President Donald Trump has delivered a pointed message to his critics amid the government shutdown and his renewed threat of impending layoffs for federal workers.
Taking to his social media platform, Truth Social, late Wednesday night, Trump shared an image posted by one of his supporters. The portrait of Trump signing a document in the Oval Office was emblazoned with the statement: “Cry all you want. He’s doing exactly what I hired him for.”
Just moments before the repost, Trump delivered a firm message online, seemingly reaffirming that his Administration intends to seize the shutdown as an opportunity to carry out mass layoffs and reshape the federal workforce.
“Republicans must use this opportunity of Democrat-forced closure to clear out dead wood, waste, and fraud,” Trump stated, before going on to claim that “billions of dollars” could be saved.
The President earlier indicated that Democrats would feel the main brunt of the layoffs, telling reporters in the Oval Office: “We’d be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected, and they’re Democrats. They’re gonna be Democrats.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday that “layoffs are imminent” and that Trump has “directed his cabinet, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is working with agencies to identify where cuts can be made.”
Leavitt said more announcements would be made soon regarding the hits to the federal workforce, which are expected to begin within the next two days.
Read More: Who the Trump Administration Says Is ‘Essential’ in a Shutdown Is Raising Eyebrows
The action of pursuing layoffs is a step away from the standard procedure of furloughing workers until government funds resume. The Trump Administration’s eagerness to pursue further layoffs has received heavy criticism from Democratic lawmakers.
House Democratic Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries referred to the impending layoffs as “cruelty” and pointed to the mass federal dismissals and office shutterings that have already taken place since Trump returned to office.
“These are all the things that the Trump Administration has been doing since January 20,” Jeffries said, seemingly referencing the widespread layoffs and spending cuts led by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), previously overseen by Elon Musk.
DOGE said it cut government spending by $55 billion within the first month of Trump’s second term, but a TIME review of the itemized savings posted on DOGE’s website found it only accounted for about $16 billion in savings.
Meanwhile, in what appears to be a sign of the lapsed communication between Republicans and Democrats, Jeffries also said that he hasn’t heard from the White House since Monday.
The government has been in shutdown—its first in almost seven years—since midnight on Oct. 1, after a bitter stalemate in Congress between the Republicans and Democrats. The political parties are locked in a dispute over spending and enhanced Obamacare subsidies. An eleventh-hour attempt to find common ground failed on Tuesday night when almost all Senate Democrats voted to reject a House-passed Republican bill that would have extended funding until Nov. 21. The bill did not meet the Democrats’ core demand that Affordable Care Act subsidies, set to expire at the end of the year, should be extended, nor did it move to reverse the deep cuts to Medicaid that featured in Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” that was signed into law on July 4.
Read More: Republican and Democratic Lawmakers React to Government Shutdown as Blame Game Ensues
A blame game has ensued in light of the shutdown, with both political parties holding each other responsible for the halt in government activities.
The President and Congress still get paid during a shutdown, but amid concerns over layoffs and the impact on federal workers and everyday Americans, some lawmakers have pledged to forgo their own paychecks in solidarity, until the government is back up and running.
Republican Rep. Ron Estes of Kansas has requested that his salary be put on hold in response to the shutdown, for as long as the government closure lasts.
“Democrats, led by Chuck Schumer, have pushed Congress into another Schumer shutdown. During a government shutdown, members of Congress still receive their paychecks. This is unfair when some federal employees are furloughed and/or don’t receive their paychecks,” Estes said via social media on Wednesday morning, sharing a letter requesting his salary be withheld.
Democratic Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey is also among the lawmakers who will refuse to accept his own salary.
“It’s wrong that the President and Members of Congress get paid during a government shutdown when our military and public servants don’t. I will be refusing my own pay… Government leaders shouldn’t be playing with other people’s chips,” said Kim.
