Tony Romm

But nothing is to say that the president will continue to push that envelope in ways that would see him use the money for more controversial purposes, perhaps in defiance of what Congress has said.

Got it.

Yeah, with a few exceptions, most of the government remains shut down.

And so as a result of that, there are hundreds of thousands of civilian employees at agencies that touch on functions like housing and health and education who are furloughed right now.

They're out of work, they're not receiving pay, and the administration has not taken any steps to reprogram the budget in a way for these individuals to be paid.

In fact, the president and his aides at times have suggested that some of these hundreds of thousands of furloughed workers may not even be automatically entitled to back pay once the shutdown ends.

Potentially.

I mean, there is a law that, in fact, President Trump himself signed at the end of the longest shutdown in U.S.

history that—

guaranteed so far, right, that guaranteed these individuals back pay.

But the White House has tried to interpret that law in a way that may suggest that they won't provide that automatic back pay.

So there are hundreds of thousands of people who really do have their finances at risk here.

And that's on top of those that the White House has now said it's potentially looking to fire.

Because President Trump and his aides have made very clear that in their attempts to weaponize this shutdown, they also want to conduct another round of mass layoffs.

And they began to take the steps to do that last week when they announced an initial batch of about 4,000 federal workers across eight major agencies that they were going to cut from government in a process that will take about 60 days.

That has been the subject of litigation.

A federal judge recently blocked the administration from proceeding with those layoffs, but the president and his aides have made clear that they're not backing down and they really do want to cut government.

And so if those people are in fact laid off, that's just another financial blow on top of what they're already experiencing.

Yeah, I think Katie is absolutely right that this is emboldening Democrats to keep fighting, even though they have seen pretty staggering cuts in some cases to their states and districts as the president has weaponized this shutdown.

But I think the reason that's happening is because they have this deeper worry about the ways in which the president has asserted his power to rearrange the budget and to do so in a way that disregards what Congress may say about what he must spend or what he must not spend.