Trump Plans to Stiff Federal Workers Furloughed During Shutdown

A draft White House memo, reported by Axios Tuesday, lays out a plan to stiff federal workers on furlough during the ongoing government shutdown.

The memo reinterprets the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act, or GEFTA, a federal law signed into law by Donald Trump in 2019, amid the longest shutdown in U.S. history.

GEFTA is typically interpreted as guaranteeing furloughed government workers automatic back pay.

But Axios’s Marc Caputo reports that the memo, from the Office of Management and Budget, “argues that GEFTA has been misconstrued or, in the words of one source, is ‘deficient,’” in light of an amendment made nine days after it was signed into law.

The amended law includes language providing that furloughed employees will be paid “subject to the enactment of appropriations Acts ending the [shutdown].”

As interpreted by the White House, this means back pay is not automatic but requires explicit approval by Congress. As Semafor reporter Dave Weigel put it, the White House believes you can simply “not appropriate” the backpay “or appropriate it and impound it.”

“Does this law cover all these furloughed employees automatically? The conventional wisdom is: Yes, it does,” a senior White House official told Axios. “Our view is: No, it doesn’t.”

Legal experts told Axios that interpretation is misguided. “The law here is quite clear,” said Sam Berger, senior fellow at the Center for Policy and Budget Priorities. “The caveat is, if you follow the law.”

Notably, the OMB memo contradicts shutdown guidance issued by Office of Personnel Management last month.

The guidance, which was updated on September 28, says that employees who are furloughed will get paid. “After the lapse in appropriations has ended, employees who were furloughed as the result of the lapse will receive retroactive pay for those furlough periods,” the document states. “Retroactive pay will be provided on the earliest date possible after the lapse ends, regardless of scheduled pay dates.”

The plan comes as the OMB under Russell Vought seizes on the shutdown to try to cull the federal workforce and fulfill Trump’s threat to punish Democrats by “cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”

Democrats have gained an unlikely ally in their fight to extend expiring Affordable Care Act funding: MAGA Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene.

“I was not in Congress when all this Obamacare ‘Affordable Care Act’ bullshit started. I got here in 2021. As a matter of fact, the ACA made health insurance UNAFFORDABLE for my family after it was passed, with skyrocketing premiums higher than our house payment. Let’s just say as nicely as possible, I’m not a fan,” Greene wrote on Monday night. “But I’m going to go against everyone on this issue because when the tax credits expire this year my own adult children’s insurance premiums for 2026 are going to DOUBLE, along with all the wonderful families and hard-working people in my district.

“And I’m absolutely disgusted that health insurance premiums will DOUBLE if the tax credits expire this year. Also, I think health insurance and all insurance is a scam, just be clear!” Greene continued. “Not a single Republican in leadership talked to us about this or has given us a plan to help Americans deal with their health insurance premiums DOUBLING!!!”

It isn’t just Greene’s adult children who will be slammed by raising premium costs if tax credits aren’t extended. Millions of Americans will have to fork over thousands of additional dollars to make sure they can get basic, often lifesaving care in this country if the Obamacare subsidies expire. Greene joins Representative Thomas Massie as the highest-profile GOPers to criticize the shutdown, as Massie called the shutdown a distraction to avoid voting on the Jeffrey Epstein files.

“Our country sent $30 billion to Israel in 2024 alone killing countless innocent children and sent HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS to Ukraine in the past few years,” Greene added in her statement Monday. “By the way, I voted NO to all of that murder! America has funded the Ukrainian government, Ukrainian pensions, and Ukrainian businesses during this entire stupid war that America should have nothing to do with.

“All our country does is fund foreign countries and foreign wars, and never does anything to help the American people!!! It is absolutely shameful, disgusting, and traitorous, that our laws and policies screw the American people so much that the government is shut down right now fighting over basic issues like this.… You don’t HATE your government enough.”

This kind of talk from Greene should make Democrats feel more confident in holding out on the shutdown while allowing Republicans to gradually tear each other apart from within.

President Donald Trump’s administration has been desperate to cast blame for the government shutdown onto Democrats, but one House Republican is calling out House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Representative Thomas Massie claimed on X that the real reason Congress isn’t in session is because Johnson hopes to fend off a floor vote to release the government’s complete files on Jeffrey Epstein.

“The government is shutdown, but the House refuses to go back in session. Why are we in recess? Because the day we go back into session, I have 218 votes for the discharge petition to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files,” Massie wrote on X Sunday afternoon, adding that Johnson “doesn’t want that to be the news.”

