Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday refused to explain President Trump’s seeming threat that federal firings during the government shutdown would be based on political affiliation.
A day earlier, CBS’s Weijia Jiang had asked the president why he’d said government employees would have to be let go during a shutdown, given the massive reductions to the federal workforce enacted earlier in the year by his so-called “Departments of Government Efficiency.”
In response, the president said many people will be laid off, and “they’re going to be Democrats,” leading Jiang on Wednesday—the first day of the shutdown—to ask Vance whether terminations would be ideologically motivated.
“Has the administration asked agencies to target federal workers who they believe to be Democrats in these reductions of forces?” Jiang asked.
Vance denied that the administration is “targeting federal agencies based on politics,” and said federal workers would be fired only if the shutdown “drags on” long enough.
“So what did he mean by ‘They are going to be Democrats’?” Jiang asked, quoting Trump. Vance, taking the next question, did not answer.
Reporter: Yesterday, President Trump said as a result of the shutdown, “We will be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected,” and “They are going to be Democrats.” Vance: We are not targeting federal agencies based on politics Reporter: But he said “They… pic.twitter.com/N0jmiwyNg7
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 1, 2025
Whether or not possible layoffs will be explicitly politicized, the Trump administration has already used the shutdown as a cudgel against Democrats.
On Wednesday, White House budget director Russell Vought said he was freezing $18 billion earmarked for infrastructure projects in New York—the state represented by both of the top-ranking Democrats in Congress. Shortly after, Vought announced the cancellation of nearly $8 billion in climate projects across 16 states, each of which just so happen to be blue states that did not vote for Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
In doing so, the budget director was simply following through on Trump’s threat to punish Democrats during the shutdown by “cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”
The post JD Vance Flails When Reminded of Trump’s Vow to Hurt Dems in Shutdown appeared first on New Republic.
