September 25, 2025 09:50 AM UTC

Trump Holds Thousands More Federal Employees Hostage In Shutdown Standoff

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• by: Colorado Pols

As NBC News reports, the White House has introduced a new and troubling potential consideration to the increasingly urgent debate over legislation to keep the government from entering another shutdown on October 1st–a threat to permanently fire employees who would normally only be furloughed in a shutdown and then reinstated with back pay:

The White House is raising the stakes of a potential government shutdown by drafting a request for federal agencies to prepare “reduction in force” plans in case Congress doesn’t pass a spending bill before Oct. 1.

In a memo from the Office of Management and Budget, obtained by NBC News, the Trump administration indicated it’s prepared to go beyond the traditional furloughing of some government employees during shutdowns and fire federal employees…

The memo says agencies would be directed to consider reduction-in-force notices for all employees in programs, projects or activities whose discretionary funding will lapse on Oct. 1 that lack available alternative funding sources and are “not consistent with the President’s priorities.”

This appears to be an explicit version of similar threats that were leveled in March of this year as a shutdown loomed, and prompted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to controversially give in and support the Republican temporary funding resolution under debate at that time. With Trump once again threatening to magnify the pain of the next shutdown regardless of the practical consequences for an already hollowed-out federal workforce, the Aurora Sentinel reports that Colorado Democrats are once again united in condemning the administration’s high-stakes treachery:

“They are careening this government off a cliff,” Aurora Democratic Rep. Jason Crow told reporters at an affordable housing fair his office held in Aurora Wednesday. “I will not vote for a bill that jeopardizes the health of thousands of constituents and will explode the cost of healthcare for all of us.”

He joined Colorado Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper and the congressional Democratic caucus in blaming Trump and Republicans for the looming crisis.

“Here’s the math: Trump needs 7 Democrats in the Senate to agree to his bill to fund the government,” Hickenlooper said in a social media post. ” But he just flip-flopped on negotiating with us yet again. I’m a No vote unless we address sky-high costs caused by health care cuts and tariffs.”

Caught in the middle of this standoff are Colorado’s two swing-seat Republican members of Congress, Reps. Gabe Evans and Jeff Hurd–both of whom would politically benefit from a deal that reduced cuts to Medicaid and Affordable Care Act tax credits resulting from the “We’re All Going To Die Act” federal budget bill they both cast deciding votes to pass. Hurd is a co-sponsor of standalone legislation that would preserve the ACA tax credits he previously voted to cut. But neither Evans nor Hurd have the standing within their caucus to stand up to the lies the White House and Republicans are telling about what Democrats actually want in these negotiations. Ironically, it’s the very thing that would help Evans and Hurd the most.

As for where this latest high-stakes standoff between a White House that plays by its own rules and responsible people who want the government to function and Americans to not needlessly suffer, mindful of what happened last March we are not in a position to make solid predictions. Schumer’s sense of responsibility could well force him again into a politically unpopular compromise to prevent a far more destructive shutdown in the long term than any we’ve experienced before. Or, this is the moment to fight it out, which the Democratic base has been clamoring impatiently for since January.

Our question while we wait to see what they do…is what would you do?