Furloughed government workers may not be entitled to back pay according to White House memo – reports
Government workers who have been furloughed since the government shutdown last week may not be entitled to back pay, according to a memo first obtained by Axios.
In a draft, seen by multiple outlets, office of management and budget (OMB) general counsel Mark Paoletta argues that an amendment to the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act (GEFTA) of 2019, which Trump signed during the last government shutdown, doesn’t guarantee furloughed workers back pay if Congress hasn’t set aside money to compensate them when the government reopens.
The president didn’t promise that back pay was a guarantee while taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office today, simply saying that “it depends who we’re talking about” when it comes to the White House’s position on furloughed workers.
Meanwhile, Republican leaders on Capitol Hill have been similarly evasive. Senate majority leader John Thune said today that “the sooner they vote to open up the government, the sooner this becomes a non issue”, while also saying he wasn’t familiar on the exact language of the law. For his part, House speaker Mike Johnson said that there is “new legal analysis” that back pay might “not be appropriate or necessary”.
Democratic lawmakers have already hit back against the administration and their colleagues across the aisle. Senator Chris Van Hollen, of Maryland, whose state is home to several thousand federal workers, said any suggestion that paychecks will be withheld is “more fear mongering from a president who wants a blank check for lawlessness”. While congressman Jerry Nadler of New York posted a screenshot on X, and urged the Louisiana Republican to “look at his own website to brush up on what federal law says about federal employees and backpay”. Johnson voted for GEFTA in the last Trump administration, and his website says that “under federal law, employees are entitled to back pay upon the government reopening”.
Key events
Senator Schiff says justice department has become Trump’s ‘personal sword and shield’
A short while ago, senator Adam Schiff said that the Department of Justice under Pam Bondi’s leadership has become Donald Trump’s “personal sword and shield to go after his ever growing list of political enemies and to protect himself his allies and associates”.
Schiff is a noted adversary of the president, who served on the House select committee which investigated the Capitol insurrection on 6 January 2021.
Bondi snapped back at Schiff today, when she refused to answer questions about the allegations against Tom Homan, the border czar, for accepting $50,000 in bribes prior to Trump taking office: “Deputy attorney general Blanche and [FBI] director Patel said that there was no evidence that Tom Homan committed a crime, yet now you’re putting his picture up to slander him.”
“If you worked for me, you would have been fired,” Bondi told the Democratic lawmaker from California. “Will you apologize to Donald Trump for trying to impeach him?”
Per my last post, it’s worth noting that House speaker Mike Johnson added that he hasn’t spoken to the White House yet, about the possibility of furloughed federal workers not receiving back pay.
Furloughed government workers may not be entitled to back pay according to White House memo – reports
Government workers who have been furloughed since the government shutdown last week may not be entitled to back pay, according to a memo first obtained by Axios.
In a draft, seen by multiple outlets, office of management and budget (OMB) general counsel Mark Paoletta argues that an amendment to the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act (GEFTA) of 2019, which Trump signed during the last government shutdown, doesn’t guarantee furloughed workers back pay if Congress hasn’t set aside money to compensate them when the government reopens.
The president didn’t promise that back pay was a guarantee while taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office today, simply saying that “it depends who we’re talking about” when it comes to the White House’s position on furloughed workers.
Meanwhile, Republican leaders on Capitol Hill have been similarly evasive. Senate majority leader John Thune said today that “the sooner they vote to open up the government, the sooner this becomes a non issue”, while also saying he wasn’t familiar on the exact language of the law. For his part, House speaker Mike Johnson said that there is “new legal analysis” that back pay might “not be appropriate or necessary”.
Democratic lawmakers have already hit back against the administration and their colleagues across the aisle. Senator Chris Van Hollen, of Maryland, whose state is home to several thousand federal workers, said any suggestion that paychecks will be withheld is “more fear mongering from a president who wants a blank check for lawlessness”. While congressman Jerry Nadler of New York posted a screenshot on X, and urged the Louisiana Republican to “look at his own website to brush up on what federal law says about federal employees and backpay”. Johnson voted for GEFTA in the last Trump administration, and his website says that “under federal law, employees are entitled to back pay upon the government reopening”.
Trump says he will announce in five days which government programs and jobs will be ‘permanently eliminated’
Trump says his administration plans to eliminate a number of government programs as a result of the ongoing shutdown, adding that he would provide details on job cuts within the next four or five days.
He says he has identified programs to shut down, and he’ll be “announcing it pretty soon, but we have a lot of things that we’re going to eliminate and permanently eliminate.”
He says the Democrats handed him the opportunity to do so “on a silver platter”.
“I’ll be able to tell you that in four or five days, if this keeps going on,” he adds. “It’ll be substantial, and a lot of those jobs will never come back.”
Asked what his message was to Democrats ahead of another short-term spending bill vote, Trump accuses Democrats of a kamikaze attack.
This is like a kamikaze attack. Well, they’re the ones that started it … and it’s almost like a kamikaze attack by them. You want to know the truth, this is like a kamikaze attack … they have nothing to lose.
Trump says US will do ‘everything possible to make sure everyone adheres to the deal’ once deal is reached for Gaza
Asked by a reporter what guarantees he’s giving that Israel won’t resume its offensive once it gets the hostages back, Trump stresses that the US has “a lot of power” and says that once they have a deal, the US “is going to do everything possible to make sure everyone adheres to the deal”.
Trump says they could renegotiate the USMCA or they might not, but he wants the best deal for the US and also for Canada.
Trump says the fentanyl crisis is not over, adding that Canada has been doing “a much better job than in the past”.
‘We are very close to making a deal on the Middle East,’ says Trump
Trump is again optimistic about the prospect of ending the war in Gaza. “We are very close to making a deal on the Middle East,” he says.
Trump says the US will have tariffs with Canada.
“We will treat Canada fairly,” he says.
Trump says he thinks Canada “will be very happy” with the deal they walk away with.
The US and Canada are “working very closely” on the Golden Dome missile defense system, Trump says.
Trump declines to say whether he would invoke Insurrection Act
Asked whether he plans to invoke the Insurrection Act, Trump declines to say whether or not he would but says that it has been invoked before.
“Well, it’s been invoked before. As you know, if you look at Chicago, Chicago is a great city where there’s a lot of crime, and if the governor can’t do the job, we’ll do the job,” Trump says.
He told reporters yesterday he would consider utilizing the Insurrection Act, a law enacted more than two centuries ago, to sidestep any court rulings restricting his orders to send national guard troops into cities over the objections of local and state officials.
Sam Levine
Attorney general Pamela Bondi defended the mass exodus of career officials from the justice department during her testimony on Tuesday.
“Many employees took the fork in the road. DOJ is hiring committed prosecutors who will actually come into the office and work — and not work remotely,” she said.
While it is accurate that many career employees in the civil rights division did accept a deferred resignation offer, it was only after DOJ officials removed the leadership of their sections, dismissed ongoing cases, and moved attorneys into low-level offices where there wasn’t much work to do. It was a clear effort to push people out the door. Justice department officials were so caught off guard by the number of people who chose to leave that they asked some employees to reconsider leaving.
On trade, Trump says the US has a “natural business conflict” with Canada, citing examples of cars and steel.
“We’ve made some compromise even on steel,” says Trump, repeating that he wants the US to make its own steel and its own cars while also wanting Canada to do well.
He says that in areas where the US and Canada compete, “we have to come to an agreement that works”.
Trump says they will be discussing tariffs.
