Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought wants Americans to believe that in the event of a government shutdown, he and President Donald Trump have the power to fire swaths of federal employees at will. They cannot. Vought’s vindictive memo, directing agencies to consider reductions in force (RIFs) for employees in programs whose funding would lapse under a shutdown, reads like a coercive power trip. But it isn’t authority. It’s Project 2025 ambition. And it’s wrong — both legally and practically.
There is no statute, appropriation or constitutional clause that gives an administration license to fire federal civilian employees simply because funding has lapsed. When Congress fails to enact a continuing resolution or full-year funding, federal agencies are constrained by appropriations law, not presidential whim. This means that only narrowly defined “excepted” operations may continue, and all other nonessential activities must stop.
Let’s not lose sight of what is at stake. Federal employees are not political hostages.
The linchpin here is the Antideficiency Act. This statute prohibits federal officers from obligating or expending funds beyond what Congress has appropriated. It forbids initiating new obligations in a funding gap. It is the reason that many federal functions cease during a shutdown, and the reason that those federal employees deemed “excepted” work without receiving a paycheck.
In that emergency context, the only lawful personnel actions are to designate which employees are essential and which are nonessential, and then manage the furlough process. The made-up idea that you can layer a full-blown RIF process (with its permanent separations, severance, internal competition, appeals and procedural steps) on top of a funding lapse is fundamentally incompatible with the law.
Attempting to implement “mass firings,” as Vought said, during a shutdown would create new administrative burdens, legal liabilities, severance obligations and significant compensation or benefits questions. That is exactly the kind of commitment to future expenditures that the Antideficiency Act bars when money is unavailable. Vought’s proposal would push him and federal agencies into antideficiency violations and legal jeopardy.
In short, then, Vought’s memo is political intimidation, not valid administrative guidance. The RIF process is no trivial matter. “With strict regulations and processes agencies have to follow, it takes a lot of work and time for agencies to run any RIFs,” Federal News Network reported earlier this year. As experts have warned repeatedly, it is slow, complex, heavily regulated, and often vulnerable to legal challenge. Indeed, many experts see Vought’s plan as unprecedented and legally dubious. “It doesn’t seem to me that they would really be able to legally do that additional work during a shutdown,” former OMB official Bobby Kogan told Federal News Network earlier this week.
“Leveraging the possibility of a shutdown to inject new life into the Trump administration’s massive workforce reduction agenda is yet another stunt at the expense of the civil service,” says Rob Shriver, former acting director at the Office of Personnel Management. Shriver, who now leads the Civil Service Strong program at the legal group Democracy Forward, adds: “It’s clear that Trump’s own agency leaders don’t support his agenda, because they are finally learning how important the work of civil servants is to our country. OMB Director Vought should let his agency HR teams focus on the work needed to manage a shutdown without putting them through a pointless RIF exercise.” A federal shutdown does not unlock a secret sledgehammer that Vought can take to the federal workforce. Let’s not lose sight of what is at stake. Federal employees are not political hostages. They are the backbone of our nation’s safety and prosperity. They are the air traffic controllers guiding planes safely through our skies, the inspectors ensuring our food and water are safe, the scientists tracking and combating public health threats, and the law enforcement officers protecting our communities. They maintain our infrastructure, safeguard our environment and advance the research that drives American innovation. Consider the debacle earlier this year at the National Nuclear Security Administration, where up to 350 employees were abruptly fired, only to have the terminations rescinded days later due to public backlash and national security concerns. Similar stories have played out at the General Services Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These chaotic episodes underscores the dangers of politicizing federal workforce decisions and highlights the instability such actions can create in critical sectors. Threatening similar mass layoffs during a shutdown would not only disrupt essential services but also erode the trust and morale of the dedicated public servants who keep our nation secure. So let me be clear. Russ Vought’s directive is an illegal power grab. A federal shutdown does not unlock a secret sledgehammer that he can take to the federal workforce. And while a government shutdown is terrible for federal workers in that they will not get paid until the government is reopened, federal law prevents the Trump administration from mass firings during a shutdown.
Rep. James R. Walkinshaw
Rep. James R. Walkinshaw represents Virginia's 11th congressional district in the House of Representatives. 
