder to negotiate.

“I think with senators, carrots work better than sticks,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican.

One Democratic idea may win GOP support

Before they vote to reopen the government, Democrats’ main demand is that Congress take up an extension of tax credits for health plans offered on Affordable Care Act marketplaces. Trump has sounded open to a deal, saying that he wants “great health care” for Americans.

What’s received less attention is that Democrats also want new safeguards in the law limiting the White House’s ability to claw back, or rescind, funding already approved by Congress. While final appropriations bills are still being worked out, Republicans have been open to the idea.

“When you end the shutdown and get back to regular order within the appropriations bills, there’s very clear language about how we feel about rescissions,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, a Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee. “I think you’ll find hard, solid support from Republicans to see that what we agree to will be executed on.”

In the meantime, the main sticking point for lawmakers this week has been finding any agreement on extending the health care subsidies.

The consequences of an extended shutdown

As the shutdown drags on without sign of significant progress to ending the impasse, lawmakers are looking ahead to the dates when federal employees will miss a payday.

Active-duty military troops would miss a paycheck on Oct. 15. Some lawmakers are getting nervous about both the financial implications for the troops and the political blowback of allowing soldiers to go without pay.

As House Speaker Mike Johnson fielded questions on C-SPAN Thursday morning, one caller pleaded with him to pass legislation that would allow the military to get paid during the government shutdown.

The woman, identified as Samantha, said her husband serves in the military and that they “live paycheck to paycheck.”

She pleaded with Johnson to call the House back to Washington, saying, “You could stop this.”

Johnson said he was sorry to hear about her situation, blamed Democrats for refusing to pass a stop-gap spending bill and added, “I am angry because of situations just like yours.”

Groves, Jalonick and Brown write for the Associated Press. AP writers Lisa Mascaro, Kevin Freking and Joey Cappelletti contributed to this report.

The shutdown of the U.S. government has brought work determined by the Trump administration to be “nonessential” to a halt across the country as thousands of federal employees have been furloughed and ordered not to do their jobs.

The shutdown — the first in six years — began late Tuesday and could last days if not weeks. Many employees may not return to work at all, as the White House’s Office of Management and Budget recently advised federal agencies to prepare for mass layoffs in the event of a shutdown.

While much of the fallout remains to be seen, federal agencies that deal with wildfires, weather and disaster response — including the U.S. Forest Service, the National Weather Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Environmental Protection Agency — expect to see some impacts.

Here’s what we know:

The U.S. Forest Service will shut down activities on more than 193 million acres of land across 46 states, including at least 154 national forests, according to the agency’s most recent contingency plan, published in September. Hundreds of recreational sites and facilities will be closed, while work on operations such as timber sales and restoration projects will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

The Forest Service — the largest federal firefighting entity in the country — will continue its work geared toward responding to and preparing for wildfires, according to the plan. However, the agency will reduce some work related to fire prevention, including prescribed burns and the treatment of vegetation to reduce fire risk.

What’s more, the shutdown will delay state grants for forest management and wildland fire preparedness; delay reimbursement for ongoing forest management work on non-federal lands; and may affect states’ ability to train firefighters and acquire necessary equipment, among other impacts, the plan says.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection works closely with the Forest Service to manage fire preparation and response. Cal Fire officials said it does not anticipate any impacts to its ability to respond to blazes, and that the agency is fully staffed.

However, effects may be seen when it comes to federal grant programs that support fire prevention work in the state. For example, private property owners in California who rely on federal funds to conduct vegetation reduction work or create defensible space on their land may have to “front the money themselves” while they await reimbursement said Jesse Torres, deputy chief of communications with Cal Fire.

“The other thing is there are a lot of unknowns,” Torres said. “We don’t know what this is going to look like — is it going to be two days, two weeks, two months?”

Other agencies that play key roles in California’s disaster response and preparation — including the National Weather Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency — are largely deemed essential and will face fewer interruptions, according to their contingency plans.

“We are still operating in our core mission function and providing most of our normal services,” said Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. That includes weather forecasts and extreme weather watches and warnings.

“The things that we do for public safety will continue as normal,” Kittell said.

About 84% of FEMA employees, meanwhile, are exempt from shutdown-related furloughs, according to its plan, which provides few additional details about which operations will cease or proceed.

