Federal Workers Might Not Know They’ve Been Fired Thanks to Shutdown

President Donald Trump’s administration announced Friday that the government initiated sweeping layoffs of furloughed federal employees—but they might have some trouble actually delivering termination notices amid the government shutdown.

White House budget director Russell Vought announced that the reductions in force were finally underway, after he’d warned federal agencies to prepare for mass layoffs as means to force Democrats to approve a stopgap funding measure.

But federal employees sent home on furlough are typically barred from accessing their email accounts, except for in limited cases, CNN reported Friday. The Antideficiency Act—the same law that places some constraints on whether Trump can actually fire federal workers during a shutdown—bars federal employees from doing any work during the shutdown.

One employee at the Department of Agriculture suggested this could delay workers receiving termination notices. “So I guess we won’t find out we’re laid off until after the shutdown ends?” the person told CNN.

Trump administration officials said that employees would also be notified by mail, and that furloughed employees were permitted to use government-issued equipment to check for updates on the reductions in force. So, rather than waiting indefinitely with an axe over their heads, they may know in just a few days, as USPS has not been affected by the shutdown.

Responding to the announcement that layoffs were underway, the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 820,000 government workers, wrote on X, “The lawsuit has been filed.”

The Trump administration’s approval of a Qatari air force base in Idaho isn’t popular with either of America’s political parties.

Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the forthcoming Qatari Emiri Air Force facility in America’s heartland Friday morning, thanking the Middle Eastern nation for playing a “core part” in negotiating the ceasefire between Israel and Palestine. Mountain Home Air Force Base will host Qatari F-15 fighter jets and pilots, and allow Qatari forces alongside American troops for F-15 pilot training.

The move, which stands in stark contrast to the president’s “America first” agenda, seriously rattled some of Donald Trump’s most outspoken supporters.

“Never thought I’d see Republicans give terror financing Muslims from Qatar a MILITARY BASE on US soil so they can murder Americans,” posted far-right influencer Laura Loomer, who has operated as Trump’s informal “loyalty enforcer” since August. “I don’t think I’ll be voting in 2026. I cannot in good conscience make any excuses for the harboring of jihadis.”

“This is where I draw the line,” she wrote.

Other conservatives were left bewildered by the seemingly nonsensical decision.

“What’s the strategic rationale for this? Either ours or Qatar’s?” posted the National Review’s Noah Rothman. “You could rattle off all the problems/risks we’re inviting easily. But I have no idea what the steelman case for this would be? I’m sure we don’t need to import any more Qatari covert assets into this country.”

And still others pointed out the inconsistent hypocrisy of the administration’s policies.

“Joe Biden was criticized for a Chinese balloon flying over our airspace,” wrote GOP consultant Mike Madrid. “They’re giving Qatar an entire f’ing air base.”

Dan Caldwell, who was forced out of the DOD during Hegseth’s Signalgate disaster, wrote on X that the joint air force operation was being blown out of proportion.

“The freak out around this is of course totally unwarranted since this is actually a pretty common practice with countries that buy and operate a lot of U.S. military aircraft. Singapore has a similar facility and detachment for its F-15 training unit at this very same airbase,” Caldwell said.

But even beyond the Air Force base, Qatar appears to have bought itself a very sweet spot in Trumpworld. Just months ago, Qatar solidified a deal with the Trump Organization to build a Trump-branded golf course and a beachside project as part of a $5.5 billion development project. The tiny nation also bestowed a wildly controversial super luxury jumbo jet on to Trump, all in an apparent attempt to shore up its relationship with the U.S.’s notoriously flighty leader.

Those transactions began to pay off earlier this month, when Trump signed an executive order that pledged to give the tiny, energy-rich, non-NATO ally the same level of protection from the U.S. as some of America’s most powerful allies.

Virginia Republican gubernatorial hopeful Winsome Earle-Sears seems to have a very loose definition of what is and what is not discrimination. 

Earle-Sears and Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger got into a back-and-forth exchange about transgender people and bathrooms during the Virginia gubernatorial debate on Thursday, before moving on to Earle-Sears’s record on discrimination. 

“My opponent was asked about her record of discrimination,” Spanberger began. “And importantly, my opponent has previously said that she does not think that gay couples should be allowed to marry—” 

“That’s not discrimination!” Earles-Sears interrupted defensively. 

“She is quote unquote ‘morally opposed’ to same sex marriage—”

“That’s not discrimination!” Earles-Sears interrupted again. 

