Congress

Democrats float RIF reversals as shutdown demand

Published

9 months ago

October 15, 2025

President Donald Trump’s decision to fire thousands of federal workers this month was meant to pressure Democrats into quickly ending the government shutdown. Instead, it could have the opposite effect.

As the shutdown enters its 15th day, many Democrats say they want a commitment that employees subjected to reductions-in-force, or RIFs, will be rehired before they agree to reopen the government — even as courts independently act to curb the firings.

“It’d be pretty unconscionable to open it up and still have to put up with those thousands and thousands of firings,” said Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who represents a fed-heavy district bordering Washington.

Negotiating the fates of those workers could further complicate the path out of the shutdown, with Democrats already demanding the extension of key expiring health insurance subsidies and an end to Trump’s moves to cancel congressionally approved spending.

Beyer said he would leave it to the top Hill Democrats — House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — to figure out whether a U-turn needs to be written into legislation. “But it definitely should be fully reversed,” he said.

Federal workers and their advocates won an early victory Wednesday when a California-based federal judge halted some of the layoffs on a temporary basis. The White House budget office has said in court papers some 4,000 employees have already been subject to RIFs, and budget director Russ Vought said in an interview with “The Charlie Kirk Show” Wednesday the layoffs could ultimately go “north of 10,000.”

It’s possible that the layoffs might be overturned without congressional intervention as lawsuits stack up. But some Trump administration mass firings undertaken before the shutdown were initially blocked by federal judges only to be ultimately found valid and allowed to remain in effect.

Jeffries has denounced the firings as an intimidation tactic and said they “will be reversed, either congressionally or by the courts.” Schumer has called on the White House to undo the latest firings but has not said whether forcing a backtrack should get tacked on to Democrats’ demand list.

“The administration should reverse every single firing from last week and should stop playing politics with people’s livelihoods and their lives,” he said in a Wednesday floor speech.

Schumer, in particular, has sought to maintain flexibility in navigating a path out of the shutdown. Unlike some Democrats — including Jeffries — he has not demanded an extension of the expiring health care subsidies as a prerequisite to reopen the government, only that the parties negotiate on a bipartisan product. Adding a reversal of the Trump firings to the list could make an off-ramp even harder to find than it already is.

Other Democrats, including some who represent parts of the Washington area, said they are confident the court challenges would ultimately prevail. Federal worker unions filed the initial lawsuits following threats from Vought that preceded the start of the actual government shutdown — arguing, among other things, that the act of firing workers is a nonessential function that cannot be performed during a lapse in federal funding.

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said negotiating the cancellation of the RIFs “certainly should be on the table” but added, “I think they’re going to be reversed” by the courts. Added Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.), “To the extent those are illegal anyway, they really don’t need to be on the table. But I think we’ll have to see how that plays out.”

Trump said Tuesday more workforce cuts could come as soon as Friday if the government isn’t open by then.

“We’re closing up programs that are Democrat programs that we were opposed to,” he said. “And they’re never going to come back in many cases.”

Many Democrats have argued Trump would have pursued the sweeping cuts whether the government was open or not. The president has already slashed 200,000 federal jobs through the Department of Government Efficiency, according to a Partnership for Public Service estimate.

That has driven a larger desire to not only fight the Trump administration but to curtail its power to dismantle programs that have been authorized and funded by Congress.

“I think not just RIF removals, but the treatment of federal workers should be part of these negotiations,” Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) said. “They have nothing to do with the shutdown though, and they’re using this as an excuse to fire people that they were already going to fire.”

Asked about undoing the RIFs, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said “we might reverse some of them as part of the appropriations process.” But he added that Democrats cannot agree to any spending deal so long as Trump can continue cutting federal workers against congressional will: “Getting to stop the unilateral action is definitely something that I’m looking for.

Kaine and other Senate Democrats have gotten some Republican backup. Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) spoke out against the administration’s first round of permanent layoffs last week. And Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) signed onto a letter with dozens of Democrats demanding that the administration guarantee it will give back pay to furloughed workers in keeping with a requirement Trump signed into law in 2019.

But conservative Republicans continue championing the mass layoffs, saying they are proof that the federal government is too big and can easily be pared back.

“The president is doing what he needs to do,” Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) said during a telephone town hall Tuesday. “He said that what we’re going to do is start laying off federal workers — not furloughing them, but laying them off — delivering on the government efficiency promises that he made when he ran for office.”

Calen Razor and Jordain Carney contributed to this report.

Congress

Senate Ethics dismisses allegations against Ruben Gallego

Published

2 hours ago

June 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate Ethics Committee has dismissed allegations of misconduct levied against Sen. Ruben Gallego, who stood accused by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of “campaign finance violations and inappropriate conduct of a sexual nature.”

The charges came following the resignation of the Arizona Democrat’s longtime friend, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), who was forced to step down amid accusations of serious sexual misconduct. Luna, a Florida Republican, sought to implicate Gallego by claiming in an interview on CBS that a woman would come forward about an “incident that occurred between the two of them at the same time and the event was sexual in nature allegedly.”

