An unknown number of federal health employees received termination notifications Friday afternoon as part of a mass reduction in force by the Trump administration that senior officials and federal employment lawyers say is almost certainly illegal.
The Department of Health and Human Services has taken heavy hits since Trump came to office. Early in the year, the Trump administration pushed out 10,000 employees through early retirements, deferred resignations, and other efforts while laying off 10,000 more, slashing the HHS workforce from 82,000 to 62,000 in all. In the current government shutdown—which hinges on a dispute over Affordable Care Act tax credits that 80 percent of Americans support—more than 32,000 HHS employees are furloughed.
In an emailed statement to Ars Technica, HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon said that HHS employees "across multiple divisions" have received termination notices.
HHS did not respond to questions asking about the number of employees being terminated or their agencies. But Nixon said that "all HHS employees receiving reduction-in-force notices were designated non-essential by their respective divisions."
Nixon's statement said the terminations are "a direct consequence of the Democrat-led government shutdown." In the funding dispute that led to the shutdown, Democrats are pushing for an extension of the popular ACA tax credits that are otherwise set to expire at the end of the year. Nixon also blamed the Biden administration for turning HHS into a "bloated bureaucracy, growing its budget by 38 percent and its workforce by 17 percent."
Questionable cull
Today's layoffs are the work of White House Budget Director Russell Vought, a lead creator of the Project 2025 playbook, which planned a massive reduction in the federal workforce. In a post on X earlier today, Vought announced that the terminations "have begun."
But as The Washington Post has previously reported, senior government officials have warned that Vought's layoffs amid a shutdown are likely illegal, running afoul of the Antideficiency Act. The law forbids the government from incurring new expenses during a shutdown, and the process of laying employees off—which includes severance packages—does just that.
Federal employment lawyers told the Post that the move is almost certainly illegal for a second reason: Under federal regulations, a shutdown-driven lapse in funding does not count as one of the reasons federal employees can be terminated.
Last week, the American Federation of Government Employees and other unions representing federal workers filed a lawsuit over threats that the Trump administration would try to lay off workers during the shutdown.
In a statement today, AFGE National President Everett Kelley said, "It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country."
"AFGE is currently challenging President Trump’s illegal, unprecedented abuse of power, and we will not stop fighting until every reduction-in-force notice is rescinded," Kelley said.
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