Multiple agencies confirm reductions in force are under way
The Guardian has independently confirmed that reductions in force (RIFs) are under way at the following departments and agencies:
-
Department of Education
-
Department of Health and Human Services
-
Department of Homeland Security (specifically the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency)
-
Department of the Treasury
Certain agencies haven’t immediately responded to the Guardian’s request for comment, but other media outlets have reported layoffs are expected at the following:
-
Environmental Protection Agency
-
Department of Energy
-
Department of the Interior
-
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Key events
-
Closing summary
-
Trump claims that inhaler that costs $645 will be offered at 654% discount
-
Trump got Covid vaccine booster on Friday, and his doctor says he has the heart of a 65-year-old
-
After uproar, Hegseth clarifies that Qatari air force facility in Idaho is not a foreign base
-
Department of Housing and Urban Development confirms layoffs
-
Trump once agains shares his imaginary tale that stores in Portland, Oregon, are all made of plywood
-
Trump claims his threat to ‘obliterate’ Hamas sealed deal to end Gaza war and bring peace ‘to the entire Middle East’
-
Trump starts announcement on drug prices with 2020 election lie, promises impossible 1,000% discounts
-
Trump threatens additional 100% tariff on imports from China, and export controls on software
-
Criminal charges against John Bolton could be filed next week – report
-
Multiple agencies confirm reductions in force are under way
-
HHS confirms layoffs, saying department had become ‘bloated bureaucracy’ under Biden
-
Federal worker union calls mass layoffs during government shutdown ‘disgraceful’
-
Department of Education confirms layoffs will happen
-
White House budget office says layoffs are ‘substantial’
-
Treasury department confirms that RIFs have begun
-
DHS says layoffs will happen at cybersecurity agency
-
Trump to host summit on Gaza with world leaders during Egypt visit – report
-
Here’s a recap of the day so far
-
US government workforce cuts have begun, OMB chief says
-
MIT becomes first university to reject White House offer for special funding treatment
-
National guard troops seen on Memphis streets as Trump faces legal challenges
-
US immigration enforcement using military hardware and tactics on civilians
-
Trump says there is ‘no reason’ to still meet with president Xi, weighing tariff increase
-
First lady says that she has had an ‘open channel’ with Putin regarding displaced Ukrainian children
-
Johnson says House will come back when Senate Democrats ‘turn the lights back on’
-
Johnson holds press conference as shutdown enters tenth day
-
Tariffs caused a Chinese exit from the soybean market, leaving midwestern farmers are waiting for a solution
-
Senate advances annual defense policy bill as shutdown continues
-
Speaker Johnson defends decision to stave off vote on separate bill to keep service members paid throughout shutdown
-
Israeli police preparing for Trump visit on Monday
-
White House says Nobel committee places ‘politics over peace’ as Trump misses out again
-
US to send 200 troops to Israel to support and monitor ceasefire deal, reports say
-
Federal appeals court hears arguments on whether Trump can federalize Oregon national guard
-
Letitia James criminally charged in Trump’s latest effort to punish rivals
Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of another week in the life of the second Trump administration. Here’s what we learned:
-
The nation is the hands of a president in rude health, a 79-year-old with the heart of a 65-year-old, fully immunized against Covid and the flu, according a note from his doctor following his second physical in six months.
-
Donald Trump claimed that an inhaler made by the British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca would soon be available, from the new US government website TrumpRx, at a 654% discount. The math here is unclear.
-
The secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, was forced to issue a clarification on social media, hours after he publicly signed what he called “a letter of acceptance” to build a Qatari air force facility in Idaho. The plan is not to build a foreign military base on US soil, as the former Fox weekend anchor at first seemed to suggest.
-
For at least the third time in recent weeks, the president of the United States publicly stated his firm belief in the entirely imaginary claim that very few stores remain in business in Portland, Oregon, and the few that continue to operate are constructed entirely of plywood, to make them easier to rebuild after serial arson attacks and looting, which are not, in fact, happening.
-
Hours after not winning the Nobel peace prize he had openly campaigned for, Donald Trump said that his threats of violence against Hamas had convinced the Palestinian militants to agree to a deal to exchange Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners and an end to Israel’s US-backed offensive in Gaza.
-
Reigniting his trade war with China, and sending stocks plummeting, Trump announced that, in response to what he called China’s “extraordinarily aggressive position on Trade”, he intends to “impose a Tariff of 100% on China, over and above any Tariff that they are currently paying” starting on 1 November.
