The US government shutdown dragged into a third week on Monday, with Congress gridlocked in a clash over spending and no resolution in sight to a crisis that has already cost thousands of jobs.
With hundreds of thousands of federal employees already on enforced leave, President Donald Trump is following through on threats to take a hatchet to the workforce to pressure Democrats to agree to Republican funding demands.
Trump has vowed to find a way to pay troops due to go without their paychecks for the first time, although the uncertainty is already leading to long lines of men and women in uniform at food banks.
And Trump has warned that continued refusal by Democrats to support a House-passed resolution to fund the government through late November would result in mass layoffs targeting workers deemed aligned with the opposition party.
"We're ending some programs that we don't want -- they happen to be Democrat-sponsored programs," Trump told reporters.
"But we're ending some programs that we never wanted and we're probably not going to allow them to come back."
Vice President JD Vance told Fox News at the weekend that Democrats could expect more pain ahead if they did not cave.
Court documents filed by the Department of Justice show more than 4,000 employees were fired on Friday, with the US Treasury and health, education and housing departments hardest hit.
The reductions in the workforce are part of a campaign of threats on multiple fronts to amp up pressure on Democrats to back Republican moves to reopen the government. AFP
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