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Welcome to the News Hour. The White House is threatening to use a looming government shutdown to drive

mass layoffs at federal agencies. And that's with the funding deadline that lawmakers

appear almost certain to miss just days away.

Our congressional correspondent, Lisa Desjardin and White House correspondent, Liz Landers, are here with the latest.

So Liz, we'll start with you last night, the OMB director, Russ Vote.

He told agencies to prepare shutdown plans that include permanent layoffs.

What more do we know?

We obtained this memo late last night.

It was sent over by the Office of Management and Budget. And in it, it says that they are

preparing for a potential shutdown. And some of this is normal. And they've had some planning calls,

apparently about this this week. And there's some politics in here, some finger pointing that the

administration is doing at Democrats in

particular, saying that they are inching closer to a shutdown over a series of insane demands,

including a trillion dollars in new spending. But this note goes farther. And what it suggests

is that the agencies could use this moment to do mass layoffs. It says agencies are directed to use this opportunity

to consider reduction in force. And as you know, Jeff, this agent, this administration,

I should say, has really relied on these RIF notices, these reduction in force mechanisms

...