A shocking White House memo circulating among staffers reveals that President Donald Trump plans to deny back pay to 750,000 furloughed federal workers as the government shutdown enters its second week.
The move would overturn a well-established policy implemented by Trump himself in 2019 when he signed legislation that made sure federal workers would receive retroactive pay for the time they were forced off the job by a government closure.
Axios first reported the existence of the memo on Tuesday.
“If that memo’s legit, it’s one of the dirtiest power plays the bureaucracy’s pulled in years. You’ve got unelected pencil pushers trying to override a law signed by the sitting president — the same law that guarantees every furloughed worker back pay after a shutdown,” X user Dan Brisbois fumed on social media, and he wasn’t finished.
“Let’s be real: these aren’t ‘public servants,’ they’re political operatives with pensions. They think they run the country — elections be damned. Congress passed that law, Trump signed it, and that should’ve been the end of the discussion. But now the White House thinks it can just memo its way around legality? That’s how empires rot — not with explosions, but with memos,” Brisbois remarked.
Then, on Tuesday, Trump suggested some furloughed workers could see back pay, while others might not.
“I would say it depends on who we’re talking about. I can tell you this, the Democrats have put a lot of people in great risk and jeopardy. But it really depends on who you’re talking about,” Trump said during an Oval Office meeting with the prime minister of Canada, according to The Hill.
Republicans are blaming Democrats for the ongoing shutdown. Still, they are the party in control of the government, including the White House and Congress. They’re also the ones refusing to negotiate with Democrats over Medicaid cuts or the impending expiration of Affordable Care Act subsidies, which could result in millions of Americans losing their health insurance coverage or paying hundreds more if they can afford to keep it.
Even Speaker of the House Mike Johnson seems supportive of the idea of withholding back pay from government employees.
“It is true that in previous shutdowns, many or most of them have been paid for the time that they were furloughed, but there is a new legal analysis. I don’t know the details; I just saw a headline this morning. I’ve not read in on it and I haven’t spoken to the White House about it, but there are some legal analysts who are saying that may not be appropriate or necessary in terms of the law requiring that back pay be provided,” Johnson told reporters before adding he predicted “a lot of discussion around that.”
He went on to cite unspecified legal analysts who he says “don’t believe that’s something the government should do.”
He then went on to say, “If that’s true, it should turn up urgency and the necessity of the Democrats doing the right thing here.”
Trump and the Republican leaders of Congress have watched the government shut down over their unwillingness to negotiate with Democrats over health care cuts, an almost unprecedented development when it comes to negotiations over spending bills.
And Trump doesn’t seem too concerned about the ongoing shutdown or making any attempts to break the stalemate between the Democrats and their GOP counterparts.
He was spotted on a golf course having a ball over the weekend as furloughed workers tried to figure out how to make ends meet if the federal closure drags on for an extended period of time.
