White House Tries to Smush Dems’ Backbone With Threats of Mass Firings During Gov’t Shutdown
This is your TPM evening briefing.
Democrats are using what little power they have in the Senate as a government shutdown nears to hold the Trump administration to account for some of its abuse of power. Specifically, they are trying to force the executive branch to let the legislative branch do its job, demanding, in exchange for their votes to avert a shutdown, it stop seizing from senators their power to set spending levels. The White House’s response? Threatening to conduct mass firings of federal workers unless Democrats cave and help Republicans pass a stopgap measure to keep the government open without concessions.
As my colleague Emine Yücel has been reporting for weeks, any short term government funding legislation must clear the filibuster in order to pass in the Senate, meaning Republicans need a handful of Democratic senators to get on board with their funding legislation — called a continuing resolution — in order to keep the government open and avert a shutdown when the fiscal year ends next week.
Congressional Republicans have spent the entirety of Trump’s second term slowly shattering constitutional norms by ceding their power of the purse to the executive branch, as the Trump White House refuses to spend federal money the way that Congress appropriates it and tries to force Congress to swallow Department of Government Efficiency cuts through the rescission process, and, more recently, via illegal so-called “pocket rescissions.” It’s been unclear until recently whether Senate Democrats would push for anything in exchange for their votes to avoid a shutdown. In recent weeks, they began floating some demands: they’d help Republicans keep the government open if any legislation to fund the government included an extension of the Obamacare subsidies set to expire this year — avoiding health care premium increases for millions of Americans.
While crucial, expanding the Affordable Care Act subsidies already had bipartisan support, and did nothing to stop the Trump administration’s ongoing legislative branch power grab.
Finally, last week, Democrats put out their own version of a CR to keep the government open that included an extension of the subsidies, as well as some additional provisions — among them language to block the Trump White House from freezing and rescinding federal spending, likely in violation of the Impoundment Control Act. A vote on that CR, as well as Republicans’ House-passed version, both failed in the Senate last week. A planned meeting between Democratic leaders and President Trump was also abruptly canceled by Trump this week. With Democrats holding the line on what they’re demanding in exchange for their help, the White House is attempting a new tactic, trying to force them to fold like their party leaders did last March.
The White House Office of Management and Budget, which is led by Russ Vought, put out a memo last night telling federal agencies to start prepping reduction-in-force (RIF) plans for widespread firings in the event of a potential government shutdown next week. The memo instructed agency staff to identify jobs that can be permanently eliminated from the pool of employees who would typically be placed on furlough in the event of a normal government shutdown. Per Politico:
“Programs that did not benefit from an infusion of mandatory appropriations will bear the brunt of a shutdown,” OMB wrote in the memo. Agencies were told to submit their proposed RIF plans to OMB and to issue notices to employees even if they would otherwise be excepted or furloughed during a lapse in funding.
Potentially seeing the writing on the wall last week, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities put out a memo explaining that the Trump administration does not have the authority to use a government shutdown as a pretext for firing federal employees:
Critically, while the executive branch has some discretion as to what activities continue during a shutdown — and it is impossible to predict whether the Administration will take unlawful actions under the pretext of a shutdown — a government shutdown does not provide the Administration any additional legal authority to fire federal employees, limit review of its actions by federal courts, or freeze funding once full-year appropriations are provided.
Democrats, at least for now, are not caving.
“This is nothing new and has nothing to do with funding the government,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told Politico. “These unnecessary firings will either be overturned in court or the administration will end up hiring the workers back, just like they did as recently as today.”
He’s referencing a point that my colleague Josh Marshall made today as well: the Trump administration is already in the process of rehiring many of the federal employees Elon Musk tried to get rid of as part of DOGE’s rampage through the federal government earlier this year.
Even Democrats who represent the areas where federal workers live are downplaying the Trump administration’s threats at the moment, like Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD).
“President Trump is engaged in mafia-style blackmail, with his threats ultimately harming the American people,” he said in a statement Thursday. “These dedicated workers have nothing to do with the ongoing political and policy disputes that have brought us to the brink of a shutdown. These threats are not only an attack on Americans’ services and benefits, they’re also likely illegal. We’ll be fighting back with every tool we have.”
The Retribution Agenda
As he fires U.S. attorneys and replaces them with allies who will go after his political foes, it appears Trump has successfully pushed his Justice Department to find something with which to indict longtime right-wing bogeyman George Soros and the anodyne pro-democracy organization that he runs. According to new reporting in the New York Times, a senior DOJ official directed multiple U.S. attorneys’ offices around the U.S. to come up with a plan to investigate the Open Society Foundations, the group founded by Soros. The memo, which was reviewed by the Times, suggests that the official was at least in part operating off of Trump’s recent order to go after any left-leaning groups he doesn’t like in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder. Trump has called for Soros to be prosecuted and jailed for years.
Per the Times:
On Monday, a lawyer in the office of the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, issued the directive to U.S. attorney’s offices in California, New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Detroit and Maryland, among others.
The lawyer, Aakash Singh, who is responsible for communicating with federal prosecutors around the country, suggested a wide range of charges for prosecutors to consider against the Open Society Foundations. Possible charges included racketeering, arson, wire fraud and material support for terrorism, according to a copy of the directive.
WTF Is This?
New eyebrow-raising reporting from The Washington Post today:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered hundreds of the U.S. military’s generals and admirals to gather on short notice — and without a stated reason — at a Marine Corps base in Virginia next week, sowing confusion and alarm after the Trump administration’s firing of numerous senior leaders this year.
The highly unusual directive was sent to virtually all of the military’s top commanders worldwide, according to more than a dozen people familiar with the matter. The directive was issued earlier this week, as a government shutdown looms, and months after Hegseth’s team at the Pentagon announced plans to undertake a sweeping consolidation of top military commands.
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