ALSO SEE: White House Budget Office Tells Agencies to Draft Mass Firing Plans Ahead of Potential Shutdown

Funding will run out next week if Congress doesn’t act.

President Donald Trump’s administration instructed federal agencies Wednesday night to prepare for mass layoffs if the government shuts down Oct. 1, after federal funding runs out.

The memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget directs agencies to consider firing employees working on any program that is not funded by another law, such as Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act enacted in July, and which does not align with the president’s priorities. Once government funding is reinstated after a shutdown, agencies should revise their plans to keep only the smallest number of employees necessary to legally operate, the memo says.

Any such layoffs would add to the sweeping reductions in the federal workforce initiated this year under the U.S. DOGE Service, the memo says. DOGE offered to pay federal employees through Sept. 30 to leave their jobs, although some agencies have since tried to rehire workers over concerns that the personnel cuts made it difficult to perform some functions.

The directive increases pressure on congressional Democrats, who have insisted that they will not support a funding extension through Nov. 21 if Republicans do not agree to their demands on health care.

It is also a departure from previous shutdowns, when employees have been temporarily taken off the job and then returned when new funding was approved. The memo instructs agencies to tell employees that they could be fired even if they aren’t furloughed during a shutdown. When the government closes due to lack of funds, some employees typically continue working — temporarily without pay — and others stay home.

The GOP law passed this summer “provided ample resources to ensure that many core Trump Administration priorities will continue uninterrupted,” OMB officials wrote in the memo. “Programs that did not benefit from an infusion of mandatory appropriations will bear the brunt of a shutdown.”

The memo continued: “We remain hopeful that Democrats in Congress will not trigger a shutdown and the steps outlined above will not be necessary.”

A spokesperson for OMB did not respond to a request Wednesday night for information on which programs would remain open under a shutdown. The GOP law increased spending on defense and immigration enforcement, among other areas, which could mean more money is available to pay for those programs.

The memo was first reported by Politico.

The fiscal year will end next week, and Republicans and Democrats in Congress are at an impasse over how to fund the government after that. While Republicans have the majority in both the House and Senate, they need some Democratic support to pass a funding extension in the Senate.

Republicans have proposed a funding extension known as a continuing resolution, or CR, through Nov. 21. It would continue operations at current spending levels and is what’s known as a “clean” CR, because it does not include policy priorities except for new funding for security in each branch of government after conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing.

Democrats countered with their funding proposal, which would fund the government through Oct. 31 and implement several of their priorities, including extending subsidies for people on Affordable Care Act insurance plans and reversing cuts to Medicaid enacted under the GOP’s tax and immigration bill.

Both failed in the Senate late last week before lawmakers left Washington for a week-long recess. The upper chamber plans to vote again on the Republican plan Monday.

In March, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) supported a six-month funding extension due to fears that a shutdown would empower OMB Director Russell Vought and Elon Musk, then the overseer of DOGE, to make unilateral decisions on government spending, despite fierce backlash from the Democratic base.

“A shutdown gives the executive branch — in this case Trump, Musk, Vought and DOGE — pretty much complete freedom as to what parts of the government to fund and what parts not to fund,” Schumer told reporters at the time. “They would use their power in a shutdown to decimate the government and close all kinds of agencies that they didn’t like.”

But this time, Schumer says the situation has changed and that Democrats must fight to improve health care in the wake of cuts implemented under the GOP tax and spending law.

Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) planned to meet with Trump this week to negotiate a path forward, but Trump canceled via a social media post, arguing that no meeting “could possibly be productive” given the Democrats’ “unserious and ridiculous demands.”