Federal Employee Layoffs Are Imminent, Administration Officials Say
The best officials of the White House said on Wednesday that force reductions would soon occur through the government. They have already started at the American Patent and Brands Bureau.
A few hours after financing the government, the Patent and Marks Office began to dismiss staff, according to an internal email and interviews with the staff. The licensed staff are people in business support units, such as communications, according to Notus staff.
About 140 of the 14,000 USPTO employees received an opinion on their dismissal, Bloomberg Law reported.
The Office of Personnel Management refused to comment and asked questions at the Bureau of Patents and Brands, which did not respond to requests for comments.
President Donald Trump and administration officials threatened to dismiss federal workers if the Democrats did not vote with the Republicans to finance the government. It is not clear that the layoffs of the Patent and Marks Office are linked to this threat. But officials said the layoffs soon arrived.
The director of the management and budget office, Russ Vought, told Republican legislators on Wednesday that the RIFs would be “substantial” and would begin in a day or two, according to several sources on the call.
Vice-President JD Vance told journalists during a White House briefing that layoffs would occur in the coming weeks. The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, when a calendar was questioned on several occasions, said: “Two days. Imminent. Very soon … All these things are very synonymous with each other.”
Leavitt said the Democrats are ultimately responsible for the planned dismissal of federal workers.
“Well, sometimes, you have to do things you don’t want to do … If the Democrats have not voted to close the government, we did not get here to talk about layoffs today,” said Leavitt. She did not respond, when asked by Notus, if a shorter closure would reverse the reduction of forces.
Government closings in the past have involved content but not permanent layoffs; Government funds do not require reductions in strength.
The president and the administration sent mixed messages to find out if they consider this closure as an opportunity to further reduce the federal government.
“Lots of good can be removed from closings,” said the president in the oval office on Tuesday, after declaring earlier than the benefits and programs favored by Democrats could also be threatened if the government closed.
During meetings on Wednesday, some staff members of the Ministry of Agriculture were informed that the government’s closure had triggered OPM instructions that agencies should start preparing RIF’s opinions, a source in Notus told.
The Patent and Brands Office is one of the few federal agencies that have not stopped no operation when closing. The agency is funded by costs and has a budgetary surplus with the reservations on which it can count to operate the agency.
One of the office employees of licensed patents and brands, a longtime federal employee, called “useless and cruel” layoffs and told Notus that they were devastated and shocked by this decision.
