Donald Trump had a warning to Democrats. Soon he will decide what Democrat agencies he would cut and whether those reductions would be temporary or permanent.
He said the government shutdown, which began on Tuesday, had afforded him an unprecedented opportunity.
I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, he posted on his Truth Social website on Thursday morning.
Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, may not be a household name. But Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for governing put together primarily by former Trump officials like Vought when the Republicans were out of power, featured prominently during last year's presidential campaign.
The 900-page policy document contained proposals for dramatic reductions in the size of federal government, expanded presidential authority, rigorous immigration enforcement, a nationwide abortion ban, and other elements of an ultra-conservative social agenda.
It was frequently touted by Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, as Trump's dangerous plan for the future if he was to win.
At the time, seeking to reassure undecided voters, Trump tried to distance himself from the policy document. I know nothing about Project 2025, Trump wrote in July 2024. I disagree with some of the things they're saying and some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.
Now, however, Trump is using the conservative blueprint as a threat to get Democrats to agree to his budgetary demands. And he is holding up Vought, who authored a chapter on the use of executive power, as a kind of budgetary angel of death, ready to take a scythe to government programmes near and dear to Democrats.
In case that particular metaphor wasn't clear, on Thursday night Trump shared an AI-generated parody music video on Truth Social with Vought portrayed as the grim reaper, set to altered lyrics of Blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear the Reaper.
On Capitol Hill, Republican leaders have echoed Trump's characterisation of Vought as the White House heavy. We don't control what he's going to do, Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune said. This is the risk of shutting down the government and handing the keys to Russ Vought.
Senator Mike Lee of Utah told Fox News that Vought had been preparing for this moment since puberty. That may be a bit of an overstatement, but Vought, who cut his teeth as a congressional staffer for Republican budget hawks and helped run the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has a wealth of experience digging through the intricacies of the federal budget.
He spent a year as the deputy director of the White House budget office during Trump's first term, rising to be its director in 2019. Unlike many who served with Trump during those first four years, Vought had staying power - and was quickly reinstalled as head of the budget office when Trump returned this year.
A lot of those who didn't come back represent an old way of thinking, said Richard Stern, a Heritage economic policy director who, like Vought, began his career in conservative congressional budget circles. Russ was ahead of his time in the first term and right on time now.
Although Vought isn't one to shy away from controversial statements – he once said that he aspired to be the person who crushes the deep state – he doesn't exactly look the part of a Republican bogeyman.
Balding and bespectacled, with a greying beard, Vought's public statements typically have the measured cadence of a bean-counter or professor. He lacks the narrow-eyed glower and amped-up rhetoric of Stephen Miller, another longtime Trump adviser who oversees White House immigration policy.
Make no mistake, however, Vought has become an influential player in this White House, having turned the Office of Management and Budget – usually referred to by its acronym OMB - into the principal engine behind Trump's push to slash government spending and its workforce.
Earlier in the year he worked closely with Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, as they cut a scorched-earth path through the federal government, shuttering multiple agencies and downsizing entire departments. And he carried on the efforts after Musk departed and Doge largely dropped out of public view.
Now Trump has threatened to unleash Vought at a time when, because of the legal limbo created by the government shutdown, their cuts might be deeper and more durable than those instituted earlier this year by Doge.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a veteran of the big shutdown fights of the 1990s, told NPR that Vought and his team have been preparing for exactly these kinds of circumstances while they were in the political wilderness during the Biden years.
Democrats and federal worker unions have promised to fight these reductions in court and claimed that Trump is making largely empty threats to try to pressure them into abandoning the fight.
Many economists have pointed out that the White House reductions have been accompanied by other deficit-ballooning policies, which could undercut their attacks on Democrats for being the party of fiscal irresponsibility.
Some Republicans in Congress have expressed concern that the apparent glee with which Trump is touting Vought-ordered cuts could turn public opinion against them if the shutdown stretches on.
As a counter, some members of Congress have indicated a desire for caution in the unilateral changes being proposed and discussed amidst the shutdown, citing potential backlash from the public and within their own party.
According to Stern, however, the White House, and Vought, may view the long-term benefits as well worth the short-term challenges. For Russ, for myself, for anybody who's in the budget space, this country is going bankrupt, he said. Whatever the political risks of trying to do the right thing, we have to do it. If we do nothing, this country will implode.
