By JOHN LESLIE
At midnight on Sept. 30, the U.S. government shut down after Republicans and Democrats failed to reach agreement on a short-term spending plan. As a consequence, there is a looming danger that the shutdown will lead to a series of service cuts and permanent layoffs of federal workers that go far beyond what the administration has already carried out. A memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)indicates agencies are directed to “use this opportunity to consider reduction in force (RIF) notices for all employees in programs, projects, or activities.” Conditions in which layoffs could take place include the consideration that they “are not consistent with the president’s priorities.”
During budget negotiations, the Democrats were holding out for the extension of the temporary tax credits under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which were put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic and extended through 2025 by the Inflation Reduction Act. Without the extension of these subsidies, 22 million ACA enrollees could see a sharp increase in their premiums.
Prior to the shutdown, GOP leaders claimed that the Democrats were holding up a deal in order to give health insurance to “illegal aliens.” Trump posted a fake and incredibly racist AI-generated video on X of Senate Minority Leader Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries.
According to KFF, “If Congress extends enhanced premium tax credits, subsidized enrollees would save $1,016 in premium payments over the year in 2026 on average. In other words, expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits is estimated to more than double what subsidized enrollees currently pay annually for premiums—a 114% increase from an average of $888 in 2025 to $1,904 in 2026. (The average premium payment net of tax credits among subsidized enrollees held steady at $888 annually in 2024 and 2025 due to the enhanced premium tax credits).”
The result of soaring premiums could be catastrophic. ”Some people will need to drop their insurance all together, but households with someone with a chronic illness will have to pay those big, big increases,” said Rohit Chopra, former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
All of this is on top of the huge cuts in Medicaid under the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB) and changes to ACA rules under Trump, including shortening the open enrollment period, restrictions on special enrollment periods, and extra monthly fees levied on auto-enrollees who don’t actively re-verify their eligibility.
The OBBB also changed the rules for ACA eligibility. Beginning in 2027, only certain groups will be eligible for subsidized health insurance through the ACA marketplaces; these are U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents (LPRs) (green card holders), Cuban and Haitian entrants, and migrants from Compact of Free Association (COFA) nations, including the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Excluded from the marketplaces are a group of legal immigrants—refugees and asylum holders who do not have a green card, recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), persons with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), humanitarian parolees, and holders of certain work visas. According to the KFF, this “will result in about 1.4 million lawfully present immigrants becoming uninsured.”
We should note that although congressional Democrats have chosen to fight on the question of cuts in health-care benefits, they have offered no opposition to the stupendous amount of government funding given to the military, which amounts to over 13% of the budget. In June, Trump requested $961.6 billion for the Department of Defense in 2026, while the House passed a bill for $831.5 billion in discretionary funding for the military, and the Senate approved a bill for $852 billion. These figures are almost 10 times the amount ($95 billion) that has been budgeted for the Department of Health and Human Services in 2026.
Jobs and services on the chopping block
Some essential services will continue during the shutdown, with Transportation Security Administration staff and air traffic controllers continuing to work. Social Security checks will still be issued, but hundreds of thousands of federal workers across multiple agencies have been furloughed. Furloughed employees are considered to be on “non-duty, non-pay status” but will receive back pay at a later time, according to a 2019 law; previously, furloughed employees were not guaranteed back pay. Those deemed “essential” must continue to work without pay until the shutdown ends.
According to Politico, “A shutdown now presents him [Trump] and his budget chief, Russ Vought—ever eager to test the limits of executive authority—with a fresh means of wielding even more control over the federal workforce and spending. Last week, the Office of Management and Budget directed agencies to develop plans for firing employees if a shutdown happened.” Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), is one of the authors of the far right Project 2025.
In response to Vought’s directive, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees AFSCME) and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) filed a lawsuit challenging these threats.
AFSCME President Lee Saunders said, “The Trump administration is once again breaking the law to push its extreme Project 2025 agenda, illegally targeting federal workers with threats of mass firings due to the federal government shutdown. … If these mass firings take place, the people who keep our skies safe for travel, our food supply secure, and our communities protected will lose their jobs. We will do everything possible to defend these AFSCME members and their fellow workers from an administration hell-bent on stripping away their collective bargaining rights and jobs.”
