Civil Servants Strike: Latest Updates & Protests

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  Sjoerd den Das

  United States correspondent

On day 10 of the shutdown, the Trump administration is doing what it has repeatedly threatened to do in recent weeks. “The layoffs have started,” Budget Office Director Russel Vought wrote in a short message on X shortly before the weekend. Once again, thousands of American civil servants are being laid off.

No one knows where it is anymore. “I was fired once in April, but after a month I was brought back,” says Travis Kinder, who works for the Ministry of Health Care. The official conducts research into autoimmune diseases. “Now my career is at stake again. While the government is in lockdown, our patients’ ailments do not stand still,” he says.

Others have been put out on the street before. “I was laid off in July,” says Michael Duffin. He worked for the American Bureau of Counterterrorism, which was involved in international cooperation to combat terrorism, also together with the Netherlands. “They didn’t believe it fit with the Trump administration’s America First foreign policy.”

Trump wants to reduce the civil service workforce by 300,000 people this year. Friday evening’s layoffs are on top of that. More than 4,000 jobs will disappear at the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Health, among others. “A bully who engages in blackmail,” Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren calls the American president, who previously said he would use the shutdown to fire more civil servants.

“The president of the United States who, for political reasons, wants to inflict as much pain as possible on thousands of people, whose only ‘sin’ is doing their job,” Warren said, standing on the steps of the Senate. “The courts have already concluded that several dismissals are illegal,” fellow senator Chris Van Hollen agrees. “That includes layoffs during the shutdown,” he says.

Van Hollen represents nearby Maryland, home to about 225,000 federal employees. He also believes that Trump is using the dismissals as a means of pressure. “As if they are using civil servants as hostages. It is hypocritical: he wants to keep the government open to provide services. But he wants to fire the people who provide those services.”

Democrats and Republicans are embroiled in an impasse over the budget for the new fiscal year, which started October 1. Without an agreement in Congress, the government may only spend money on ‘essential government services’. Whether they continue working or sit at home, civil servants will not be paid for the time being. Trump does say that he has now found money to pay soldiers their salaries.

Despite their majority, Republicans in the Senate still need a handful of Democrats to pass their budget. The Democrats are digging in their heels and demanding that health insurance subsidies continue. “We will continue to fight,” Warren said, asked whether she would bow to Trump’s pressure. “It’s a fight for the tens of millions of Americans so that they don’t wake up on November 1 and see that their health care premiums have doubled.”

“We’re working hard to reopen the government and make sure you get paid,” Republican Senator Susan Collins shouted to a group of officials in the hallways of the Capitol. She does not want to say more, not even about the layoffs. “We deserve so much better than this, but she just keeps walking,” says official Stephi. “It’s cowardly, they’re abandoning us.”

The effects of the shutdown are now starting to seep far beyond the walls of the Capitol. In several places, air traffic controllers, who are not paid during the shutdown, have called in sick. As a result, air traffic is experiencing more delays. From Sunday, the ‘Smithsonians’, the national museums in the capital, will close their doors until further notice.

Meanwhile, the blame game in full swing: Trump always calls the shutdown the ‘Schumer Shutdown‘, after the leader of the Democrats in the Senate. The Democrats, in turn, point to Trump and the Republican Party. Americans are divided on the question of guilt.

The question is who will blink first in this one staredown: Trump and his Republicans, or the Democrats? “There is nothing to negotiate about,” Republican Party leader John Thune said earlier at a news conference. Yet that remains what the Democrats are aiming for. “The Republicans will have to negotiate, the president has to talk,” says Senator Van Hollen firmly.