Here’s an update on Russ Vought’s “mass layoffs,” following through on the threats he and Trump made in advance of the shutdown. From what I can tell, this seems to be a version of what we described yesterday: a comparatively small number of layoffs aimed mainly at allowing the White House to say it followed through on its threat (call it counter-TACO praxis) and tightly focused on a few agencies or departments President Trump is personally aggrieved at. The most concrete number I’ve seen refers to 4,200 employees across seven departments and agencies. That’s a big deal for the people losing their jobs. It’s also a very small number compared to what we saw in the spring. The New York Post suggests (famous last words, I know) that as many as a third of those layoffs may come from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which has been a focus of Trump’s anger since 2021 when its then-director Chris Krebs disputed Trump’s claims of cyber-election hacking in the 2020 election. Other targeted offices seem tied to clean energy projects and other bêtes noir.