Trump claims that inhaler that costs $645 will be offered at 654% discount
At one point during an event on lower drug prices for US consumers on Friday, Donald Trump pointed to a chart in the Oval Office which indicated that an inhaler made by the British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca would soon be available, from the new US government website TrumpRx, at a 654% discount.
No one asked what this could possibly mean, but the math here is exceedingly unclear. As numerous reporters have noted, it is just mathematically impossible to offer a discount of more than 100% of the price on any item, without giving it away for free and providing a payment to the consumer.
According to a White House fact sheet, the drug Bevespi Aerosphere, an inhaler used to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), “will be made available to patients purchasing directly at a discount equal to 654% of the deal price.”
No explanation of the calculation was provided.
Curiously, a letter from Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator, and three colleagues sent last year to AstraZeneca asked why a similar product, the Breztri Aerosphere inhaler, costs $645 in the US but just $49 in the UK.
A visit to the website TrumpRx offered no details, just a promise that it would be in operation in January 2026 and a large photograph of Donald Trump, seated in the Oval Office, apparently during his first term, before the painting of Andrew Jackson was swapped out for one of Ronald Reagan, and a lot of gold trim was added.
Trump got Covid vaccine booster on Friday, and his doctor says he has the heart of a 65-year-old
Shortly before appearing with his vaccine-skeptic health secretary on Friday, Donald Trump was vaccinated against both Covid and the flu, according to a letter from the president’s doctor.
Sean Barbabella, a US Navy captain and osteopathic physician, seemed to suggest that Trump received at least one more vaccine, without specifying against what illness, during his visit to Walter Reed medical center earlier in the day.
The doctor also wrote that Trump underwent an evaluation that included advanced imaging and laboratory testing, but cast the tests as routine and suggested that he is in “exceptional health”.
Unlike in April, when Trump underwent what was described then as “his annual physical examination”, no test results were released.
“His cardiac age – a validated measure of cardiovascular vitality via ECG – was found to be approximately 14 years younger than his chronological age” of 79, the doctor added.
There was no mention of the persistent bruising on his right hand, no update on his chronic venous insufficiency and no word on whether a cognitive test was administered, or passed with flying colors.
After uproar, Hegseth clarifies that Qatari air force facility in Idaho is not a foreign base
The secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, was forced to issue a clarification on social media on Friday evening, hours after he publicly signed what he called “a letter of acceptance” to build a Qatari air force facility in Idaho.
Sitting alongside Qatar’s defense minister, Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman bin Hassan bin Ali al-Thani, at the Pentagon on Friday morning, Hegseth said that the location “will host a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots”.
In the aftermath of the televised event, it was widely reported that the United States had accepted the building of a foreign military base on its territory, which triggered a backlash from Donald Trump’s base, particularly those motivated by the anti-Muslim animus he expressed most vociferously in the run-up to the 2016 election.
Among those most outraged was Trump’s influential outside adviser, the extremist podcaster Laura Loomer, who is notorious for her anti-Muslim racism.
Loomer voiced her objections, laced with virulent Islamophobia, in dozens of posts on the platform X, including one in which she embedded video of Trump, in 2017, calling the nation of Qatar “a funder of terrorism”.
Never thought I’d see Republicans give terror financing Muslims from Qatar a MILITARY BASE on US soil so they can murder Americans.
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. pic.twitter.com/24OdLMw14Y
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) October 10, 2025
Another influential podcaster, Steve Bannon, told Newsweek: “There should never be a military base of a foreign power on the sacred soil of America.”
Bannon was Trump’s chief strategist in 2017 when he implemented his promised Muslim ban by barring entry to the US by citizens of seven nations with Muslim majorities, prompting mass protests at airports.
The uproar over plans to build a Qatari air force facility in Idaho led Hegseth to post what he called an “important clarification” on social media later on Friday. “The US military has a long-standing partnership w/ Qatar, including today’s announced cooperation w/ F-15QA aircraft,” the former Fox weekend anchor installed as defense secretary wrote. “However, to be clear, Qatar will not have their own base in the United States – nor anything like a base. We control the existing base, like we do with all partners.”
Department of Housing and Urban Development confirms layoffs
Shrai Popat
A spokesperson for the Department of Housing and Urban Development has confirmed that layoffs of federal workers are under way during the government shutdown. “HUD is implementing a reduction in force to align our programs with the Administration’s priorities and the appropriations available to the department,” the spokesperson told the Guardian.