“My opponent has also previously said that she thinks it’s OK for someone to be fired from their job for being gay, that is discrimination—” 

“That’s not discrimination, nooo,” Earles-Sears said yet again.

Earles-Sears did not immediately respond to Spanberger’s examples, instead accusing her of wanting to defund the police. 

If being “morally opposed” to gay marriage and supporting firing people for their sexual orientation isn’t discrimination, what is? 

Sears has been a vocal right-wing firebrand long before she joined Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin as his lieutenant governor. The state’s first Black lieutenant governor has suggested it’s time to move on from slavery, supported making abortions illegal at six weeks and threatened violence against reproductive rights activists, held an assault rifle in her 2021 campaign posters, and thinks “critical race theory” creates “morale problems,” among other things. She and Spanberger are currently fairly close in the race for Virginia’s gubernatorial seat, as The Decision Desk has Spanberger at 51 percent and Earles-Sears at 44 percent.   

The election is on November 4.  

Russell Vought, the White House budget director, announced that the administration has begun firing federal workers en masse.

Vought warned last week that “consequential” layoffs were forthcoming amid the ongoing government shutdown. On Friday, he tweeted, “The RIFs have begun,” referring to “reductions in force.”

Vought, as anticipated, is now using the government shutdown to cull the federal workforce, fulfilling Trump’s recent vow to cut “vast numbers of people out,” as well as slash programs that he says Democrats “like.”

An unnamed White House official told MSNBC’s Vaughn Hillyard, “We expect thousands of people to unfortunately be laid off due to the government shutdown.” CNN’s Alayna Treene reports that a White House official said that fired workers have begun receiving notices and, “It will be substantial.”

Agencies poised to be affected, according to Politico, include the Departments of the Interior, Treasury, Commerce, Education, Energy, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Reacting to Vought’s four-word social media announcement, the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 820,000 government workers, shot back: “The lawsuit has been filed.” The AFL-CIO told Vought, “America’s unions will see you in court.”

This story has been updated.

President Donald Trump didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize Friday—but that isn’t stopping him from trying to make the prestigious award all about himself.

The president took to Truth Social to share a video of Russian President Vladimir Putin criticizing past winners and praising Trump’s peace efforts on long-standing crises.

“There have been cases where the committee has awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to people who have done nothing for peace,” Putin said, according to the AP’s translation. “A person comes, good or bad, and [gets it] in a month, in two months, boom. For what? He didn’t do anything at all. In my view, these decisions have done enormous damage to the prestige of this prize.

“[Trump’s] really doing a lot to resolve such complex crises that have lasted for years and even decades,” Putin added. The Kremlin had announced earlier Friday that it would support Trump’s bid for a peace prize—but clearly Moscow’s efforts were too little, too late.

“Thank you to president Putin!” Trump wrote when resharing the video.

Trump also shared an X post from this year’s winner, María Corina Machado, a pro-democracy activist and the leader of the opposition party in Venezuela, where she partially dedicated her win to Trump for supporting Venezuela.

“We are on the threshold of victory and today, more than ever, we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world as our principal allies to achieve Freedom and democracy,” Machado wrote on X. “I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!”

Trump then proceeded to go back to posting about his efforts to prosecute his political enemies, namely New York Attorney General Letitia James, who was indicted Thursday for mortgage fraud by the president’s (seemingly incompetent) former lawyer who was recently installed as a prosecutor in Virginia.

While Trump seemed to avoid having a total temper tantrum (for now, but he’s speaking late Friday afternoon), the White House didn’t spare fighting words.

In announcing the award Friday morning, the Nobel Committee warned about the dangers of unchecked leaders. “When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,” the committee said.

Republican Speaker Mike Johnson thinks the “No Kings” rally planned for next week is a “Hate America” rally meant to extend the government shutdown—something someone who has never been to a “No Kings” event would say. 

“We’re so angry about it. I’m a very patient guy, but I have had it with these people. They’re playing games with real people’s lives,” Johnson said Friday morning on Fox News, in his usual monotone voice. “The theory we have right now: They have a ‘Hate America’ rally that’s scheduled for October 18 on the National Mall. It’s all the pro-Hamas wing and the antifa people, they’re all coming out. Some of the House Democrats are selling T-shirts for the event. It’s being told to us that they won’t be able to reopen the government until after that rally, ’cuz they can’t face their rabid base. This is serious business hurting real people.… I’m beyond words.” 

