A third of the White House complex has been furloughed so far due to the government shutdown—but exactly whom the Trump administration has deemed mission critical provides a clearer picture on their near-term agenda.

All 45 staffers at the Department of Government Efficiency, for instance, were apparently too valuable to lose, as the agency was completely unscathed by the temporary employment suspension, according to a numerical breakdown of the furloughs obtained by Politico.

The Office of Management and Budget also escaped largely unscathed, maintaining 437 of its 530 employees.

The document obtained by Politico indicates DOGE’s workers and 49 employees at OMB are “exempt from the shutdown because their compensation comes from a source other than annual appropriations,” according to Politico.

Both departments gained fame earlier this year when their joint work supported a mass reorganization of federal employees, nixing thousands of civil servants from their roles across the executive branch.

Practically every other department in the White House complex will fare much worse, with some losing more than half of their staffers, according to the document.

The shutdown-induced damage has been seismic across the executive branch. So far, the shutdown has furloughed more than half a million federal employees, according to a New York Times monitor. That includes 89 percent of the Environmental Protection Agency, 87 percent of the Education Department, and 71 percent of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Forty-five percent of the civilian work force of the Defense Department has also been temporarily let go.

The president has been crystal clear in blaming Democrats for the critical congressional failure this week, publicly promising to target liberals in a forthcoming mass firing. On Tuesday, the Trump administration issued ideological messaging via executive agency heads to thousands of federal employees, in potential violation of the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch and the Hatch Act.

As federal agencies trumpet blatantly political messages blaming the “radical left” for the current government shutdown, FBI Director Kash Patel had a trainee fired for simply putting a gay pride flag on their desk.

In a letter dated Wednesday, Patel cited President Donald Trump’s Article 2 power to dismiss a trainee who the director said had “exercised poor judgment with an inappropriate display of political signage” while working in Los Angeles, where the trainee had been assigned during the Biden administration.

Although the letter did not cite a specific infraction, three people familiar with the incident told MSNBC the trainee was fired for displaying a pride flag on their desk.

Under previous administrations, displaying a pride flag at one’s desk would not violate any FBI policy, two bureau veterans told CNN. But since entering office, Trump has taken significant efforts to eradicate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and to make it easier to discriminate in the workplace—summoning a flurry of lawsuits.

And federal employees have responded in kind. One person told MSNBC that FBI agents had warned colleagues after Trump entered office that the president’s loyalists in the bureau were searching through internal files for lists of LGBTQ employees. Even before Trump’s inauguration, agents and prosecutors warned one another to be careful about revealing their sexual orientation or support for the LGBTQ community to their new superiors.

Earlier this month, Trump claimed that he had “no problem” with banning the progressive pride flag, which includes the colors of the transgender flag, after Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend claimed that “a lot of people are very threatened” by it. Wednesday’s firing comes as members of the Trump administration escalate rhetoric baselessly linking the transgender community to political violence, including a campaign for the FBI to adopt a new designation of “transgender ideology-inspired violence and extremism.”

Lawyer Alejandra Caraballo recently warned that under Trump, anything “as innocuous as a pride flag can cause a federal investigation now or people to lose their jobs.… The spectacle is there to create fear in everyone else that they need to comply or they are next.”

The Trump administration’s projected strength during the government shutdown is belied by a nagging insecurity, reports The Wall Street Journal: that the Democratic health care concerns that set off the affair are well founded.

The government shut down this week after the GOP refused several Democratic demands, chief among them extending Affordable Care Act premium subsidies currently on track to expire at the end of 2025. Without the subsidies, millions of Americans, many in red-leaning states, would see their health care premiums more than double—initiating a political nightmare for a party hoping to cling onto its weak majority in the House in 2026.

The White House is keenly aware of this. Citing administration officials, the Journal reports that Trump’s advisers are concerned the GOP “will take the blame for allowing healthcare subsidies to expire,” and have “privately acknowledged” that the issue could cause Trump “political headaches.”

White House officials are thus considering proposals to extend the subsidies, according to the Journal, but the president remains undecided on supporting such a plan.

Republican strategists have long warned that the expiration of the subsidies would be a political disaster, with Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio issuing a memo in July that stated: “By........

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