Politics
Mass firings, unpaid furloughs? The Trump loyalist who picked up where Musk left off
WASHINGTON — It has been four months since Elon Musk, President Trump’s bureaucratic demolition man, abandoned Washington in a flurry of recriminations and chaos.
But the Trump administration’s crusade to dismantle much of the federal government never ended. It’s merely under new management: the less colorful but more methodical Russell Vought, director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget.
Vought has become the backroom architect of Trump’s aggressive strategy — slashing the federal workforce, freezing billions in congressionally approved spending in actions his critics often call illegal.
Now Vought has proposed using the current government shutdown as an opportunity to fire thousands of bureaucrats permanently instead of merely furloughing them temporarily. If any do return to work, he has suggested that the government need not give them back pay — contrary to a law Trump signed in 2019.
Those threats may prove merely to be pressure tactics as Trump tries to persuade Democrats to accept spending cuts on Medicaid, Obamacare and other programs.
But the shutdown battle is the current phase of a much larger one. Vought’s long-term goals, he says, are to “bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will” and “deconstruct the administrative state.”
He’s still only partway done.
“I’d estimate that Vought has implemented maybe 10% or 15% of his program,” said Donald F. Kettl, former dean of the public policy school at the University of Maryland. “There may be as much as 90% to go. If this were a baseball game, we’d be in the top of the second inning.”
Along the way, Vought (pronounced “vote”) has chipped relentlessly at Congress’ ability to control the use of federal funds, massively expanding the power of the president.
“He has waged the most serious attack on separation of powers in American history,” said Elaine Kamarck, an expert on federal management at the Brookings Institution.
He’s done that mainly by using OMB, the White House office that oversees spending, to control the day-to-day purse strings of federal agencies — and deliberately keeping Congress in the dark along the way.
“If Congress has given us authority that is too broad, then we’re going to use that authority aggressively,” Vought said last month.
Federal judges have ruled some of the administration’s actions illegal, but they have allowed others to stand. Vought’s proposal to use the shutdown to fire thousands of bureaucrats hasn’t been tested in court.
Vought developed his aggressive approach during two decades as a conservative budget expert, culminating in his appointment as director of OMB in Trump’s first term.
In 2019, he stretched the limits of presidential power by helping Trump get around a congressional ban on funding for a border wall, by declaring an emergency and transferring military funds. He froze congressionally mandated aid for Ukraine, the action that led to Trump’s first impeachment.
Even so, Vought complained that Trump had been needlessly restrained by cautious first-term aides.
“The lawyers come in and say, ‘It’s not legal. You can’t do that,’” he said in 2023. “I don’t want President Trump having to lose a moment of time having fights in the Oval Office over whether something is legal.”
Vought is a proponent of the “unitary executive” theory, the argument that the president should have unfettered control over every tentacle of the executive branch, including independent agencies such as the Federal Reserve.
When Congress designates money for federal programs, he has argued, “It’s a ceiling. It is not a floor. It’s not the notion that you have to spend every dollar.”
Most legal experts disagree; a 1974 law prohibits the president from unilaterally withholding money Congress has appropriated.
Vought told conservative activists in 2023 that if Trump returned to power, he would deliberately seek to inflict “trauma” on federal employees.
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work.”
When Vought returned to OMB for Trump’s second term, he appeared to be in Musk’s shadow. But once the flamboyant Tesla chief executive flamed out, the OMB director got to work to make DOGE’s work the foundation for lasting changes.
He extended many of DOGE’s funding cuts by slowing down OMB’s approval of disbursements — turning them into de facto freezes.
He helped persuade Republicans in Congress to cancel $9 billion in previously approved foreign aid and public broadcasting support, a process known as “rescission.”
To cancel an additional $4.9 billion, he revived a rarely used gambit called a “pocket rescission,” freezing the funds until they expired.
Along the way, he quietly stopped providing Congress with information on spending, leaving legislators in the dark on whether programs were being axed.
