The White House said on Friday it had begun mass layoffs of federal workers as President Donald Trump sought to amp up pressure on opposition Democrats to end a government shutdown that has crippled public services.

With the crisis set to go into a third week and no off-ramp in sight, Trump’s budget chief Russ Vought confirmed on social media that the administration had begun following through on its threat to begin firing some of the 750,000 public servants placed on enforced leave.

The Office of Management and Budget, headed by Vought, told AFP the layoffs would be “substantial,” but gave no precise numbers or details of which departments would be most affected.

The announcement came days after Trump said he was meeting Vought to determine which agencies “he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent.”

The president has repeatedly emphasised that he views cutbacks as a way of increasing pain on Democrats.

Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his House counterpart Hakeem Jeffries have dismissed the job cuts threat as an attempt at intimidation and said mass firings would not stand up in court.

Those public servants who hang onto their jobs still face the misery of going without pay while the crisis remains unresolved, with the standoff expected to drag on until at least the middle of next week.

Adding to the pain, 1.3 million active-duty service military personnel are set to miss their pay due next Wednesday— something that has not happened in any of the funding shutdowns through modern history.

“We´re not in a good mood here in the Capitol — it’s a sombre day. Today marks the first day federal workers across America will receive a partial paycheck,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said at a news conference marking the 10th day of the shutdown.

Rising tensions between the two parties have been on full display this week, with Johnson and Democratic senators clashing over the shutdown in front of the gathered press.

There was a fiery exchange after a House Democratic leadership press conference when Republican Congressman Mike Lawler needled Jeffries over his role in the crisis.

Jeffries told Lawler to “keep your mouth shut” as the two traded barbs and later called the Republican a “malignant clown.”

‘Tired of the chaos’

Nonessential government work stopped after the September 30 funding deadline, with Senate Democrats repeatedly blocking a Republican resolution to reopen federal agencies.

The sticking point has been a refusal by Republicans to include language in the bill to address expiring subsidies that make health insurance affordable for 24 million Americans.

With a prolonged shutdown looking more likely each day, members of Congress have been looking to Trump to step in and break the deadlock.

But the president has been largely tuned out, with his focus on the Gaza ceasefire deal and sending federal troops to bolster his mass deportation drive in Democratic-led cities such as Chicago and Portland.

“Donald Trump can find the time to play golf, but he can’t be bothered negotiating a bipartisan agreement to reopen the government… and House Republicans remain on vacation for three weeks,” Jeffries told a news conference.

“The American people are sick and tired of the chaos, crisis and confusion that has been visited upon the country by Donald Trump and Republican complete control of Congress.”

The Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS), meanwhile, announced it would delay publication of key inflation data due next week to October 24, despite the ongoing shutdown, which has halted the release of most government data.

The consumer price index data is being published to allow the Social Security Administration to meet its statutory deadlines “to ensure the accurate and timely payment of benefits,” the BLS said on Friday in a statement.

The White House on Friday criticised the Nobel Prize committee’s decision to grant the peace prize to a Venezuelan opposition leader instead of US President Donald Trump, who aggressively lobbied for the award and touted his role in brokering international ceasefire deals.

“President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives. He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will,” White House spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a post on X.

“The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace.”

The Norwegian Nobel Committee granted the annual award to Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado, citing “courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist” authoritarian leadership.

Trump has campaigned for the prize, and just this week announced a ceasefire and hostage deal to end the war in Gaza.

The president has not yet commented on the Nobel decision, but he did post three videos on his Truth Social account on Friday morning of supporters celebrating the Gaza deal.

Trump claims to have ended eight wars since taking office and insists he deserves the Nobel, though he said recently he fully expected to be passed over.

“Will you get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not. They’ll give it to some guy that didn’t do a damn thing,” Trump told top US military leaders last month.

He said it would be a “big insult” to the United States if he didn’t get it.

Nominations for the Nobel must have been made before January 31 to be valid for this year’s prize. Trump returned to the White House for his second term in office on January 20.

• Rescue teams race to reach remote quake-hit mountain areas.
• Dozens injured and power lines down across Mindanao region.
• Tsunami warnings lifted after strong aftershocks shake southern area.
  

A powerful magnitude-7.4 earthquake struck off the southern Philippines on Friday, killing at least six people and triggering regional tsunami warnings that were later lifted.

The quake hit about 20 kilometres (12 miles) off Manay town in the Mindanao region at 9:43am, according to the United States Geological Survey.

It came just 11 days after a magnitude-6.9 earthquake killed 75 people and injured more than 1,200 in Cebu province, according to official data.

Three miners tunnelling for gold were killed when their shaft collapsed in the mountains west of Manay, rescue official Kent Simeon of Pantukan town told AFP. One miner was pulled out alive and several others were injured, he said.

“Some tunnels collapsed, but the miners managed to get out. In that particular area, only one incident was reported,” Simeon said, adding that rescuers were withdrawing from the remote site of Gumayan, accessible only by dirt bikes.

In Mati city, the largest urban centre near the epicentre, one person was killed when a wall collapsed, while another suffered a fatal heart attack, local officials said.

A separate fatality was reported in Davao city, more than 100 kilometres west of the epicentre, a city government statement said without giving details.

Philippine authorities issued a tsunami warning shortly after the quake, ordering evacuations along the eastern seaboard where waves of up to three metres (10 feet) were feared.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center lifted its own alert for the Philippines, Palau and Indonesia at around noon, saying there was “no longer a tsunami threat”.

‘People screamed and ran’

Wes Caasi, a local official in Tagum city, northwest of Manay, told AFP that a government event at the city hall descended into chaos as panicked attendees fled. “They screamed and ran.”

Confirming videos that circulated on social media, Caasi said she saw city workers scrambling down a metal Christmas tree they were decorating when the quake struck.

Other witnesses said they saw students and workers pouring out of schools, office buildings and shopping malls— though some footage shared on social media proved to be misinformation.

Many Visayan-language posts shared footage of a crane falling from a building and imagery of destroyed buildings, but AFP fact-checkers found both visuals predated the tremor.

So far, the tremors seem to have caused minor and scattered damage, according to witnesses.

More than 100 aftershocks were recorded, some reaching magnitude 5.0.

Dianne Lacorda, a police officer in Davao Oriental province, told AFP that power and communication lines were down, hampering damage assessments.

The provincial government said on Facebook that it had suspended classes “until further notice” and sent non-essential public workers home.

‘Shaking was so strong’

Christine Sierte, a teacher in the town of Compostela near Manay, told AFP she was in the middle of an online meeting when the violent shaking started.

“It was very slow at first, then it got stronger… That’s the longest time of my life. We weren’t able to walk out of the building immediately because the shaking was so strong,” she said.

“The ceilings of some offices fell, but luckily no one was injured,” she said, adding that some of the school’s approximately 1,000 students “suffered panic attacks and difficulty in breathing”.

Earthquakes are a near-daily occurrence in the Philippines, which is situated on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

An 8.0-magnitude quake off Mindanao island’s southwest coast in 1976 unleashed a tsunami that left 8,000 people dead or missing in the Philippines’ deadliest single natural disaster.