White House warns layoffs are imminent if shutdown drags on
Leavitt tells reporters that government agencies are already preparing for cuts and “layoffs are imminent”.
“Unfortunately, because the Democrats shut down the government, the president has directed his cabinet and the Office of Management and Budget is working with agencies across the board to identify where cuts can be made and we believe that layoffs are imminent,” she says.
Key events
White House plays racist deepfake videos of Democratic leaders on a loop in briefing room
As the Trump administration insists that the president is serious about negotiating an end to the government shutdown, reporters were forced to endure repeated screenings of a pair of racist deepfake videos mocking Democratic leaders that played on a loop in the White House briefing room for hours on Wednesday.
The videos, previously posted by Donald Trump on his social media platform, use fabricated audio to make it seem as if the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, called Democrats “woke pieces of shit,” and showed the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, with a fake mustache and sombrero.
The clips, both set to Mexican mariachi music, are intended to drive home the administration’s false claim that the Democrats are demanding health insurance subsidies for unauthorized immigrants as a condition for funding the federal government.
In fact, Democrats want to ensure that funding is provided to Americans who rely on Affordable Care Act subsidies to purchase health insurance. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for those subsidies.
Democrats have also asked to reverse a provision of the Republican tax and spending bill that stripped health benefits from lawfully present immigrants, including refugees with Temporary Protected Status and non-citizens who were brought to the US as children, who were previously eligible for federal benefits under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals designation.
The fabricated words put in Schumer’s mouth are presented as an admission, by the Democratic senator, of a far-right conspiracy theory promoted by white supremacists, that Democrats want to give government benefits to undocumented immigrants from Latin America as part of a plot to replace white voters with immigrants who will then vote for Democrats.
The so-called “great replacement” theory has been cited by a number of gunman who have carried out racist, mass shootings, including the gunman who killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas in 2019, and another who murdered 11 congregants in the the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. The conspiracy theory also prompted torch-carrying, white supremacist marchers at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 to chant “Jews will not replace us”.
After Jeffries called the first video racist, Trump posted a second clip, of the Democrat calling the fabricated video “disgusting”, in which the sombrero and mustache are again added to the congressman, and a mariachi band featuring four versions of Trump plays in the background.
Chris Stein
Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, the top Democrats in the House of Representatives and Senate, respectively, and both New Yorkers, accused the Trump administration of retaliating against their constituents by putting billions of dollars to revamp transportation infrastructure on hold.
Hours after government funding lapsed and federal departments and agencies shut down, the transportation department announced the freeze on about $18bn that would pay for a new rail tunnel connecting New York to New Jersey, and a major New York City subway project.
“Donald Trump is once again treating working people as collateral damage in his endless campaign of chaos and revenge,” Schumer and Jeffries said in a joint statement.
“The Gateway Tunnel and Second Avenue Subway aren’t political trophies – they are lifelines. They mean tens of thousands of good-paying union jobs. They mean shorter commutes, safer travel and a stronger economy not just for New York, but for the entire nation. Choking off these projects out of spite will damage America’s competitiveness and cost working families dearly.”
Russell Vought, the director of the White House office of management and budget, announced the funding cancellation on social media, citing “unconstitutional DEI principles”.
An architect of the Trump administration’s campaign to downsize the federal government, Vought also threatened mass layoffs of government employees, if a shutdown occurs. Earlier today, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt warned “layoffs are imminent” if funding is not restored.
Lauren Gambino
Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, signed an executive order to protect access to vaccines and expand their availability for children in the state, amid confusion over the Trump administration’s changes to immunization guidelines.
Speaking from a children’s hospital in Philadelphia, Shapiro, the son of a pediatrician, accused Donald Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary, of spreading “blatantly false information about vaccines and their efficacy” and of taking away “medical and health care freedom” from parents.
“I do not want you to be guided by someone like RFK Jr, who I believe is wholly unqualified to give medical advice and who is restricting our freedoms here in Pennsylvania and across this country,” Shapiro said on Wednesday.
