Trump government shutdown: Thousands of American employees sent on mandatory leave.
The Democratic-affiliated CNN network reported on Friday that federal employees who are not considered essential have been furloughed as part of the government shutdown.
During the shutdown, federal employees who remain on the job often continue to work without pay until Congress acts to fund the government.
Others are also being furloughed, meaning they are not expected to work and will receive their back pay once lawmakers reach a budget deal and the shutdown ends.
“The number of federal employees who could be furloughed during the ongoing shutdown is likely to be in the thousands,” White House spokeswoman Carolyn Leavitt said after President Donald Trump’s administration was shut down due to partisan differences over the passage of the US budget bill.
“There will probably be thousands of people laid off, and that’s something that the Office of Management and Budget and the entire White House team, unfortunately, are having to work on today,” a White House spokesman said Thursday, responding to a question about how many people could be laid off.
House Democratic leader rejects Republican criticism of his party’s budget proposal
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also rejected Republican claims that Democrats are discussing funding health care for undocumented immigrants as part of their budget proposal.
“When Republicans claim that Democrats are somehow interested in providing health insurance to undocumented immigrants, we know that the law does not allow that, and there is no proposal from Democrats that suggests that.”
He reiterated his desire to pursue a “bipartisan path,” noting the successful bipartisan congressional negotiations under Joe Biden.
“We know that during the Trump administration, they have taken a unilateral approach, a ‘my way or nothing’ approach, and we are not going to sit back and simply endorse Donald Trump’s extremist agenda,” Jeffries said.
Asked about Trump’s sharing of racist and doctored images of himself, the New York Democrat called the president’s actions “out of control and ridiculous.”
“Everything Trump has done since Monday has been out of control and ridiculous,” he said, referring to Trump’s absence from public events since Tuesday. “Nobody can talk to him about the government shutdown because he knows he caused it.”
The US federal government went into a shutdown on Wednesday morning, local time, October 1, 2025, after congressional leaders failed to reach an agreement on a temporary funding bill and lawmakers resorted to any means necessary to break the impasse.
“I am meeting today with Ross Vote, a member of the Reputation 2025 Project, to determine which of the many Democratic agencies, most of which are political scams, should face cuts and whether the cuts will be temporary or permanent,” US President Donald Trump wrote on his social media account Truth Social on Thursday local time.
The US president added that in his view, Democrats have given him an “unprecedented opportunity.”
The US president has met with Russell Vote, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, “to determine which of the many Democratic agencies” will be cut and whether the cuts will be “temporary or permanent.”