In previous government shutdowns, federal employees were furloughed and not paid during it but when the shutdown ended, they were brought back and given their back pay. This time Trump first said that they may not get any back pay and then upped the ante by saying that he will begin firing them. He and the Republicans seem to think that this will put pressure on the Democrats to acquiesce to their demand to approve a short-term spending bill that will result in cutting health care subsidies under Obamacare that made health insurance premiums more affordable.
Over the weekend, people started getting fired. It seems like the first firings are targeting health care workers and had been planned even before the shutdown.
Dozens of CDC employees were notified late Friday night that they were being terminated, according to several former and current CDC officials and employees.
The agency’s Washington office was terminated, as well as employees in the Global Health Center and the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, according to a current CDC official and a former administration official with direct knowledge of the reduction-in-force notices.
…At least some officers in the Epidemic Intelligence Service were dismissed, according to the CDC official and a separate former agency employee with knowledge of the terminations. The EIS officers are nicknamed “disease detectives” because they are frequently charged with investigating outbreaks and are part of a storied CDC training program.
…Leaders in the agency’s Public Health Infrastructure Center also received notices, as well as the employees in the Office of Science, the CDC official said. A second former administration official confirmed that some leadership in the PHIC office had been terminated.
…The Department of Health and Human Services began laying off between 1,100 and 1,200 employees on Friday, according to a court document the Trump administration filed late in the day.
…Along with HHS, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Education and the Department of Housing and Urban Development had the largest number of terminated employees, according to the court document.
But the usually pusillanimous Democratic leadership is holding firm so far, after getting blasted for caving during the previous shutdown threat.
“Let’s be blunt: nobody’s forcing Trump and Vought to do this,” Schumer said in a statement. “They don’t have to do it; they want to. They’re callously choosing to hurt people – the workers who protect our country, inspect our food, respond when disasters strike. This is deliberate chaos.”
…Democrats are maximizing the leverage they have in the upper chamber by refusing to reopen the government until premium tax credits for Affordable Care Act health plans are extended into next year. They also want cuts to the Medicaid program for poor and disabled Americans reversed, funding to public media outlets such as PBS and NPR restored and Donald Trump’s use of “pocket rescissions” to slash spending curbed.
…“The Democrats, I think, have taken in the blowback, have understood where their folks want them to go, and are actually taking it and fighting back. And it’s a sight to see. It’s a welcome strategic shift,” Ezra Levin, co-executive director of progressive organizing group Indivisible, said.
In March, Schumer opted to work with Republicans on keeping the government open, prompting Indivisible to call for him to step aside as minority leader. Months later, Levin says his group is coordinating with Schumer’s office on actions to support Democratic lawmakers as the shutdown wears on, and believes the party should not compromise on its demands.
Not only are Democrats’ demands “wildly popular”, Republicans are not to be trusted to honor any agreement, he said. Trump and his allies in Congress have made clear their interest in rescissions packages, which can be passed on a party-line vote, to cut spending approved with bipartisan support. After passing one in July that clawed back $9bn in funding for public media and foreign aid, Johnson said he is considering putting together another.
…“We’ve got the goods. We are fighting for popular things. The Republicans are closing rural hospitals, increasing costs and giving a lawless administration more power to do what it wants. That’s a losing hand, and we want to see Democrats fight back.”
Trump and the Republicans simply cannot be trusted to honor any agreement. The only language they understand is force..
The people implementing these policies are wealthy and represent the wealthy who can afford to buy whatever health care they may need for themselves. Hence they think that measures that improve public health in general can be terminated without harming them or their clan. But good public health infrastructure protects rich and poor alike, just as mass vaccinations also protect the unvaccinated by reducing the chances that they will encounter an infected person.
But these people do not care. They are so ideologically blinkered in their determination to destroy any government services that do not benefit them that future negative consequences are ignored.
The only language they understand is force.
They seem fairly fluent in money. (Not in functional economics, but in tangible gimme!)
