Here’s an update on Russ Vought’s “mass layoffs,” following through on the threats he and Trump made in advance of the shutdown. From what I can tell, this seems to be a version of what we described yesterday: a comparatively small number of layoffs aimed mainly at allowing the White House to say it followed through on its threat (call it counter-TACO praxis) and tightly focused on a few agencies or departments President Trump is personally aggrieved at. The most concrete number I’ve seen refers to 4,200 employees across seven departments and agencies. That’s a big deal for the people losing their jobs. It’s also a very small number compared to what we saw in the spring. The New York Post suggests (famous last words, I know) that as many as a third of those layoffs may come from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which has been a focus of Trump’s anger since 2021 when its then-director Chris Krebs disputed Trump’s claims of cyber-election hacking in the 2020 election. I’ve gotten more concrete reports that at least a quarter of these firings are at the CDC alone, focused on core public health work. STAT News reports that almost the entire staff of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report have been fired. (That is essentially the publication that the CDC uses to communicate the latest information on disease circulation in the country.) Other targeted offices seem tied to clean energy projects and other bêtes noir. As one source put it, these are not ‘reductions in force’. They are ideological firings targeting specific offices and parts of the government Trump has long been mad at.

You’ve probably seen that Russ Vought went on Twitter today and said “the RIFS [government speak for permanent layoffs] have begun.” Obviously, I can’t know directly what this means or what they’re doing. But since I’ve written about this a few times, I thought I should share my reaction. I remain skeptical that this is actually happening in a substantial way.

It could totally be happening. But I think the driver here is that Trump was getting hit increasingly hard for having flinched on this threat. And as of yesterday, they started backing off on the threat not to pay backpay to federal workers. So I think the press about this was getting to the White House and both angering Trump and making them look like they’re flailing. I would say I’m certain that this is why they’re doing this (reaction to that bad press). The only question is whether they’re actually going to follow through to really undo that impression.