President Donald Trump has discovered a brand new option to weaponize the federal government shutdown. On Thursday, he introduced that he can be assembly with Workplace of Administration and Finances Director Russ Vought to resolve which “Democrat Agencies” ought to be minimize.
“I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent,” Trump wrote on Fact Social.
Workplace of Administration and Finances Director Russ Vought, who helped write Undertaking 2025, speaks throughout a press briefing in March.
The federal authorities is now two days into its first shutdown since 2019 after lawmakers did not move a spending invoice. On the middle of the combat is whether or not the package deal ought to embrace an extension of Inexpensive Care Act subsidies, which Democrats argue are important to defending well being care protection, whereas Republicans contend that the problem ought to be dealt with individually.
GOP leaders have tried to border the dispute as Democrats pushing for well being take care of undocumented immigrants, a declare that has been debunked. Democrats, nevertheless, counter that their purpose is to make sure that lawful residents and U.S. residents are lined.
Regardless that Republicans management each stage of presidency, Trump has been desperate to pin the disaster on Democrats—and now appears prepared to make use of the shutdown as cowl for mass layoffs. The Congressional Finances Workplace estimates that about 750,000 federal employees could possibly be furloughed every day of the shutdown. However OMB has gone a step additional, circulating a memo asking companies to organize full-blown reduction-in-force plans.
Associated | It’s easy: Republicans have the votes to finish their shutdown
Forward of Trump’s assembly with Vought on Thursday, White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that layoffs will possible be “in the thousands.”
Unions representing federal staff have already filed swimsuit, calling the administration’s threats “contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious.” Democrats, too, say the firings can be unlawful.
Nonetheless, Vought instructed Home Republicans Wednesday that mass cuts might start “in a day or two.” And Trump has been overtly gleeful about it.
“I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity,” he wrote. “Maybe this is their way of wanting to, quietly and quickly, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
In the meantime, the White Home is making an attempt to spin layoffs as a necessity.
A cartoon by Clay Bennett.
“If [Democrats are] so worried about the effect this is having on the American people—and they should be—what they should do is reopen the government, not complain about how we respond,” Vice President JD Vance instructed reporters Wednesday
Trump, after all, doesn’t have the facility to get rid of companies created by Congress, however there are different levers. Vought has already introduced $8 billion in vitality cuts throughout 16 states—all of which voted for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2024—and is now threatening to tug infrastructure funding for New York Metropolis.
What’s hanging about Trump’s submit is how he’s immediately leaning into Vought’s ties to Undertaking 2025. He spent months pretending to maintain his distance from the Heritage Basis blueprint, which Democrats made a centerpiece of their 2024 marketing campaign. Now he’s bragging about having considered one of its architects by his aspect.
Undertaking 2025 was written as a 900-page playbook to overtake the federal authorities, develop presidential authority, and embed right-wing management throughout federal companies. Vought helped write it, and now he’s deciding which “Democrat Agencies” to focus on because the shutdown drags on.
Vought pushes what he calls “radical constitutionalism,” a model of Christian nationalism that tosses apart the same old checks on presidential energy. In observe, it treats Congress as primarily irrelevant and casts the president as one thing nearer to a monarch than a constitutional chief.
In different phrases, Trump is popping a shutdown of his personal making right into a check run for Undertaking 2025—and pushing to see simply how far he can bend the system earlier than it breaks.