Trump once agains shares his imaginary tale that stores in Portland, Oregon, are all made of plywood
For at least the third time in recent weeks, the president of the United States publicly stated his firm belief in the entirely imaginary claim that very few stores remain in business in the thriving city of Portland, Oregon, and the few that continue to operate are constructed entirely of plywood, to make them easier to rebuild after serial arson attacks and looting, which are not, in fact, happening.
“Portland, Oregon, I mean, every time I look at that place, the place is burning down. There’s fires all over the place,” Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, where he made the same wildly false claim last month to justify his desire to deploy federal troops to the city.
“When a store owner, there’s very few of them left, but when a store owner rebuilds his store, they build it out of plywood. They don’t put up storefronts anymore. They just put wood up, because they know it’s going to be ripped down,” the president insisted, as his health secretary, FDA commissioner and Medicare administrator looked on but said nothing.
“And then I hear how wonderful it is. It’s not wonderful, it’s a disaster,” Trump continued, apparently referring to the vision of the city as a fiery hellscape common in rightwing media that he has confused with reality.
The president made the same false claim on Wednesday, during a roundtable with conservative influencers who exaggerate the impact of protests in Portland, and on 25 September, two days before declaring that troops were needed in the “war ravaged” city.
“That’s almost an insurrection, that place,” he concluded, perhaps hinting that he is ready to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy military forces to the city where protesters dancing in inflatable costumes have made a mockery of his claims on multiple nights this week.
Trump claims his threat to ‘obliterate’ Hamas sealed deal to end Gaza war and bring peace ‘to the entire Middle East’
Hours after not winning the Nobel peace prize he had openly campaigned for, Donald Trump said that his threats of violence against Hamas had convinced the Palestinian militants to agree to a deal to exchange Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners and had led to an end to Israel’s US-backed offensive in Gaza.
Trump also continued to make grand claims about the Gaza deal, claiming to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday that it would bring peace “to the entire Middle East”.
Asked what guarantees he had given Hamas to persuade them that Israel will not simply restart its bombing campaign in Gaza once the Israeli hostages have been exchanged for Palestinian prisoners, Trump suggested his own threat to obliterate the militant group had been decisive.
“What did I do, with respect to them? Well, you know, I spoke a little bit tough, and that’s what would happen, you have to speak tough. That’s a tough world, that’s a tough, as they say, neighborhood. And they’re tough people, they’re very tough people. And they’re smart people. They’re good negotiators, you know, they’ve got a lot of things going. They put that to good use, they’re going to be very, very successful,” the president said.
“But they knew the retribution would be tremendous, unsustainable. It would’ve been unsustainable. It would have been complete obliteration, and they didn’t want that. And nobody wants it at this point. They want to get on with, you know, rebuilding the entire Middle East. It’s not only Gaza, it’s going to be the entire Middle East. They’re going to be able to live in peace,” Trump continued.
“Now, we have some little hotspots, but they’re very small, you know the ones I’m talking about,” the president said to the reporter whose question he did not actually address. “They’re very small, they’ll be very easy to put out. Those fires are going to be put out very quickly.”
Trump starts announcement on drug prices with 2020 election lie, promises impossible 1,000% discounts
Donald Trump just started an Oval Office announcement on a deal with the British-based drug maker AstraZeneca, for a “most-favored-nation” drug-pricing model aimed at making prescription medicines more affordable, by boasting that he would have struck the deal sooner, but “we were interrupted by a rigged election”.
Trump went on to repeat the wildly false claim that the discounted prices for American consumers would reduce the price of prescription drugs by up to 1,000%.
As Daniel Dale of CNN has explained: “Cutting drug prices by more than 100% would mean that Americans would get paid to acquire their medications rather than paying for them.” A health economist, Timothy McBride, told the network Trump’s claims are “just not logical”, since a 500% price reduction would mean that a drug that now costs $100 would be available for free, with consumers given a $400 rebate.
The actual deal includes cutting prices for the government’s Medicaid health plan for low-income Americans and discounted prices through a “TrumpRx” website, the president said.
AstraZeneca’s chief executive Pascal Soriot stood near Trump in the gold-clad Oval Office as the president made the announcement.
Pfizer previously agreed to drop prescription drug prices in the Medicaid program for lower-income Americans to what it charges in other developed countries in exchange for relief from tariffs threatened by Trump.
Americans currently pay by far the most for prescription medicines, often nearly three times more than in other developed nations, and Trump has been pressuring drugmakers to lower their prices to what patients pay elsewhere or face stiff tariffs.
