'It's not just rare': White House reporter stunned by 'unprecedented' move coming soon

President Donald Trump is eying massive cuts to the federal workforce under cover of the government shutdown, and CNN's Alayna Treene reported that layoffs of that scope have never been done before.

Sources say the president and his White House budget chief Russell Vought have targeted certain agencies for most of the cuts after congressional Republicans were able to get a funding bill passed before the start of the fiscal year on Wednesday, and the executive branch is moving on to another priority in the Project 2025 blueprint.

"The latest I heard from my conversationswith people at the White Househas been that they are ironingthings out, as you mentioned,from my conversations with them,they said that they have a list," Treene reported. "They actually held up a coupleof pieces of paper to me, butthey wouldn't divulge thespecifics of which agenciesthey're actually targeting,only that they know where theywant these cuts to be, and partof that, of course, is because Russell Vought the the White House budget chief, he's had hiseye on several agencies formonths now."

"He knows exactly theplaces in the government that hewants to cut, and that's notonly people that they want to tofire, essentially, which we nowknow is in the thousands, butthey're also looking at programsthat they want to slash, andfrom what we've heard from thepresident himself," she added.

Trump flaunted Vought's work on Project 2025, from which he attempted to distance himself during last year's election campaign, as he announced he would meet with the longtime budget hawk, and Treene said the president intended to carry thought on his threat to slash agencies prioritized by Democrats.

"Insome of the conversations I'mhaving with people throughoutthe administration, a lot ofthem are targeting Democraticpriorities," Treene said. "At least that's howpeople in this White House aredescribing it, and one thing,again, I need to make clear isjust how rare this is. It's noteven just rare, it'sunprecedented in no othershutdowns that we've looked at.We've dug into the data, hasany previous president oradministration used a shutdownin this way to try to enactwidespread cuts to the federalworkforce and to these types ofprograms, and, look, I mean,from what they're trying toargue for, the reasoning for alot of this, we keep hearing thepresident himself call this anunprecedented opportunity thathe couldn't believe Democratsgave him."

"They're arguing thatif the Democrats had agreed tothat short-term funding bill,the CR, as they call it, thenthis could have been avoided,that they could have negotiateda budget together," Treene added. "But now,since the government is shutdown, they essentially can moveforward with some of these cutswithout congressional approval, and also that essentially the White House is going totake the budget into their ownhands."

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