WASHINGTON — The nation entered Day 2 of the government shutdown on Thursday –– with much attention focused on the Trump administration’s warnings of widespread and potentially permanent layoffs and cuts across Washington and beyond.
President Donald Trump opened the day marveling at the “unprecedented opportunity” he says Democrats in Congress handed him, writing in a post on Truth Social in the morning that he was set to meet with his Office of Management and Budget Chief Russ Vought on Thursday to discuss cuts to “Democrat Agencies.”
”I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent,” the president wrote.
Hours earlier, he said on Truth Social that the GOP must use the shutdown to “to clear out dead wood, waste, and fraud.”
“Billions of Dollars can be saved,” the president declared.
Hundreds of thousands of federal employees are being furloughed as a result of the government’s lights being turned off –– a typical occurrence in a shutdown. Trump’s administration told agencies to prepare to use the shutdown to carry out more permanent mass layoffs, and Press Secretary Leavitt said Wednesday that such firings were “imminent.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., front, with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., right, and House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain, R-Mich., speaks during a news conference at the Capitol, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Holding a press conference Thursday morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., again lamented that almost all Democratic senators rejected the short-term government funding bill – known as a continuing resolution – that Republicans and one Democrat passed in the House earlier this month.
He once again stressed that his short-term funding bill is as “clean” as can be, meaning it aims to keep spending at the current level previously passed by Congress and doesn’t contain tacked-on policies supported by Republicans. Johnson insisted that as a result there is nothing in it that can be negotiated with Democrats.
Asked about the president’s pledge to use the funding lapse to enact layoffs and cuts, Johnson said the president has the power to do so. He made the case that by allowing the government to shutdown, Democrats have “effectively turned off the legislative branch” and handed turned things over to the executive, giving Trump and his budget head the ability to determine how resources are spent.
”This is Chuck Schumer’s decision to hand, as I said in a couple of interviews yesterday, the keys of the kingdom to the president,” Johnson said.
He argued Trump nor Vought want to be in this position – despite the Office of Management and Budget chief calling for massive government reforms in his section of Project 2025, the blueprint of conservative priorities for a second Trump term published by the Heritage Foundation that Trump distanced himself from on the 2024 campaign trail.
”Russ does this reluctantly,” Johnson said, noting House Republicans had a 45-minute phone conference with him on Wednesday. “Russ has to sit down and decide, because he is in charge of that office, which policies, personnel and which programs are essential and which are not. That is not a fun task.”
Democrats – who are arguing that Republicans have created a “healthcare crisis” in the country, particularly through changes to Medicaid in Trump’s signature tax cut bill passed and signed this summer – have largely brushed off the pledges to enact mass layoff and cuts.
They argue the Trump administration and Republicans have already been cutting federal jobs since the president’s first day back in office, particularly pointing to the work of his large-scale government downsizing campaign known as the U.S. DOGE Service.
“These are all things that the Trump administration has been doing since January 20th,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said. “The cruelty is the point.”
Democrats also particularly want subsidies for those with health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act, which have lowered costs for millions of Americans but are set to expire at year’s end, extended in the temporary funding patch. Jeffries is insisting Democrats are ready to engage in bipartisan negotiations with “anyone, at any time, and at any place” to come to a deal to fund the government, but Republicans say they won’t hold conversations on the subsidies until the lights are back on.
“At midnight, Donald Trump and Republicans shut the federal government down because they don’t want to provide health care to working class Americans,” Jeffries said Wednesday.
The OMB head already marked Day 1 of the shutdown by announcing he was putting on hold roughly $18 billion of infrastructure funds for New York City’s subway extension and Hudson Tunnel projects — in the hometown of the Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leaders of the U.S. House and Senate. He also announced cuts to clean energy funding, impacting more than a dozen states.
Despite Trump’s pledge to single out “Democrat Agencies” in his cuts, Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday denied the administration would be “targeting federal agencies based on politics.”
The vice president instead argued that the administration would be prioritizing “essential services,” and they will have to seek other places to “save money,” such as laying people off, so that those can continue.
With the shutdown already underway, the Senate on Wednesday for the third time rejected the House-passed, short-term funding bill that seeks to keep the government’s lights on through mid-November. Two Democrats and one independent who caucuses with Democrats crossed the aisle to support it, while one Republican bucked his party to reject the GOP stopgap bill in a vote tally that mirrored the one that took place ahead of the shutdown deadline Tuesday night.
If the vote stays as is, Republicans would need five additional Democrats to get on board for the bill to pass. Republicans also once again rejected a short-term funding bill that includes changes to healthcare that Democrats have offered as a counter.
The Senate is not expected to hold another vote Thursday in observance of the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.
After that, however, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who joined Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Johnson at the morning’s press conference on Wednesday, said the Republicans’ plan is to hold a vote on their short-term bill again and again “as long as it takes until the Senate passes the House bill.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
