Trump says the administration has “identified funds” to pay troops during the shutdown

President Donald Trump said Saturday that 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 resources to get our troops PAID on October 15th.”

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

Paychecks for 1.3 million active-duty members of the U.S. military are due Oct. 15, raising the potential political costs of the standoff, some economists say.

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

The Trump administration began laying off thousands of federal employees 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 employees who will be laid off will be “a lot.”

“It will be Democratic-leaning,” Trump said, reiterating his pledge to target programs he believes are favored by Democratic officials. The uncertainty over which federal employees will be paid — and which employees will be laid off or possibly laid off — has increased worker anxiety.

Members of the aviation industry have expressed concern about the added strain on already thinly staffed air traffic controllers across the country.

They will receive their first partial paychecks next week and will miss a full paycheck on Oct. 28 if the funding impasse is not resolved, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the air traffic controllers' union, said Friday.

The union said it plans to begin handing out informational flyers at New York's LaGuardia Airport on Tuesday about the shutdown's impact on air traffic controllers. Similar events are planned at other airports in Washington, DC, Chicago and Philadelphia.

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

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