Alissa Tafti, co-executive director of the Federal Unionist Network, said, “We’ve known for some time that this administration wants massive RIFs (reductions in force). This is not new. … What is new is using a shutdown as a threat to pressure Congress to pass a budget that impacts our most vulnerable, including seniors, rural communities, hungry children and cuts out access to healthcare for millions of Americans.”
Indeed, Trump may try to use the shutdown as the pretext for massive spending and service cuts, federal workforce restructuring, and retribution against political opponents. According to the Associated Press, “The Office of Management and Budget announced it was putting on hold roughly $18 billion of infrastructure funds for New York’s subway and Hudson Tunnel projects—in the hometown of the Democratic leaders of the U.S. House and Senate.” Trump praised Vought, saying, “He can trim the budget to a level that you couldn’t do any other way.”
Coupled with anti-DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) measures, the firing of federal workers will disproportionately affect women and Black workers, and the ripple effect in the economy from the loss of secure employment could be catastrophic for communities. For decades, government jobs have offered Black working-class people a stable path to a middle-class income. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 300,000 Black women have left the workforce since Donald Trump’s return to office in January 2025.
Economists and researchers attribute these job losses to a combination of federal workforce cuts, elimination of DEI initiatives, and a broader economic slowdown. A round of mass layoffs in the public sector will only exacerbate this trend. This is on top of previous mass job losses during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, when unemployment rates for Black women reached 16.5%, the highest of any demographic group.
According to Forbes, “Federal job cuts are disproportionately impacting women of all ages and career stages. The Trump administration projects a reduction of 300,000 federal jobs this year, comprising nearly 12.5% of the workforce, according to press statements by Office of Personnel Management director Scott Kupor. Women represent roughly half of federal employees and have higher representation in the agencies targeted for cuts. These administrative actions threaten not only women’s jobs but also their career growth, retirement security and financial stability.”
Building opposition to Trump’s cuts
Trump’s attack on public-sector unions is a prelude to an all-out attack on the unions as a whole. Some union leaders, like the Teamsters’ Sean O’Brien, think they have a seat at Trump’s table, but they are on borrowed time. Not since Reagan’s anti-union onslaught in the 1980s has there been a federal attack on the unions on this scale. According to the Economic Policy Institute, “Trump has hurt working people and the economy [in] over 100 ways. From his attacks on workers’ rights to his chaotic implementation of historically high tariffs, and his dismantling of critical federal agencies and the programs they administer, Trump’s actions have left workers with fewer rights and have put the U.S. economy on a path toward an almost certain recession.”
Since Trump’s ascension to his second term, the union leaderships and the Democratic Party establishment have been criminally ineffective. In some cases, the lesson Democrats have drawn from their 2024 defeat is that the party needs to move even further right or abandon trans people in a quest for votes. Likewise, in 2024, the Democrats tacked right on the immigration issue, arguing that they could carry out deportations more humanely. In a nutshell, the Democrats would rather compromise with Trumpism than risk angering their capitalist paymasters.
We also need to reinvigorate the movement for a national health-care system that covers all people. The ACA, which was passed as a “compromise” during the Obama administration, intentionally left aside the question of single-payer health care, leaving working people at the mercy of predatory insurance companies.
The alternative for workers and oppressed people is an independent, democratically organized mass movement, the mobilization of the unions at workplaces and in the streets, and the mass defense of democratic rights. The capitalist courts and politicians won’t save us. We hold the potential power to completely reshape society in the interests of the oppressed and exploited. In part, this means building a party of our own, a working-class party that fights for us every day.
It also means building a new class-struggle leadership in our unions. We need working-class methods of struggle—including strikes, mass marches, and community self-defense against far right attacks.
In 1981, in response to Reagan’s union busting, the unions and their allies organized a Solidarity Day march that brought 500,000 working people to the streets of the nation’s capital. In 1991, Solidarity Day Two brought hundreds of thousands into the streets in the wake of the Gulf War to demand workers’ rights, jobs, education, and healthcare.
We need another Solidarity Day march on Washington today to demand:
- No cuts of federal services; no layoffs!
- Stop union busting!
- Stop attacks on democratic rights!
- Defend immigrant communities! Papers for all!
- Defend LGBTQ rights! Defend transgender people!
- Jobs, education, and health care for all!
- Halt Trump’s march towards authoritarianism!