The “No Kings” rally is a nationwide action with a very simple goal: oppose the blatantly authoritarian tilt of the Trump administration. The protests are supported by groups like the Human Rights Campaign, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the College Democrats of America, among others. The rallies have been very tame, and I have run into veterans, federal employees, and mostly older, liberal white people who love America but hate what President Trump is doing. No one there is particularly close to being pro-Hamas, and antifa (whoever that is) would likely consider the action to be insufficiently leftist for them. 

But Johnson can say ridiculous things like this because his party can’t fathom that not everyone who opposes them is some militant anarchist with a Molotov cocktail locked and loaded. The government is shut down because Republicans refuse to negotiate with Democrats on extending health care subsidies millions of Americans rely on, not because Democrats want antifa to destroy the government.  

Bari Weiss must have pulled a lot of management inspiration from the Department of Government Efficiency.

The new editor in chief of CBS News issued a memo to staff Friday, ordering them to send her memos by Tuesday denoting how they spend their workdays and what they believe could be improved.

“By the end of day Tuesday, I’d like a memo from each person across our news organization,” Weiss said in a copy of the email obtained by Semafor’s Max Tani. “I’m not looking for a JD or words like synergy. I want to understand how you spend your working hours—and, ideally, what you’ve made (or are making) that you’re most proud of. I’m also interested in hearing your views on what’s working; what’s broken or substandard; and how we can be better.

“Then I’ll use your memo as a discussion guide for when I meet with most of you (ideally, all of you if time permits) in the coming few weeks,” Weiss added.

That strategy is remarkably similar to the one employed by Elon Musk when he ran DOGE. The parallels weren’t lost on CBS staffers, either: One lamented to Status newsletter writer Oliver Darcy, “We just got Elon Musk-ed.”

In February, Musk ordered federal employees across the government to email his office weekly summaries of their achievements. Failure to do so, under Musk’s rule, would be grounds for immediate firing.

The mandate was remarkably unpopular and scantily enforced by agency heads—some of whom butted up against Musk for making demands outside of his purview as a special government employee. The program met its quiet demise in August, when the Trump administration officially axed it—months after Musk was forced out.

Weiss’s version will have her inundated in paperwork. CBS News on its own employs thousands of individuals. A memo from each person on staff would lend itself to a tremendous amount of work.

The anti-woke, pro-Israel grifter became CBS’s newest chief last week. Her far-right, pro-genocide blog, The Free Press, was simultaneously scooped up by CBS’s parent company, Paramount Skydance, for roughly $150 million. It will also be Weiss’s first foray into running a major news operation. The Free Press, by comparison, employed more than 50 people as of last month.

The acquisition—and Weiss’s whopping promotion—mark the beginning of a radical new era for the historically middle-ground, traditional news conglomerate. Weiss is expected to bring a notably right-wing slant to CBS, which has served as the home of some of journalism’s most venerable names, including Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday announced the establishment of a Qatari military installation in Idaho.

Seated beside Qatar’s defense minister, Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Hegseth announced that the United States is “signing a letter of acceptance to build a Qatari Emiri Air Force facility at the Mountain Home Air Base in Idaho.”

The facility, the defense secretary said, “will host a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots to enhance our combined training, increase lethality, interoperability”—though he provided little else by way of detail.

The two officials signed a letter green-lighting the move, after Hegseth praised Qatar for its role in securing a peace deal in Gaza. Notably, the announcement also comes from an administration heavily criticized for corruption involving Qatar, a country the president accused of being a “funder of terrorism” in his first term.

The agreement builds on an existing U.S.-Qatari military relationship. Under a $12 billion deal signed in 2017, the U.S. gave aircraft and U.S.-based training to Qatar. In 2022, it was reported that about 170 Qataris were to be sent to train with F-15s at Idaho’s Mountain Home Air Base, which already hosts Singaporean forces and would be expanded to accommodate the new arrivals.

Representative Mike Simpson, a pro-Trump Republican of Idaho, called the development “fantastic news.” But some proponents of the president’s so-called America First cause disagree.

Laura Loomer, an informal Trump adviser and frequent purveyor of Islamaphobic hysteria, decried the administration’s decision. “What the hell is going on? Why are we trying to train more Muslims how to fly planes on US soil? Didn’t we already learn our lesson?” she wrote, saying it would allow “the Islamic enemy to gain so much ground in our country.”