DOGE and OMB eliminated jobs so quickly that the federal government stopped publishing its ongoing tally of federal employees. (Any number would only be approximate; some layoffs are tied up in court, and thousands of employees who opted for voluntary retirement are technically still on the payroll.)
The result was a significant erosion of Congress’ “power of the purse,” which has historically included not only approving money but also monitoring how it was spent.
Even some Republican members of Congress seethed. “They would like a blank check … and I don’t think that’s appropriate,” said former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
But the GOP majorities in both the House and Senate, pleased to see spending cut by any means, let Vought have his way. Even McConnell voted to approve the $9-billion rescission request.
Vought’s newest innovation, the mid-shutdown layoffs, would be another big step toward reducing Congress’ role.
“The result would be a dramatic, instantaneous shift in the separation of powers,” Kettl said. “The Trump team could kill programs unilaterally without the inconvenience of going to Congress.”
Some of the consequences could be catastrophic, Kettl and other scholars warned. Kamarck calls them “time bombs.”
“One or more of these decisions is going to blow up in Trump’s face,” she said.
“FEMA won’t be capable of reacting to the next hurricane. The National Weather Service won’t have the forecasters it needs to analyze the data from weather balloons.”
Even before the government shutdown, she noted, the FAA was grappling with a shortage of air traffic controllers. This week the FAA slowed takeoffs at several airports in response to growing shortages, including at air traffic control centers in Atlanta, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.
In theory, a future Congress could undo many of Vought’s actions, especially if Democrats win control of the House or, less likely, the Senate.
But rebuilding agencies that have been radically shrunken would take much longer than cutting them down, the scholars said.
“Much of this will be difficult to reverse when Democrats come back into fashion,” Kamarck said.
Indeed, that’s part of Vought’s plan.
“We want to make sure that the bureaucracy can’t reconstitute itself later in future administrations,” he said in April in a podcast with Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who was slain on Sept. 10.
He’s pleased with the progress he’s made, he told reporters in July.
“We’re having fun,” he said.
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President Donald Trump is taking his feud with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to the libertarian lawmaker’s home turf on Wednesday.
Trump is expected to hold an event in Hebron, Kentucky, on Wednesday, the Republican Party of Kentucky announced on social media Monday. It’s located in the northern part of the state’s 4th Congressional District, which Massie represents.
Massie’s primary rival, Ed Gallrein, will attend the Hebron event, his campaign confirmed to Fox News Digital on Tuesday, while deferring all other questions on the matter to the White House.
Massie himself will miss the event due to a previously scheduled official engagement, his spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
KHANNA AND MASSIE THREATEN TO FORCE A VOTE ON IRAN AS PROSPECT OF US ATTACK LOOMS
President Donald Trump will be visiting Rep. Thomas Massie’s congressional district on Wednesday. (Win McNamee/Getty Images; Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
When asked about the visit, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston told Fox News Digital, “President Trump will visit the great states of Ohio and Kentucky on Wednesday to tout his economic victories and detail his Administration’s aggressive, ongoing efforts to lower prices and make America more affordable.”
The president has thrown his considerable influence behind Gallrein to unseat Massie after the GOP lawmaker publicly defied Trump on multiple occasions.
MASSIE, KHANNA TO VISIT DOJ TO REVIEW UNREDACTED EPSTEIN FILES
Massie most recently was one of two House Republicans to vote to stop Trump’s joint operation in Iran with Israel, though the legislation was successfully blocked by the majority of GOP lawmakers and a handful of Democrats.
Ed Gallrein, left, seen with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House. (Ed Gallrein congressional campaign)
He was also one of two Republicans to vote against Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” last year.
Trump in turn has hurled a slew of personal attacks against Massie, including calling him “weak and pathetic” in a statement endorsing Gallrein in October.
“He only votes against the Republican Party, making life very easy for the Radical Left. Unlike ‘lightweight’ Massie, a totally ineffective LOSER who has failed us so badly, CAPTAIN ED GALLREIN IS A WINNER WHO WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN,” Trump posted on Truth Social at the time, one of numerous criticisms targeting the Kentucky Republican through the years.
