The Trump administration’s strategy during the ongoing government shutdown has taken a sharp, unmistakable turn—and it’s one that could fundamentally reshape the federal workforce as we know it.
On Wednesday, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought appeared on The Charlie Kirk Show, confirming what many suspected: the administration isn’t just riding out the shutdown—it’s using it. Using it to permanently reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy, with an eye toward making government leaner, less entrenched, and—if critics are right—less partisan.
So far, about 4,000 federal employees have received reduction-in-force (RIF) notices—layoff letters, in plain terms. But according to Vought, that’s only the beginning.
“That’s just a snapshot, and I think it’ll get much higher,” Vought said. “I think we’ll probably end up being north of 10,000.”
This isn’t idle speculation. It’s a clear declaration of intent.
“We’re going to keep those RIFs rolling throughout this shutdown, because we think it’s important to stay on offense for the American taxpayer,” Vought added.
That word—“offense”—is telling. The administration sees this shutdown not as a defensive posture or a temporary standoff, but as an opportunity to go after deep-rooted bureaucratic structures that have long resisted reform. The stated goal? To do more than just slash budgets. Vought put it plainly:
“We want to be very aggressive where we can be in shuttering the bureaucracy, not just the funding.”
But within hours of that statement, a federal judge in San Francisco threw up a legal roadblock. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, appointed by President Clinton, issued a temporary injunction against the layoffs, citing statements made by President Trump and Vought himself as evidence of improper political motive.
Illston specifically pointed to Trump’s comment that the layoffs would target “Democrat agencies”—a phrase that may now prove legally consequential.
“You can’t do that in a nation of laws,” Illston said from the bench. “And we have laws here, and the things that are being articulated here are not within the law.”
The unions representing affected federal workers, more than 30 agencies’ worth, argue the administration is overstepping legal procedures required for workforce reductions. The Justice Department, in turn, says those unions are jumping the gun—that they must take their complaints first to a federal labor board, not directly to the courts.
What unfolds next will be a critical legal battle—not just over job cuts, but over the limits of executive power in an era where political lines are drawn not just in Congress, but across the federal bureaucracy itself.