The following day, the Kentucky Republican responded to Johnson’s comments on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, where the speaker claimed that he was in favor of “maximum disclosure” of the so-called Epstein files. “I want every page of this out,” Johnson said Monday morning, while insisting that Trump couldn’t possibly be implicated by the materials.

But Massie wasn’t convinced. “Contrary to what he says, @SpeakerJohnson is doing everything he can, including delaying the swearing in of the most recently elected member of Congress and spreading misinformation about the legislation, to block a vote in Congress on legislation to release the Epstein files,” he wrote Monday afternoon.

As the shutdown deadline loomed last week, Johnson canceled votes in order to pressure Senate Democrats into acceding to a Republican stopgap funding measure, and postponed the swearing-in of Democratic Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, who is poised to provide the deciding signature on Massie and Democratic Representative Ro Khanna’s petition for a vote. (Notably, the Louisiana Republican has previously sworn in special election winners during pro forma sessions, but he has refused to do so with Grijalva.)

Other Republicans who signed Massie’s petition didn’t seem quite on the same page as their contrarian counterpart. Last week, Representative Nancy Mace said that she’d refuse to take her paycheck during the so-called “Schumer Shutdown,” while Representative Lauren Boebert said the whole thing was a ploy by Democrats so they’d have something to write in their fundraising emails. Six days into the shutdown, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene didn’t seem to have a clue what the stakes of closing the government actually were.

The Trump administration is continuing to pretend as if the January 6 insurrection never happened.

“When in our history have we tolerated unlawful riots and assemblies night after night around FBI buildings, or ATF buildings, or DEA buildings?” Trump adviser Stephen Miller said Monday on CNN, referring to protesters at ICE facilities in Chicago and Portland. “This is the textbook definition of domestic terrorism!”

If Miller’s definition of domestic terrorism is “unlawful riots and assemblies” at government buildings, then the insurrection his boss started absolutely qualifies.

“I kinda remember Trump pardoning a bunch of people for this, many of whom beat up cops and put them in the hospital,” Ron Filipkowski wrote on X. “I think they were yelling something about the Vice President as they stormed the building.”

But the administration that is labeling anything vaguely critical of America as domestic terrorism will never admit that they incited, supported, and pardoned hundreds of domestic terrorists—even as virtually all of it was caught on camera.

“We’re drawing a blank, let us get back to you Stephen,” the House Homeland Security Committee Democrats wrote in response to Miller’s ridiculous question. They attached one of the many images of January 6 insurrectionists breaking into the Capitol Building.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday lashed out at a federal judge and then the press in order to deflect from a question about the Trump administration’s effort to deploy the National Guard to Portland, Oregon, over the objections of local officials.

Over the weekend, U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut temporarily blocked the National Guard’s deployment to Portland. While Donald Trump hysterically claims the city is “under siege from attack by Antifa,” the Trump-appointed judge wrote that the president’s assessment that conditions in the city warrant National Guard deployment is “simply untethered to the facts.”

Given Immergut’s ruling, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Leavitt a straightforward question: “Which local officials in Portland have said that the National Guard is needed there?”

Leavitt dodged the question by attacking Immergut’s ruling. “With all due respect to that judge, I think her opinion is untethered in reality and in the law,” the press secretary said. “The president is using his authority as commander-in-chief, U.S. Code [Section] 12406, which clearly states that the president has the right to call up the National Guard in cases where he deems it’s appropriate.”

The statute to which Leavitt referred does not allow the deployment of the National Guard whenever the president “deems it’s appropriate,” but rather to “repel” an “invasion,” “suppress” a “rebellion,” or execute laws that he is unable to “with the regular forces”—criteria that Immergut ruled were not met in Portland (hence her point about the untetheredness of his decision).

Having received no answer from Leavitt, Collins pressed on: “But no local officials that you can point to that have said we need the National Guard?” she asked, citing her recent interview with Portland Police Chief Bob Day, who told her the federal government’s descriptions of conditions in Portland are “not lining up” with reality.

“I would encourage you as a reporter to go on the ground and to take a look for yourself,” Leavitt said, urging Collins to cover the “anarchy” that purportedly grips the city “night after night.”

Collins again mentioned the insights of local officials, to which Leavitt said, “Yeah, but you’re probably talking to partisan Democrat officials who are opposed to everything this president does.”

Portland’s police chief, of course, is a nonpartisan official.