Earlier this month, Pennsylvania joined the Northeast Public Health Collaborative, a voluntary coalition of Democratic-led states brought together to coordinate “science-based medicine” and public health guidance that is separate from Trump’s CDC. It has a similar aim as the newly-formed West Coast Health Alliance.
Shapiro, the popular governor of a swing state, is considered a possible Democratic contender for president in 2028. A Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday found that 60% of Pennsylvania voters approve of “the way Josh Shapiro is handling his job as governor”, while 28% said the opposite.
Deployment of troops to Portland could cost Oregon $10m, governor says
Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, said in a statement on Wednesday that “Donald Trump’s unlawful federalization of members of the Oregon National Guard could cost taxpayers up to $10m, according to the Oregon Military Department (OMD).”
The calculation includes salaries, supplies, food, lodging and other costs associated with the deployment of 200 guard members to Portland for 60 days based on the president’s false claim that a small protest outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in the city, attended by dozens, makes the entire city “look like a war zone.”
“Our country and our state should be focused on solving real problems,” Kotek said. “Wasting an estimated $10 million dollars on made up problems is an insult to Americans who are struggling with the cost of living, access to affordable health care, safety in their neighborhoods, and more. Not only is this an abuse of power, it is a dereliction of the president’s duty to solve real problems.”
Corey Lewandowski, a former Trump campaign manager who is now serving in a powerful role at Trump’s department of homeland security, said it was “shameful” that Puerto Rican super star Bad Bunny, a longtime critic of Donald Trump, was headlining the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show, Variety reports.
“It’s so shameful they’ve decided to pick somebody who seems to hate America so much to represent them at the Halftime Show,” Lewandowski said in an interview with Benny Johnson.
Johnson, a conservative commenter, described Bad Bunny as an “anti-ICE activist” on Instagram, the Associated Press reported. On his show today, Variety reported, Johnson asked Lewandowski if Ice would have enforcement at the Super Bowl.
Lewandowski replied that Ice agents do enforcement everywhere. “There is nowhere you can provide safe haven to people who are in this country illegally. Not the Super Bowl and nowhere else,” he said, according to Variety.
“If there are illegal aliens, I don’t care if it’s a concert for Johnny Smith or Bad Bunny or anybody else. … We’re going to do enforcement everywhere.”
Employees within HHS told to ‘set an OOO email blaming Democrats – report
Employees at an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services “were told to set an out-of-office message in their email accounts blaming Democrats” for the government shutdown, according to an email obtained by HuffPost.
It’s another example of the Trump administration using mainstream government resources to make targeted partisan attacks. As HuffPost notes, federal government employees have been barred since 1939 from using their jobs for political activity under the Hatch Act.
“The law’s purposes are to ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion, to protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace, and to ensure that federal employees are advanced based on merit and not based on political affiliation.” a federal website still notes.
Donald Trump got a significant amount of blame during the last partial government shutdown, which took place toward the end of his first term after he forced a shutdown over border wall funding — but with Democrats embracing the shutdown fight this time, the outcome could be very different, the Associated Press reports.
Democrats in Congress had demanded an extension to expiring health care benefits in order to pass the bill to extend government funding. (See my colleague Chris Stein’s recent analysis: ‘A righteous fight.’) Republicans in Congress had refused, but offered a stopgap bill to keep the government open for several weeks, which Democrats rejected.
A New York Times/Siena poll conducted last week, prior to the shutdown, shows that two-thirds of registered voters did not want Democrats to shut down the government if their demands were not met, although both parties could end up receiving some blame for the resulting closure.
About one-quarter of registered voters in the Times/Siena poll — which was conducted prior to the shutdown — said they would blame Trump and the Republicans in Congress if a shutdown happened, while about 2 in 10 said they would place blame on congressional Democrats. About one-third said they’d blame both sides equally.
The state department has updated the government shutdown banner on its website to join the list of government department sites bearing a partisan message. It reads: “Due to the Democrat-led shutdown, website updates will be limited until full operations resume.” As I reported this morning, it didn’t say that earlier.
