The Trump administration took steps on Wednesday to maximize the pain of the government shutdown, halting billions of dollars in funds for Democratic-led states while readying a plan to lay off potentially droves of civil servants imminently.
The moves by the White House appeared both unprecedented and punitive, underscoring the risks of a fiscal stalemate that had no end in sight. It also evinced how President Trump might try to leverage the governmentwide closure to achieve his agenda, slash the budget and exact revenge on his political enemies.
In a series of social media posts, Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, said the administration had paused or moved to cancel the delivery of about $26 billion in previously approved funds across a range of programs, describing the money as wasteful or in need of further review.
The timing seemed to be no mere coincidence, nor were Mr. Vought’s choices of location. The administration said it was terminating one tranche of funds, totaling about $8 billion, because it was “Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda,” a move that affected projects in 16 states, most of which are led by Democrats.
In a second instance, the Trump administration paused about $18 billion in approved infrastructure funding for two major transportation projects primarily in New York City, whose state delegation includes Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader. The two men have been frequent targets of Mr. Trump’s personal attacks, and the Transportation Department said the money would be held pending further review.
Mr. Vought’s budget maneuvers marked an attempt to formalize Mr. Trump’s threat from a day earlier, when he described a shutdown as a “good” opportunity to cut federal agencies, programs and benefits he disfavors in ways that would harm Democrats. He said at the time that it could include another round of mass layoffs targeting “a lot” of government workers.
By Wednesday, those cuts appeared imminent. Speaking privately with House Republicans, Mr. Vought said the firings, known as a reduction in force, could go into effect in the next day or two, according to a member on the call.
Vice President JD Vance later echoed the need for layoffs in a briefing at the White House, saying the firings would preserve “essential services,” even though such cuts have not been required in past instances when the government had to halt its operations.
Taken together, the administration’s actions laid bare the risks and consequences of a protracted fiscal stalemate under Mr. Trump. With an expansive view of executive power, the president has spared no opportunity in his second term to shutter agencies, slim down the federal work force and reconfigure the budget, with aggressive tactics that have tested the courts and, at times, defied Congress.
The shutdown began at midnight, the start of the new fiscal year, after Democrats and Republicans failed to reach a short-term spending truce. G.O.P. leaders sought to extend existing funding levels into November, but Democrats in the Senate rejected that approach, partly because it did not preserve a set of expiring subsidies that help millions of Americans pay for their health insurance.
As a result, many federal employees are now furloughed, while others, including military service members and airport baggage screeners, are forced to report for work without pay. While those employees will eventually get back pay, there is no clear indication of when that might happen. Scores of critical government services are also halted or reduced significantly.
The longer the standoff continues, the greater the chances of financial harm to American families, businesses and the broader economy. Both parties’ leaders acknowledged that reality on Wednesday, even if they remained far from a resolution. Instead, they traded recriminations, while Mr. Trump’s top aides unfurled the ways they might leverage the standoff to their own ends.
On Wednesday, Mr. Vought offered no further details about the roughly $8 billion in newly canceled green energy funds. The White House budget office declined to comment, and the Energy Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Transportation Department, which halted the delivery of about $18 billion in infrastructure money that benefited New York, said it would review those grants for compliance with Mr. Trump’s directives on diversity, equity and inclusion.
In doing so, though, it appeared to dispel any illusion about the political implications of its decision. The agency said it had to furlough staff reviewing infrastructure projects “thanks to” Mr. Schumer and Mr. Jeffries, as it blamed Democrats for the shutdown.
“Without a budget, the department has been forced to furlough the civil rights staff responsible for conducting this review,” it said in a statement.
In response, Democratic leaders on Wednesday forcefully denounced the White House and its handling of the lapse in federal funding, including its decision to interfere with approved money for cities and states.
Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, who leads her party on the Appropriations Committee, said the actions showed how Mr. Trump and Mr. Vought were “gleefully using the shutdown they have caused as a pretext to inflict even more pain.”
“The American people deserve so much better than a president and an administration that treat their families and their livelihoods like pawns in some sort of sick political game,” Ms. Murray said in a statement.
The White House remained unbowed, pressing forward with its strategy to weaponize the closure.
Soon after government funding lapsed, the Trump administration suspended all news broadcasts from Voice of America and furloughed all of its journalists, a break with past practice in funding lapses. The closure came two days after a judge reinstated about 500 of the broadcaster’s employees.
The White House also laid the groundwork to fulfill the president’s threats to oust more government employees. On a call with Republican lawmakers, Mr. Vought said the shutdown offered an opportunity to remove officials who are working on programs that are not aligned with the president’s political agenda, according to the member who attended the phone meeting.
In a sign that the process was well underway, Trump officials on Wednesday instructed employees at the Interior Department to take home their government devices to receive any information on mass firings, according to internal emails reviewed by The New York Times.
It is unclear how many employees could be laid off at the department, which includes the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management. But Mr. Trump’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year calls for a 30 percent cut to the budget for the agency, which has already lost thousands of employees since January.
Overall, the government is already expected to employ 300,000 fewer workers by December than it did in January. The substantial decline reflects a series of firings, layoffs and induced resignations that date back to the start of the president’s term, and the work of the cost-cutting campaign orchestrated by the Department of Government Efficiency.
Fearing widespread reductions in force, a group of unions representing federal workers preemptively sued the Trump administration this week, claiming that it did not have the legal authority to conduct mass layoffs under cover of a shutdown. The case is pending in a federal court in California.
Publicly, though, Mr. Trump’s deputies still insisted that they had not politicized the funding lapse. Speaking at a press briefing on Wednesday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, maintained instead that the layoffs, in particular, were necessary because of the realities of the budget.
“There are unfortunate consequences to a government shutdown,” she said.
Annie Karni, Minho Kim and Maxine Joselow contributed reporting.
Tony Romm is a reporter covering economic policy and the Trump administration for The Times, based in Washington.
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