I’m astounded. Has the party of hand-wringing and capitulation really grown a spine?
I wonder if eventually we’ll end up at a point where the US doesn’t actually break up, but the Federal Government doesn’t actually do anything? Other than to collect tax dollars in order to prop up a massive but largely useless military and to provide giveaways to useless rich people, some of who aren’t Americans, leaving everything else to the states? Boy will that be “fun”.
I’m astounded that the US budget process is so fragile. The only time in 125 years that anything like the semi-regular US government shutdowns has happened in Australian federal government was in 1975. The opposition Senate majority refused to put the government’s Supply Bills (the bills that permit the government to spend money in the upcoming financial year) to a vote. Before the federal administration shut down, the Governor-General dismissed the government and installed the opposition leader as caretaker Prime Minister, on the condition that Supply be passed, which was done. The Governor-General then dismissed whole federal parliament, and, with the funding of the administration secured, sent them all to face the people.
I know that that mechanism doesn’t exist in the US, but surely there should be some way to prevent political infighting from shutting down the administration.
@2 file thirteen
No. A serious opposition party would threaten not to pass the National Defense Authorization Act, and Democrats always let that pass without a struggle.
See, that is what the US needs in order to start to have a basically functional government -- a representative of the King who can step in when the colonial children prove they can’t be trusted with grown-up responsiblity, send them all to their rooms without any supper, ensure basic functions of government continue, then force an election.
Can you even imagine how much better life would be in the US if some Eton-educated toff with a cottage in the Cotswolds and a castle in Scotland was empowered to simply fire Trump, demand the basics of the budget required to ensure the government functions is passed, then force an election?
@ 6 sonofrojblake
Cool story, bro.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kerr_(governor-general)#Early_life
It’s beside the point anyway. When a deadlock occurred, a “referee” stepped in, made the government functional, and called an election, resolving the deadlock.
The punchline to prl’s story is that the opposition (to the dismissed government) won the election by a landslide. So although the dismissal of the government was extremely controversial at the time, ultimately the people endorsed it.
@ ^
Also, prl’s wider point is this was half a century ago, was a big deal, and has never happened again. Shutdown’s just seem to be accepted in the USA as routine events. Which is insane. Where’s the much-vaunted “checks and balances”.
Until the billionaires are neutralized, by whatever means necessary, nothing will improve. Not our failed constitution, not our healthcare, housing, systemic racism, etc. No progress until they are stopped.
Regarding the US government dysfunction, it is important to note that the USA had over 200 years where government shutdowns were not a problem. What changed was not the system itself but rather the willingness of one party to repeatedly shut down the government to get its way. I’m sure some other countries have a system that might deal with it better, but I suspect that no system will function very well when a majority of people in power want it to fail.
Snowberry @3
Individual states are already taking over responsibilities abandoned by the federal government:
Concerned about federal vaccine policies, states are crafting their own
September 6, 2025
…
Some states are banding together to form regional health coalitions. Oregon, Washington, California and Hawaii have formed the West Coast Health Alliance to coordinate their vaccine recommendations. States in the Northeast are considering a public health collaboration.
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/09/06/nx-s1-5532121/states-vaccine-guidance-washington-oregon-new-mexico
In a country with more privately owned firearms than people, it’s not a question of if the US will break up, but when.
Given that each state’s governor functions as the commander-in-chief of the National Guard within their state, it is only a matter of time before individual states respond to federal military intervention into their affairs with an armed response and groups of states band together to oppose these unconstitutional incursions by the federal government.
An excellent (IMHO) fictional treatment of this is the 2024 movie “Civil War”:
In a dystopian future, four journalists travel across the United States during a nation-wide conflict. While trying to survive, they aim to reach the White House to interview the president before he is overthrown.
Spoiler alert, it has a happy ending.
No budget that does not consider reducing military spending is serious. What we have is members of the War Party who label themselves Democratic and some who label themselves Republican.