Officials with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said FEMA staff have advised them that they will continue to make payments for existing disaster declarations made by President Trump, but there’s no guarantee that new or additional disaster declarations or funding will be made available.

FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund — the main source of funding for response and recovery efforts following major disasters — is also running low and is not likely to be replenished during the shutdown. It requires congressional approval for additional funds.

What’s more, FEMA, the National Weather Service and the Forest Service have already been affected by significant budget cuts and layoffs this year as part of the Trump administration’s larger reorganization of the federal government, which it says will help save taxpayers money.

These agencies, including NWS’ parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have lost thousands of employees to layoffs and buyouts and have experienced reduced operations, grant cancellations and the closure of offices and research arms.

The same is true for the EPA, which has undergone staff cuts and layoffs in addition to a considerable shift in its organizational priorities. The nation’s top environmental agency has spent the last several months loosening regulations that govern air and water quality, electric vehicle initiatives, pollution monitoring and greenhouse gas reporting, among other changes.

Experts said the shutdown could further weaken the EPA’s capabilities, as nearly all of its employees — about 90% — will be furloughed. While the EPA’s imminent disaster response work will continue, such as work on oil spills and chemical releases, longer-term efforts including research projects and facility inspections will halt, according to the agency.

Meanwhile, H.D. Palmer, a spokesman with the California Department of Finance, said impacts to the California EPA’s environmental programs should be minimal if the shutdown is brief, but that problems could arise if it drags on long enough to create backlogs and funding lapses.

The average length of government shutdowns over the last 50 years was seven days, Palmer said. However, he noted that the most recent federal shutdown from December 2018 to January 2019 — during Trump’s first term — lasted 35 days.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court cleared the way Tuesday for the Trump administration to lay off tens of thousands of federal employees and downsize their agencies without seeking the approval of Congress.

In an 8-1 vote, the justices lifted an order from a federal judge in San Francisco who blocked mass layoffs at more than 20 departments and agencies.

The court has sided regularly with President Trump and his broad view of executive power on matters involving federal agencies.

In a brief order, the court said “the Government is likely to succeed on its argument that the Executive Order and Memorandum are lawful,” referring to the plans to reduce staffing. But it said it was not ruling on specific layoffs.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor concurred with the decision on the grounds that it was narrow and temporary.

Dissenting alone, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the court should not have intervened.

“Under our Constitution, Congress has the power to establish administrative agencies and detail their functions,” she wrote.

Since mid-April, the court has handed down a series of temporary orders that cleared the way for Trump’s planned cutbacks in funding and staffing at federal agencies.

Litigation will continue in the lower courts, but the justices are not likely to reverse course and rule next year that they made a mistake in allowing the staffing cutbacks to proceed.

The layoff case posed the question of whether Congress or the president had the authority to downsize agencies.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco said Congress, not the president, creates federal agencies and decides on their size and their duties.

“Agencies may not conduct large-scale reorganizations and reductions in force in blatant disregard of Congress’s mandates, and a president may not initiate large-scale executive branch reorganization without partnering with Congress,” she said on May 22.

Her order barred more than 20 departments and agencies from carrying out mass layoffs in response to an executive order from Trump.

They included the departments of Commerce, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Treasury, Transportation and Veterans Affairs as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the General Services Administration and the National Science Foundation.

She said the planned layoffs are large. The Health and Human Services department plans to cut 8,000 to 10,000 employees and the Energy Department 8,500. The Veterans Administration had planned to lay off 83,000 employees but said recently it will reduce that number to about 30,000.

Labor unions had sued to stop the layoffs as illegal.

Illson agreed that the agencies were not acting on their own to trim their staffs. Rather, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget under Russ Vought was leading the reorganization and restructuring of dozen of agencies. She said only Congress can reorganize agencies.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 2-1 vote, turned down the administration’s appeal of the judge’s order.

Appealing to the Supreme Court, Trump’s lawyers insisted the president had the full authority to fire tens of thousands of employees.

“The Constitution does not erect a presumption against presidential control of agency staffing,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer said in his appeal, “and the President does not need special permission from Congress.”

He said federal law allows agencies to reduce their staffs.

“Neither Congress nor the Executive Branch has ever intended to make federal bureaucrats a class with lifetime employment, whether there was work for them to do or not,” Sauer wrote.