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RUSS VOUGHT IS GOING TO DAMAGE TRUMP EVEN MORE THAN ELON MUSK DID  
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Alex Shephard
October 8, 2025
The New Republic
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_ Americans, and even many Republicans in Congress, don’t like it
when an unelected bureaucrat makes huge cuts to the government.
President Trump posted an AI video of Vought as the Grim Reaper. The
Project 2025 architect has lived up to the billing _

Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, has exerted his
influence over nearly every corner of President Trump’s Washington
with his command of the levers of the federal budget., Photo credit:
Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

 

Russell Vought has been “dreaming” of a government shutdown
“since puberty”—at least according to Utah Senator Mike Lee,
who boasted
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the head of the Office of Management and Budget’s mastery of the
dark arts shortly after the shutdown began a week ago. “This is
going to empower Trump—and the American people,” Lee concluded.

That’s been the Republicans’ shutdown message for some time:
raising the specter of Vought as a thinly veiled threat to
Democrats. Practically since Vought was confirmed as OMB director in
February, Republicans have suggested
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he would use a shutdown to inflict maximum damage to the
administrative state. Last week, as anxiety was spiking about what
increasingly looks like a lengthy shutdown, President Trump posted an
AI video
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Vought as the Grim Reaper. The Project 2025 architect
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lived up to the billing, cutting billions in federal funding to blue
states, threatening to cull entire agencies, and even mulling—in
clear violation of federal law—not giving shutdown workers back pay.

Trump and Vought have clearly come to two conclusions. The first is
that they have the upper hand in negotiations to reopen the
government. As federal workers sit at home or work without pay and
government services further deteriorate, the Democrats will be forced
to cave—accepting a deal to fund the government that doesn’t
extend the enhanced Obamacare subsidies. The second is that it’s a
win-win. They want to gut the government anyway; if the shutdown drags
on for weeks or even months, so be it. But the administration is
already overplaying its hand, and moreover it’s repeating mistakes
that it made just a few months ago when it gave free rein to
a different nihilist
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Musk—to take a hammer to the government.

Trump lives in a bubble where everything he does is rapturously
received and any criticism or pushback is inherently illegitimate. So
the president and his White House minions probably don’t
believe—or don’t care—that the public blames the GOP more than
Democrats for the shutdown. A second-term administration has that
luxury, but other Republicans are not so fortunate. There are
suggestions that Republicans in the Senate—where the shutdown is
currently stuck—are particularly frustrated.

The administration was roundly criticized Tuesday for an OMB draft
memo
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that, contra a law passed after the 2019 shutdown, federal workers are
not guaranteed back pay. Susan Collins, a moderate who has
been instrumental in negotiations
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reopen the government, said that Congress had “settled”
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when it passed a law guaranteeing back pay in 2019; John Thune, the
chamber’s Republican leader, pretty much concurred
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Thom Tillis, another key Republican vote, was blunt
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“I’m not an attorney,” he said, “but I think it’s pretty bad
strategy to even say that sort of stuff.” Later on Tuesday, as is
his wont, Trump hung his Senate peers out to dry by precisely saying
that sort of stuff. “I would say it depends on who we’re talking
about,” Trump said
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asked about back pay for furloughed workers. “For the most part,
we’re going to take care of our people. There are some people that
really don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of
them in a different way.”

It isn’t just open threats like this that invite public ire;
Trump’s and Vought’s actions are unpopular too. The decision to
use the shutdown as an opportunity to cut federal jobs and spending is
likely playing a crucial role in the public perception that this
shutdown is the GOP’s fault, even if it was technically started
because Democrats didn’t vote for a funding bill. It’s hard to
suggest that the administration wants or is even trying to reopen the
government when it is also gleefully boasting about its hatchet man
running around firing people.

Even if the shutdown doesn’t have long-term political
ramifications—it will likely be forgotten by the 2026
midterms—Vought’s actions may play decisive roles in 2025 races,
such as close gubernatorial contests in Virginia and New Jersey. The
threat to deny back pay to federal workers (and the shutdown more
broadly) will hit particularly hard in Virginia, a state with
a disproportionately high
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of federal workers thanks to its proximity to Washington, D.C. Vought
also suspended billions
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funding for the Gateway Tunnel, which would connect Newark, New
Jersey, and New York City—a project that is very popular with
commuters.

The Trump-Vought shutdown is already affecting everyday life across
America. More than 620,000 federal workers
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been furloughed, a number that will rise considerably as agencies run
out of carryover funds. Services at national parks are being cut, and
some locations are being forced to close
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have also been significant disruptions in air travel: Hollywood
Burbank Airport was without air traffic controllers for part of
Monday
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there were significant flight delays
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major airports across the country on Tuesday.

This is a lot like what happened a few months ago, when Musk’s
Department of Government Efficiency was moving fast and breaking
things in the federal bureaucracy—and one of those things was
airline safety. Funding cuts and an associated exodus of air traffic
controllers led to widespread shortages
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the spring and may have contributed to disasters, accidents, and near
misses. Within three months of DOGE’s launch, nearly 60 percent of
the public disapproved of its actions
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its rapid pace—a number that is even more devastating considering
that the effort was broadly popular when it was launched in January.

One person in the administration was especially peeved about DOGE.
Last month, in a profile on Vought, _The New York Times_ reported
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he “could barely contain his frustration” with DOGE for
“unilaterally axing items” that he had “intended to keep.”
Reportedly, “during one flash of irritation,” Vought told staff,
“We’re going to let DOGE break things, and we’ll pick up the
pieces later.”

And yet, that is exactly what Vought is now doing. It must feel like
déjà vu for some Republican senators. Thune, who back in March
had urged
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to hand off DOGE’s work to the Senate-confirmed “leaders” in
Trump’s Cabinet, now appears equally frustrated with the Cabinet
member to whom this work has been handed off. “We don’t control
what he’s going to do,” he said
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of shutting down the government and handing the keys to Russ
Vought.”

Vought is, to be clear, nowhere near the buffoon that Musk is. But
it’s undeniable that people like the idea of federal spending cuts
more than they do the reality of them. It also seems clear that
Musk’s constant need to draw attention to himself meant that
he—not Trump or his administration—took much of the blame for
DOGE’s bumbling sociopathy. DOGE was seen by a slice of the public
as its own thing, as many voters gave it a thumbs-down while still
broadly approving of the Trump presidency.

But Trump has little to insulate him now. Vought is not some temporary
White House employee who’s dabbling in the art of sabotaging the
government before he returns to his “job” as the world’s richest
man. He is Trump’s personal hatchet man and, according to the
president himself, the Grim Reaper personified. Decking the dorky,
bespectacled Vought in a hooded robe and handing him a scythe may seem
amusing to Republicans in the early days of the shutdown, but as the
cuts get deeper, the mood will quickly turn sour.

_[ALEX SHEPHARD [[link removed]] is
senior editor of The New Republic, where he has covered politics and
culture since 2015. His work has also appeared in New York, GQ, The
Atlantic, The Nation, and other publications.  
[link removed] ]_

* Government Shutdown
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* Russell Vought
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* Project 2025
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* OMB
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* Office of Management and Budget
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* DOGE
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* Donald Trump
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* Federal agencies
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* federal government
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* Federal Budget
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* federal workers
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* Government Workers
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* Trump 2.0
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* MAGA
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* GOP
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* Elon Musk
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