{"id":14476,"date":"2025-10-15T22:47:51","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T22:47:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/democrats-float-rif-reversals-as-shutdown-demand\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T22:47:51","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T22:47:51","slug":"democrats-float-rif-reversals-as-shutdown-demand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/democrats-float-rif-reversals-as-shutdown-demand\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats float RIF reversals as shutdown demand"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

President Donald Trump\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 even as courts independently act to curb the firings.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019d be pretty unconscionable to open it up and still have to put up with those thousands and thousands of firings,\u201d said Rep. Don Beyer<\/a> (D-Va.), who represents a fed-heavy district bordering Washington.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s moves to cancel congressionally approved spending.<\/p>\n

Beyer said he would leave it to the top Hill Democrats \u2014 House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries<\/a> and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer<\/a> \u2014 to figure out whether a U-turn needs to be written into legislation. \u201cBut it definitely should be fully reversed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Federal workers and their advocates won an early victory Wednesday when a California-based federal judge halted some of the layoffs<\/a> 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 \u201cThe Charlie Kirk Show\u201d Wednesday the layoffs could ultimately go \u201cnorth of 10,000<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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<\/a> and allowed to remain in effect.<\/p>\n

Jeffries has denounced the firings as an intimidation tactic and said they \u201cwill be reversed, either congressionally or by the courts.\u201d 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\u2019 demand list.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe administration should reverse every single firing from last week and should stop playing politics with people’s livelihoods and their lives,\u201d he said in a Wednesday floor speech.<\/p>\n

Schumer, in particular, has sought to maintain flexibility in navigating a path out of the shutdown. Unlike some Democrats \u2014 including Jeffries \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 arguing, among other things, that the act of firing workers is a nonessential function that cannot be performed during a lapse in federal funding.<\/p>\n

Rep. Steny Hoyer<\/a> (D-Md.) said negotiating the cancellation of the RIFs \u201ccertainly should be on the table\u201d but added, \u201cI think they’re going to be reversed\u201d by the courts. Added Rep. Glenn Ivey<\/a> (D-Md.), \u201cTo 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump said Tuesday more workforce cuts could come as soon as Friday if the government isn\u2019t open by then.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re closing up programs that are Democrat programs that we were opposed to,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd they\u2019re never going to come back in many cases.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think not just RIF removals, but the treatment of federal workers should be part of these negotiations,\u201d Rep. Suhas Subramanyam<\/a> (D-Va.) said. \u201cThey 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked about undoing the RIFs, Sen. Tim Kaine<\/a> (D-Va.) said \u201cwe might reverse some of them as part of the appropriations process.\u201d But he added that Democrats cannot agree to any spending deal so long as Trump can continue cutting federal workers against congressional will: \u201cGetting to stop the unilateral action is definitely something that I’m looking for.<\/p>\n

Kaine and other Senate Democrats have gotten some Republican backup. Appropriations Chair Susan Collins<\/a> (R-Maine) spoke out against the administration\u2019s first round of permanent layoffs last week. And Sen. Lisa Murkowski<\/a> (R-Alaska) signed onto a letter<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president is doing what he needs to do,\u201d Rep. Andy Harris<\/a> (R-Md.) said during a telephone town hall Tuesday. \u201cHe said that what we’re going to do is start laying off federal workers \u2014 not furloughing them, but laying them off \u2014 delivering on the government efficiency promises that he made when he ran for office.\u201d<\/p>\n

Calen Razor and Jordain Carney contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}