The US Forest Service also has one now that reads (with some grammatical issues): “The Radical Left Democrats shutdown the government. This government website will be updated periodically during the funding lapse for mission critical functions. President Trump has made it clear he wants to keep the government open and support those who feed, fuel, and clothe the American people.”
White House fires much of the National Council on the Humanities
The White House has abruptly fired a large share of the council members advising the National Endowment for the Humanities, retaining only four Trump appointees, the Washington Post (paywall) is reporting citing terminated members and an updated list of scholars on the agency’s website.
“On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as a member of the National Council on the Humanities is terminated, effective immediately,” read an email sent to council members this morning, reviewed by the paper. “Thank you for your service.” It was signed by Mary Sprowls of the White House Presidential Personnel Office.
The board of 26 scholars and humanities leaders is appointed by the president to six-year terms. It advises its chair on grantmaking, policy and funding decisions. Before the government shutdown, members were scheduled to attend a special meeting next week to review statue proposals for Trump’s “National Garden of American Heroes”, one terminated board member told the Post.
By late this morning, the council’s website had been updated to show only four members, all appointed by Trump: Russell A. Berman, Keegan F. Callanan, William English and Matthew Rose. Two of the terminated member were also Trump appointees.
Analysis: ‘A righteous fight’: Democrats hold fast on healthcare but also use shutdown to pummel Trump
Chris Stein
Finally, after nine months of Donald Trump running rampant over much in the government they hold dear, Democrats in Congress have found the ground on which to fight.
Pressed to vote for a Republican plan to keep the government open through mid-November, Democrats balked, and instead laid out a series of demands that amounted to the undoing of much of what the GOP has accomplished over the past year.
It was a nonstarter for Republicans and, after days of bluster and fruitless voting, the government tipped into a shutdown just after midnight on Wednesday. For Democrats, that may have been the point – pummeled by voters last November, the party has been looking for opportunities to remake its case to Americans.
“This is a righteous fight. There is no fight better than this fight right now,” said Massachusetts’s Elizabeth Warren on a live stream with other Democratic senators convened shortly before the chamber’s final, futile votes on Tuesday evening.
On the surface, Democrats are waging a battle over healthcare, long a signature cause for the party. They want cuts to Medicaid that Republicans approved earlier this year reversed, along with premium tax credits for health plans under the Affordable Care Act – the signature Barack Obama achievement and constant Republican target – extended, funding to public media outlets like PBS and NPR restored, and a prohibition on Trump’s backdoor attempts to cut foreign aid.
But it is also about standing up to a president whom they see as uniquely dangerous, at a time when he may be especially vulnerable. Trump’s approval ratings are well underwater, lower than even Joe Biden’s at this point in his term. Inflation has not been quelled in the way the president promised it would, while the job market is looking shaky. And the issue of free speech – dominated in recent years by Republicans who have railed against “cancel culture” – appears up for grabs by Democrats, after Trump and his officials demonized those who did not toe their line on Charlie Kirk, the murdered conservative activist.
“People are going to get hurt by a shutdown, but they’re also going to get hurt if their premiums go up by 75% when everything else is going up, the cost of car repairs, the cost of food, the cost of school supplies,” the Connecticut senator Chris Murphy said. “And people are going to get hurt by a government that’s … lawless, because if you can’t speak your mind in this country without repercussions, that comes with a cost as well.”
You can read the rest of Chris’s analysis here:
With the Senate set to leave this afternoon and still be gone tomorrow to observe Yom Kippur, the government shutdown will last until at least Friday (though likely longer, as a funding compromise hasn’t yet materialised). Voting is expected to continue on Friday and Saturday. The House, meanwhile, won’t return until next week.
After weeks of threats from both sides and negotiations that went nowhere, the US is once again experiencing a government shutdown. For this week’s edition of our excellent Politics Weekly America podcast, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Marianna Sotomayor, a congressional reporter at the Washington Post, to look at who should take the blame, who suffers, and who will blink first.
You can listen to the episode here:
