The government has shut down. But this time is different. The White House has just confirmed that for thousands of federal workers, this will not be a temporary, unpaid vacation. It will be a permanent pink slip.
The administration is using the chaos of a government shutdown to achieve a long-standing and constitutionally explosive goal: the dismantling of the professional, non-partisan civil service. This is not a budget dispute. It is the weaponization of a government shutdown.
Who’s Impacted?
In every past government shutdown, “non-essential” federal employees were placed on furlough. This meant they were sent home without pay, with the full expectation that they would return to their jobs once Congress passed a funding bill.
The Office of Management and Budget, under Director Russ Vought, has now directed federal agencies to begin permanent layoffs. This is a stunning and unprecedented escalation. The targets are the career civil servants – the non-political scientists, experts, and administrators who are responsible for the day-to-day functioning of our government.
Are There Any Surprises?
The biggest surprise is not that the administration wants to purge the federal workforce, but how they are doing it. Using a government shutdown as a mass-firing event is a radical new tactic that attempts to bypass more than a century of constitutional and legal precedent.
For most of our early history, the “spoils system” allowed presidents to fire government workers and replace them with political loyalists. This led to widespread corruption and incompetence. The Pendleton Act of 1883 was a landmark reform that ended this system, creating a professional civil service where employees are hired based on merit and are protected from being fired for political reasons. The administration’s shutdown purge is a direct assault on this 140-year-old guardrail.
What Does It Mean Going Forward?
This is the de facto implementation of “Schedule F” by other means. “Schedule F” is the administration’s well-documented plan to reclassify tens of thousands of career civil servants as at-will employees who can be fired for any reason.
By using a shutdown to execute these layoffs, the administration is attempting to achieve the goal of Schedule F without going through the normal, legally-contested process.
The long-term consequence is the destruction of an independent, professional civil service. It threatens to transform government employment from a career based on expertise into a temporary job based on political loyalty to the party in power.
This would cripple the government’s ability to perform its core, non-partisan functions, from ensuring food safety and air traffic control to managing our national security.
This is no longer a normal political standoff over a budget. The administration has transformed a government shutdown from a temporary crisis of funding into a permanent constitutional crisis of governance. It is using a failure of the legislative process as an opportunity to fundamentally reshape the executive branch – a move with dangerous and lasting consequences for the rule of law and the stability of the republic.