President Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Friday that he was laying off “people that the Democrats want,” adding any additional cuts would just deepen pain for the political left.

“It’ll be Democrat-oriented because we figure, you know, they started this thing,” he said.

But vulnerable Americans — schoolchildren, low-income families, homeless people and senior citizens — will suffer from the latest layoffs, current and former federal officials warned. The reductions-in-force, or RIFs, touched a wide range of government jobs — from an Education Department office devoted to improving academic achievement for K-12 students, to a Health and Human Services outfit that distributed funding to high-poverty communities — most with a similar mission, officials said: They aided citizens less able to advocate for or help themselves.