Trump says government will pay troops in shutdown

President Donald Trump on Saturday said his administration has “identified funds” to pay troops next week despite the federal government shutdown.

Trump said in a post on Truth Social: “I am using my authority, as Commander in Chief, to direct our Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to use all available funds to get our Troops PAID on October 15th.”

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on whether all or some members of the U.S. military would be paid and which funds the government will use to pay them.

Paychecks would be due for 1.3 million active members of the U.S. military on Oct. 15, raising the potential political costs of the impasse, some economists have said.

“We believe the military pay date on Oct. 15 could be an important forcing event for a compromise to restore funding and expect the shutdown to end by mid-October,” Goldman Sachs economists Ronnie Walker and Alec Phillips said in a client note.

The Trump administration began laying off thousands of federal workers across a range of agencies on Friday, the 10th day of the government shutdown.

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that the number of federal workers who will be laid off will “be a lot.”

“It’ll be Democrat-oriented,” Trump said, reiterating his promise to target programs he believes are favored by Democratic officials. The uncertainty over which federal workers will be paid — and which will be laid off or potentially fired — has heightened anxiety among workers.

Members of the aviation industry have raised concerns about added strains on already thinly staffed air traffic controllers across the country.

Next week, they will receive their first partial paycheck and are set to miss a full paycheck on Oct. 28 if the funding impasse isn’t resolved, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the controllers’ union, stated on Friday.

The union said it plans to start informational leafleting on Tuesday at New York’s LaGuardia Airport about the effects of the shutdown on controllers. Similar events are scheduled at other airports in Washington, D.C., Chicago and Philadelphia.

“Participating air traffic controllers and other aviation safety professionals plan to engage with travelers to explain how the government shutdown introduces unnecessary risk to the National Airspace System (NAS) and is detrimental to efficiency,” the union said.

— CNBC’s Jeff Cox and Dan Mangan contributed to this report.