But in a letter to Gallego sent Monday — which he shared in a public news release — the notoriously inactive Ethics Committee cited Gallego’s “prompt contact with the Committee following media reports of the allegations and appreciated your full cooperation with the Committee throughout the investigation.”

Gallego has maintained he was unaware of the allegations against Swalwell and said in a statement he was a victim of “right-wing conspiracies peddled by far-right activists like Anna Paulina Luna, the White House, and their allies.”

He continued, “I look forward to an apology from Rep. Luna for weaponizing the ethics process while refusing to investigate historic corruption that’s making life harder for families.”

Luna, in a post on X, defended her referral to the Senate Ethics Committee.

“The good news about DC is everyone talks, and eventually the reporters come forward with your texts,” Luna wrote on social media. “Do yourself a favor and keep raising for your legal defense fund. Once a creep always a creep, and you’re gonna need it.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misstated Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s state. She represents Florida.

Congress

Rubio, Witkoff to brief Congress on Iran

Published

6 hours ago

June 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Top deputies of President Donald Trump will brief Congress on the Iran peace talks in a Monday conference call — the first time administration officials have addressed a broad group of lawmakers since Trump signed a “memorandum of understanding” with Tehran earlier this month.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, will lead the briefing for all House and Senate members at 4 p.m., according to seven people granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting.

Republicans and Democrats have called for more transparency about the 14-point agreement inked on June 18, which initiated a cease-fire between the two countries. Since then, the U.S. and Iran have continued to engage in hostilities.

Congress

Capitol agenda: Red, white and GOP hard-liner blues

Published

8 hours ago

June 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Republicans finally cleared a runway this week to finish some of their top legislative priorities before the July 4 recess.

That is, unless a small band of hard-liners trip up those plans at takeoff.

Speaker Mike Johnson is hoping to move quickly to pass fiscal 2027 appropriations legislation, the annual defense policy bill and a kids online safety bill that has been years in the making. The movement comes after President Donald Trump instructed GOP hard-liners to stop holding up a procedural vote amid a protest from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and others that the Senate hadn’t passed Trump’s election security bill.

But Luna and other hard-liners are still threatening to tank the procedural vote that could delay the defense policy bill and other measures until they get concessions on the SAVE America Act, amid other demands.

Johnson, for example, had also promised hard-liners a vote before July 4 on a sweeping GOP immigration bill introduced in the prior Congress as H.R. 2, which is highly unlikely to happen.

Johnson for his part has said the House will “pass the SAVE America Act again” by folding parts of it into a third party-line reconciliation bill. But the slimmed-down version he’d need to pursue in order to meet strict Senate rules for the budget process is already being panned by hard-liners as insufficient.

That reconciliation bill is also already delayed. House Republicans aren’t on track to meet their goal of advancing its framework before the July 4 recess as members on the Budget panel balked over how to pay for the legislation in a closed-door meeting last week.

“Time is of the essence, given how many legislative days we have,” House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie, who is sponsoring the kids online safety legislation, said in an interview last week. “If we lose a week, that would be important.”

Meanwhile, Democratic leadership is grappling with their own heated internal divisions this week. Members are split over supporting the adoption of an amendment to a fiscal 2027 spending bill from Rep. Thomas Massie that would end Israel aid and cut the overall foreign military aid program by $3.3 billion.

Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro did not instruct her colleagues on how to vote during a rare Sunday evening caucus call, two sources granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting tell Mia and Riley. Leaders did, however, criticize the amendment as poorly written.

One other item this week that could split members of each party: House lawmakers are also slated to vote on a rewritten war powers resolution from Rep. Rashida Tlaib to reign in Trump administration military actions in Lebanon. Leadership worked with Tlaib to come up with new language last month that is expected to garner more Dem support, but the resolution is still expected to fail without GOP votes.

What else we’re watching:

— SENATE GOP GETS ANTSY ABOUT NOMINATIONS: Some Republican senators are unsettled by Trump’s apparent lack of urgency in filling vacant posts, even as GOP control of the chamber beyond the midterms is increasingly in doubt. There are more than two dozen federal court vacancies. Labor secretary, FDA commissioner and scores of other open positions do not have nominees, and a senior White House official said Trump is in no rush to fill them. “We’re running short on time,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a member of Senate HELP, which oversees health, labor and other issues.

—RICK SCOTT SAYS HE’S JUST TRYING TO HELP: Fresh off his controversial Trump invite to a Senate GOP lunch last week, Sen. Rick Scott told Blue Light News in an interview he’s trying to make a mark — not trying to challenge Senate Majority Leader John Thune. Scott insists that neither his invitation to the president nor a letter he circulated afterward outlining how the Senate GOP should be preparing for the midterms should be seen as a prelude to a leadership challenge. The Florida Republican said he’s perfectly happy running the conference’s conservative Steering Committee and predicted Thune would easily secure another term as leader. What has become eminently clear in recent weeks is that Scott — after a long career in business, two terms as governor and nearly eight years as senator — just isn’t a back-bench kind of guy.

Meredith Lee Hill, Riley Rogerson, Alex Gangitano, Jordain Carney and Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.