And for a democratic perspective on the shutdown, we're joined now by Shalonda Young, former director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Biden, now a distinguished scholar at NYU Law. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me, Jeff.

So President Trump and Russ Vote, his budget director, they are warning of permanent layoffs, mass firings connected to this shutdown, a dramatic break

from past practice. What do you make of the way Republicans are rewriting the rules here?

Jeff, this has nothing to do with the shutdown. This is in line with everything we've seen from

this administration. Who's to say those mass layoffs wouldn't happen if the government

were open? Who's to say that wouldn't happen October 15th if a deal is reached to reopen

the government? You don't get extra authority to fire people because the government ran out of money.

As the senator just said, this is a policy choice. They're making a policy

to use the shutdown as an excuse, frankly, to undertake these mass firings, a continuation

for what we've seen since January 21st. Obviously, they want the shutdown theatrics around

this announcement. But I can tell you one thing. I'm not sure whether the

government was open or not if we would see anything different. So the shutdown gives them no extra

authority. Would the firings, mass firings even be legal? So this is a great question. When you have a

lapse in funding, which is what this is, Congress didn't do

his job on time. You usually furlough most staff and you only keep the staff who are essential,

I mean essential to the workings of government. We call them accepted staff. So our military around the

world doing critical work. That should be a very limited number of people.

So what this tells me, if they made a decision that they're going to bring in HR officials to undertake these firings,

we're obviously bringing in IT people during a shutdown to volunteer to put mass firing warnings on government websites.

So there is a legality question about whether they are using volunteer services

and bringing in people not paid to do these things that obviously are not critical to the mission of government.

President Trump today said that he views this shutdown as an unprecedented opportunity to slash

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