During the first week of the government’s first shutdown in years, Donald Trump and his allies have often threatened to carry out mass federal layoffs, suggesting they may need to get rid of workers to keep essential services operational. “If this keeps going on, it’ll be substantial. And a lot of those jobs will never come back.”
Many unions representing federal workers have argued that such layoffs would be illegal, preemptively suing the administration, saying that they could not legally carry out the firings while the government is shut down and only operating essential services. Rushab Sanghvi, general counsel of the American Federation of Government Employees, called it “clearly unlawful.”