They’re mad that some of them want to keep a bigger share of the take scamming the people out of their tax moneys “buying” F-35s? They’re not even really sure why they should be? (and then failing to buy as the price goes up and the production cuts in half because what do you mean we have to deliver an actual functional product, you don’t even make us follow basic accounting principles).
@stephen oberski, 11:
There’s already a term for what you’re talking about, and it already has its own Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_secession
And it’s worth making the point clearly that soft secession is not some speculative political theory -- it’s already happening, from both sides of the aisle, with conservative states explicitly passing Second Amendment sanctuary laws, and Massachusetts already having laws prohibiting state and local law enforcement from helping federal ICE agents nab immigrants. And all this is just the beginning.
Google “soft secession”, and have a guess how much longer the weakened federal “government” of the US can maintain its control.
“Soft secession”? Sounds like a new term for the way things have always been. Show me a time in US history when there weren’t states who felt that the federal government wasn’t doing enough (or was doing too much) and enacted their own laws accordingly. This brings up “states rights”, and that always gives me a headache because it is so abused.
What cracks me up is that I do not believe that most Americans are even aware that we tried a weak federal government with most of the power vested in the states. Look up the Articles of Confederation. It was a complete failure. Our current system was the second attempt, once they realized the Articles were not salvageable.
@Silentbob
And in part, it was a big deal because it had never happened in the previous 74 years, either. The Australian federation dates from 1901, and the dismissal of the Whitlam government was in 1975.
The only similar other dismissal of a government in Australia was the dismissal of the Labor Lang government in New South Wales in 1932. That was also, indirectly, about the government’s ability to fund its operations
Wrong monarch. The one we had at at the time couldn’t have gone to Eton; she was home-schooled. But she did have a castle (actually more a manor than a castle) in Scotland for her summer holidays (and several other posh piles), and she was a proper toff.
Charles went to several different schools, including Geelong Grammar in Australia, but he didn’t go to Eton, either.
The Governor-General that sacked the Whitlam government was recommended for the position by Whitlam (and he was the only recommendation).
@prl: read the first sentence #6 again, and reflect on the significance of the the words “representative of the” mean.
I was referring to some hypothetical comedy stereotype of a senior British diplomat, probably in a plumed pith helmet and white dress uniform. The sort of cove who’d have enough of a stiff upper lip to tolerate having responsibility for making sure the seppos didnt embarrass themselves and, more importantly, us. Sort of chap who’d have gone to Eton or Harrow. Actual monarch’s education is hardly relevant.
Also, it’s (I thought obviously) a *joke*. ffs
In some ways this is one of the advantages of a more Parliamentary system, yes, particularly with not having fixed election dates. If the budget can’t get passed, a new election can get called. Well, strictly speaking (at least here in Canada) the Governor-General dissolves the existing government, asks the next party leader in line if they think they can make a go of it, and if nobody is capable of actually forming a functioning government, then a new election gets called. Some of this was all hammered out as a result of the King-Byng affair… and that affair is also part of why rather than having the Governor-General appointed from England and acting as the direct representative of the crown, modern GGs are appointed from within Canada and act as a structural representative of the crown but without any expectations of actually following England’s edicts.
Really, the big advantage of the modern Constitutional Parliamentary system is that, effectively, the ‘Executive’ branch is not elected and has no ability to make its own rules; they run the day to day things but the concept of an ‘Executive Order’ is a foreign one. The Governor-General has very strictly prescribed forms of power, and the civil service is kept reasonably non-partisan. (Or, in the case of Elections Canada, fairly vehemently non-partisan.)
The system has its flaws, but in some ways the inefficiencies make it harder to just take over.
Not to mention that, in the U.S., the take-over has basically been in the works since Nixon stepped down rather than be impeached, and his staffers started the work that would give Reagan the crowbar he needed to pull things apart, and it took a few generations to widen the cracks enough to break things completely.