Fourteen-hundred employees at the Internal Revenue Service will be laid off in a process initiated Friday, The Daily Wire has learned.

The number is larger than anyone expected, with the IRS union filing a lawsuit to stop what it said it had “heard” might be 1,300 layoffs across the entire Treasury Department. The real number, an Office of Management and Budget official told The Daily Wire, is 1,400 at the IRS alone, plus more at other components of Treasury.

The layoffs come as Democrats refuse to fund the government at all unless the Republican majority agrees to increased spending for non-citizens’ health care and other topics. That has resulted in a government shutdown, wherein employees are sent home and traditionally receive back pay one a deal is reached.

The Trump administration has countered that if federal employees are going to be prohibited from working due to a shutdown, some will never come back at all – particularly those that staff agencies favored by Democrats.

The IRS was targeted as a bloated agency that Democrats have used for political purposes, including targeting conservative nonprofits, the OMB official said. The official said the tax collecting agency spent $35 million on guns, ammunition, and military-style weaponry between 2006 and 2023, and advertised job postings that said special agents must be willing to use “deadly force.”

The official said unnecessary and redundant employees would be targeted, with those focused on the prompt processing of tax returns protected. Still, cuts to the revenue-collection agency mean that Democrats’ efforts to increase government spending in the short term could backfire, with the ability to collect increased revenue diminished.

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Politico reported that layoffs are likely to also affect the departments of Interior, Homeland Security, Commerce, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, and Health and Human Services, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency.

The government has been shut down for ten days, and the Senate failed to reach a deal Thursday night.

The Daily Wire reported Friday that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said Republicans held off on layoffs for 10 days to give Senate Democrats a chance to agree to agree to extend government funding at existing levels, but that now, “this gets real.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer countered, “Nobody’s forcing Trump and [OMB Director Russ Vought] to do this.”

Related: ‘The Government Can Destroy Anyone’: How An IRS-Led Global Alliance Ruined An Innocent American Banker

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, said that she was dedicating the award to President Donald Trump “for his decisive support of our cause.”

Machado, who has been targeted by the Nicolás Maduro regime in socialist Venezuela, was named the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for her “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and … her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” Machado said that the prize is a “recognition of the struggle of all Venezuelans,” adding that Venezuela is relying on Trump and the United States to help the country “achieve freedom and democracy.”

“I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!” Machado wrote.

On his Truth Social account, President Donald Trump shared a screenshot of a similar post from Machado. Earlier on Friday, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said that the Nobel Committee “proved they place politics over peace” by not awarding Trump the Nobel Peace Prize.

“President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives,” Cheung added. “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.”

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The deadline for this year’s nominations was January 31, just days after Trump had taken office for his second term. In recent weeks, however, there has been a chorus of world leaders arguing for Trump to receive the award after the president pushed numerous countries toward peace. The calls for Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize culminated when he successfully pressured Israel and Hamas to agree to the first phase of his 20-point peace plan this week.

Trump will likely be nominated again for the prize in 2026.

Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize comes as she remains in hiding after the Venezuelan government claimed that Maduro won the 2024 election, despite evidence showing that Machado’s ally Edmundo González defeated the dictator at the polls. González was backed by Machado after the socialist government barred Machado from holding political office. In the lead-up to the election and in its aftermath, Maduro’s regime repressed dissent and jailed opposition leaders. Machado has been hiding out since January, and González is living in exile in Spain.

In January, days before he was sworn into office, Trump praised Machado and González for “peacefully expressing the voices and the WILL of the Venezuelan people with hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating against the regime.” The Trump administration has also placed a $50 million bounty on Maduro and increased sanctions on the country earlier this year after its fraudulent election.