Energy Secretary Chris Wright and White House Budget Director Russell Vought are reportedly at odds over massive cuts to clean energy projects, Politico reported.

One senior administration official told Politico Thursday night that the White House Office of Management and Budget was annoyed that Energy Department senior staff had prepared a broad list of clean energy projects the agency hoped to target without sharing its contents with the White House. The list was the product of nearly 100 DOE staffers working to identify potential cuts, with a committee of roughly eight making selections and Wright making final determinations, people familiar with the process said.

That senior administration official said there was some friction within factions at the DOE, and that a “Colorado and DOGE crew” that lacked experience in government wasn’t interested in running decisions by the White House. “The tension is between the people who worked in government before and this other team who worked in the private sector and don’t think they need to follow processes or rules and think they can turn things on their heads,” the official told Politico.

Another person with direct knowledge of the discussions told Politico that Wright’s office was ready to drop the ax on a whopping $30 billion in funding awards but was told to wait so that OMB could use the funds as leverage against states.

Cut to last week, when OMB Director Russell Vought—not Wright—declared that the Trump administration would cut $8 billion in lawfully approved funding for energy projects, targeting 16 Democratic-led states. At the same time, a copy of the complete list began to circle around the Capitol, alarming energy advocates and lawmakers, including Republicans whose districts could be affected by the cuts. The fate of the remaining $22 billion, which is mostly earmarked for Republican districts, remains unclear.

Politico reported that the White House had forced Wright’s hand on the timing of the announcement. “Timing of announcements, I don’t control that always, but these decisions are made all in the Energy Department, all based on facts,” Wright told CNN last week.

There seems to be even more infighting at the DOE, but it’s not totally clear why. Two people told Politico that the DOE was looking to oust Undersecretary Preston Griffith Wells III. “It’s toxic af over there,” one person who works with senior DOE staff texted POLITICO. “The boys are fighting.”

But another person said that Wright had a good relationship with Griffith.

Donald Trump did not win the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, so his GOP allies in the House are working to slap together the next best thing: a resolution to get him one.

Speaking with Fox Business Friday morning, Representative Buddy Carter said that (instead of working to end the government shutdown) he and his colleagues were going to file a resolution “today” to honor the president with the Nobel Prize.

“[Donald Trump] deserves the Nobel Peace Prize,” Carter told the network. “That’s why I’m introducing a resolution today for a sense of Congress today that will honor him with the Nobel Peace Prize.

“If need be, we’ll call for a discharge petition on that. I hope we can work with the speaker though and get it on the floor for a vote,” Carter added.

That would imply that congressional Republicans would rather scratch Trump’s back than chip away at their actual jobs, which includes urgent work such as ending the government shutdown, passing appropriation bills, and swearing in Democratic Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva.

But simply asking for one is not how winning the Nobel Peace Prize works. Speaking with reporters on Friday, Norwegian Nobel Committee Chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes explained that Trump’s covetous, multiyear campaign to snag the prize had no impact on the judges’ deliberations.

“In the long history of the Nobel Peace Prize, I think this committee has seen many types of campaign, media attention,” Watne Frydnes said. “We receive thousands and thousands of letters every year of people wanting to say what, for them, leads to peace. This committee sits in a room filled with the portraits of all laureates, and that room is filled with both courage and integrity. So we base only our decision on the work and the will of Alfred Nobel.”

It’s no secret that Trump has pined for the international honor: The ego-driven U.S. president even phoned Norway’s Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg “out of the blue” back in July to inquire about the possibility of acquiring the prize, using tariffs as a cover for their discussion.

Trump has complained for years that his name has not yet been added to the ranks of prize recipients, who span some of the greatest figures of the last century, including Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Theresa, and Malala Yousafzai.

Part of the contention could be that four other U.S. presidents have received the award, including Trump’s political nemesis, former President Barack Obama.

Trump’s obsession with obtaining the prize has led to some odd boasts over the last several months, including that he has resolved eight wars around the globe within the span of his second term. Trump has so far claimed responsibility for peace between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Rwanda, between Cambodia and Thailand, between Israel and Iran, between India and Pakistan, between Serbia and Kosovo, between Egypt and Ethiopia, between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and for “doing the Abraham Accords,” all while complaining about a lack of recognition by the Norway-based judges’ panel.

As Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan pointed out last month, practically all of Trump’s war-solving braggadocio is “demonstrably untrue,” to the extent that several of the listed examples were never even at war.