President Donald Trump has threatened to fire additional federal employees during the government shutdown as retaliation against Democrats who are demanding a reversal of GOP Medicaid cuts and an extension of tax subsidies for the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare). (Experts across the political spectrum agree that the expiration of the subsidies at the end of the year will cause a substantial rise in insurance prices for millions of low and middle income families across the U.S.)
Today, Trump’s director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Russell Vought, announced on social media “The RIFs have begun.” (An RIF is a Reduction in Force.)
American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal employee union representing more than 800,000 federal and D.C. government employees, replied to Vought: “The lawsuit has been filed.”
The lawsuit has been filed. https://t.co/PRAgQ0AoOO
— AFGE (@AFGENational) October 10, 2025
Note: Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the AFGE lawsuit asserts that the OMB, under Vought, “violated the law through its threats to engage in the mass firing of federal workers during a shutdown. The lawsuit also names as defendants the Office of Personnel Management and its Director Scott Kupor, which issued allegedly unlawful and unprecedented instructions that federal employees may perform work during the federal government shutdown in order to carry out mass RIFs.”
AFGE National President Everett Kelley issued the following statement:
“It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country.
“These workers show up every day to serve the American people, and for the past nine months have been met with nothing but cruelty and viciousness from President Trump. Every single American citizen should be outraged.
“Federal workers are tired of being used as pawns for the political and personal gains of the elected and un-elected leaders. It’s time for Congress to do their jobs and negotiate an end to this shutdown immediately.
“In AFGE’s 93 years of existence under several presidential administrations – including during Trump’s first term – no president has ever decided to fire thousands of furloughed workers during a government shutdown.
“AFGE is currently challenging President Trump’s illegal, unprecedented, abuse of power and we will not stop fighting until every reduction-in-force notice is rescinded.”