Last month, he threatened 100% tariffs on drugmakers, increasing pressure on the pharmaceutical industry to agree to price cuts and shift manufacturing to the US.
Trump threatens additional 100% tariff on imports from China, and export controls on software
Writing on his social media platform, Donald Trump just announced that, in response to what he called China’s “extraordinarily aggressive position on Trade” and new export restrictions, he intends to “impose a Tariff of 100% on China, over and above any Tariff that they are currently paying” starting on 1 November.
The same day, he adds, “we will impose Export Controls on any and all critical software”.
That date is after Trump’s planned meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Our colleague Callum Jones has more on the latest friction in Trump’s trade war with China.
The wave of layoffs at federal agencies has reportedly reached the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) now, according to the PBS correspondent Lisa Desjardins.
Criminal charges against John Bolton could be filed next week – report
Federal prosecutors in Maryland could seek criminal charges next week against Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, report the Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Carol Leonnig and her colleague Ken Dilanian for MSNBC.
A grand jury in Maryland has been hearing evidence related to claims that Bolton, a former ally of Trump turned harsh critic, improperly kept classified national security information in his Maryland home.
The journalists also report that Ed Martin, a Republican operative who served briefly as Trump’s acting US attorney in the District of Columbia now running the justice department’s “Weaponization Working Group”, has met multiple times with the Trump-appointed acting US attorney in Maryland, Kelly Hayes, on the Bolton case.
An indictment on Bolton for illegally retaining classified documents would be the third of a Trump critic in recent weeks, and would echo the indictment of New York’s attorney general, Tish James, in accusing critics of the president of committing crimes he was indicted for after his first term.
I’ve been chatting to Jessica Roth, a former federal prosecutor in the southern district of New York, about the indictment of Letitia James.
Roth said it was “extremely distressing” to see prosecutions brought against the president’s perceived political enemies.
“I can’t say that I was surprised that the department [under attorney general Pam Bondi] pursued these charges against Tish James,” she added. “That doesn’t lessen my distress … particularly in light of what had been longstanding Department of Justice policy not to pursue an indictment unless prosecutors were convinced that they would be able to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt at trial.”
Lindsey Halligan, the handpicked and newly installed US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, has pursued the charges against James and former FBI director James Comey, and Roth notes that we could see a wider effort to bring charges against the president’s adversaries in districts throughout the country that are now run by Trump-friendly prosecutors.
Much like the charges brought against Comey, Roth underscored that the crimes that James is being accused of are very difficult to prove “even under the best stances” because they require proof of “criminal intent as opposed to an honest mistake or negligence”.
Multiple agencies confirm reductions in force are under way
The Guardian has independently confirmed that reductions in force (RIFs) are under way at the following departments and agencies:
-
Department of Education
-
Department of Health and Human Services
-
Department of Homeland Security (specifically the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency)
-
Department of the Treasury
Certain agencies haven’t immediately responded to the Guardian’s request for comment, but other media outlets have reported layoffs are expected at the following:
-
Environmental Protection Agency
-
Department of Energy
-
Department of the Interior
-
Department of Housing and Urban Development
HHS confirms layoffs, saying department had become ‘bloated bureaucracy’ under Biden
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed to the Guardian that employees across “multiple divisions” have received reduction-in-force notices. HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said this was “a direct consequence of the Democrat-led government shutdown”.
He added that HHS under the Biden administration “became a bloated bureaucracy, growing its budget by 38% and its workforce by 17%”.
Nixon said that all employees receiving RIF notices were “designated non-essential by their respective divisions”.
“HHS continues to close wasteful and duplicative entities, including those that are at odds with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda,” he added.
Federal worker union calls mass layoffs during government shutdown ‘disgraceful’
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest union representing federal government workers, has condemned the mass layoffs announced by the White House budget office.
“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,” said Everett Kelley, the union’s president.
AFGE has already filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the firings, and a hearing is set for Thursday, 16 October. “We will not stop fighting until every reduction-in-force notice is rescinded,” Kelley added.
Department of Education confirms layoffs will happen
The Department of Education has also confirmed to the Guardian that their employees will be affected by the reductions in force.
White House budget office says layoffs are ‘substantial’
An office of management and budget (OMB) spokesperson told the Guardian that the reductions in force that have begun are “substantial”.
The official didn’t confirm an exact number, but we’re bringing you the latest as we hear from different agencies and departments about how they stand to be affected.
