The administration drops its shutdown mass-layoff policy in a union deal. Funding runs out Dec. 11. Congress should make it permanent.

Credit where it's due, and then some homework. Government Executive reports that the Trump administration is withdrawing its authorization of widespread layoffs during government shutdowns as part of a settlement reached Friday with federal employee unions. The deal pauses the unions' lawsuit over layoffs carried out during last fall's 43-day shutdown, holding it in abeyance until the end of the year, and the unions can reopen it if another shutdown brings more firings. OPM and OMB have 30 days to tell agencies that guidance making layoffs a shutdown-exempt activity is rescinded. Agencies must strip that authority from their shutdown plans, give the unions 30 days' notice before changing course, and post updated plans publicly. About 4,200 layoff notices went out during that shutdown at Commerce, Education, HHS, Homeland Security, HUD, Treasury and the EPA. A federal judge in San Francisco blocked them, the spending package that ended the shutdown barred them, and a later funding bill kept those protections only through mid-February 2026. The notices have since been rescinded and separated employees reinstated. AFGE national president Everett Kelley said the administration "tried to turn a shutdown into an excuse to fire the public servants who kept this country running without a paycheck on payday," adding, "We fought back, we held the line, and they backed down." I'm a lifelong Democrat, and I'll say it plainly: dropping this policy is the right call, and the administration deserves credit for signing it. But a settlement can be walked back, and the government is funded only through Dec. 11, after the midterms. My test is simple: before that deadline, will members of both parties write these protections into law, so the people who keep the lights on never again become bargaining chips?