Update: On October 22, 2025, the temporary restraining order blocking further large-scale layoffs of federal employees during the government shutdown was expanded to include federal employees represented by additional unions, including the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, AFL-CIO (IFPTE), and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
Timeline:
October 1, 2025: Federal government shutdown goes into effect, as the Congress is unable to reach a short-term spending deal to keep the government funded.
October 10, 2025: The Trump administration sends layoff notices to thousands of federal employees at 7 different agencies.
October 15, 2025: A federal judge places a temporary restraining order on the Trump administration from doing further RIFs during the shutdown, in a lawsuit brought by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which represent many federal workers.
October 17, 2025: The judge expands the original restraining order to protect federal employees from further shutdown layoffs represented by represented by the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE), and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
Description: In September 2025, Office of Management & Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought threatened that were the federal government to shut down, the administration would use the shutdown as a pretense to permanently fire federal employees en masse, rather than to place them on a temporarily furlough. The administration began acting on this threat on October 10, as agencies sent layoff notices to about 4,200 employees at the Departments of Commerce, Education, Health & Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing & Urban Development, Treasury, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Government shutdowns occur when Congress is unable to come to an agreement to pass a series of appropriations, or spending allocation, bills. If Congress is unable to pass normal appropriations bills, they may pass continuing resolutions – short-term appropriations bills that keep the government functioning at existing levels, intended to buy more time for longer negotiations on the more complicated spending bills. The funding from the most recent continuing resolution expired on October 1, 2025, over a debate on preventing health insurance price hikes that would otherwise go into effect in November.
During a government shutdown, most federal government services are suspended and agencies are effectively shuttered. The vast majority of civilian government employees are placed on furlough during a shutdown – essentially, they remain employed but do not report to work and do not receive pay. Some federal employees may be required to work without pay. Others may be able to be temporarily paid through other funding sources that have been appropriated by Congress outside of the normal government funding process, until those sources run out.
Prior to the government shutdown beginning in October 2025, the Trump administration had already pursued several avenues to attempt to dramatically slash the size of the federal workforce, including terminating or limiting collective bargaining agreements with federal employees unions, offering a deferred resignation package to all federal employees, closing agencies or offices whose mission does not align with the administration’s political agenda, wand proposing a new worker classification that would make it easier to for federal employees to be fired for political reasons. Most of these moves have been challenged in court by federal employee unions or other interested parties, and in some cases the government has been blocked from firing more employees while the litigation proceeds.
Impact: The Trump administration’s recent actions have added to the chaos and uncertainty experienced by many federal workers by months. At at least one agency where workers received layoff notices on October 10, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some were speedily rehired. Most others may now need to look to proceedings in the lawsuits brought on their behalf by federal employee unions to determine the ultimate fate of their jobs. These continued attacks on federal employees continue to undermine the public sector, weaken the effective operation of countless government programs and public service, and to harm the federal employees who may lose employment or be forced to seek out other jobs due to the uncertainty.