He called Massie the “worst Republican congressman” in July amid Massie’s bipartisan push to force the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release its files on Jeffrey Epstein.
Then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, and Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, during a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
But Massie has so far appeared to defy political gravity despite making political enemies out of both Trump and House GOP leaders.
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He handily defeated multiple primary challengers in 2024 and 2022, despite public feuds with Trump, and has served his district since 2012.
Gallrein is a retired Navy SEAL and farmer who launched his campaign days after Trump made his endorsement. Their primary election day is May 19.
As anxiety mounts among California Democrats about the potential of a Republican being elected governor, the state party will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on polling to assess the viability of the sprawling field of candidates hoping to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom, according to plans released Tuesday.
The move comes after nearly every Democratic candidate refused party leaders’ call last week to withdraw from the race to avoid splitting the vote in the June primary — an outcome that could lead to a Republican being elected to statewide office for the first time in two decades.
“Candidates have filed, and now they’ve got the opportunity to showcase their viability, their path to win. I want to simply ensure that everybody has information to fully understand the current state of the race,” said Rusty Hicks, the leader of the California Democratic Party.
As campaign season ramps up, the series of six polls will allow “candidates, supporters, the media, voters, anyone and everyone to have a clear understanding of what is or is not happening in this particular race,” he said.
The filing deadline to appear on the June 2 ballot was Friday. Three days earlier, Hicks released an open letter urging candidates who did not have a path to victory to withdraw from the race. Of the nine prominent Democrats who had announced runs for governor, only one heeded his call: former state Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon.
That means the eight other candidates’ names will appear on the ballot, regardless of whether they decide to later drop out. And that creates the possibility of a Republican winning the race because of how California elections are decided.
The state has a voter-approved top-two primary system, under which the two candidates who receive the most votes in the June primary advance to the November general election, regardless of party.
Two prominent Republicans will appear on the ballot: former conservative commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. Even though Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1, and the state’s electorate last elevated Republicans to statewide office in 2006, it is mathematically possible for Democrats to splinter the vote, allowing the two GOP candidates to advance.
Under such a scenario, not only would Republicans be guaranteed the leadership of the nation’s most-populous state, but Democratic voter turnout also would probably be depressed in November, potentially affecting down-ballot races such as those that could determine control of Congress.
Hicks’ call last week prompted concerns among candidates of color, including former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, that the effort was aimed at every nonwhite candidate in the race.
The state party chairman responded that his letter was not aimed at any specific candidate.
“It’s not something I lose sleep over,” Hicks said when asked about the racial claims. But he added that the voter surveys will be conducted by Los Angeles-based Evitarus, the state’s only Black- and Latino-led full-service polling firm, and will oversample historically underrepresented communities: Latino, Black and Asian American voters.
Hicks said the polling will cost “multiple six figures” but did not specify the exact amount.
The first poll will be released on March 24, and then five additional surveys will come out every seven to 10 days until voters start receiving mail ballots in early May.
“We’re putting this forward to ensure everyone is armed with the information they need to clearly have an eyes-wide-open assessment of where the state of the race currently is between now and when ballots land in the mailboxes of voters,” Hicks said.
Politics
Trump reveals top issues GOP should focus on to secure midterms victory: ‘I’ve never been more confident’
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President Donald Trump outlined five key items he believes will tip the upcoming midterm elections in the GOP’s favor — if Republicans can muscle them through Congress.
“No transgender mutilation surgery for our children,” Trump told an audience at the Republican Members’ Issues Conference. “Voter ID, citizenship [verification], mail-in ballots, we don’t want men playing in women’s sports.”
“It’s the best of Trump. Those are the best of Trump. This is the number one priority, it should be, for the House,” Trump said.
Trump’s exhortations to Republican lawmakers come as the GOP wages an uphill campaign to hang on to a controlling majority in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. He framed his legislative priorities as a way for Republicans to capitalize on popular demands within the GOP base that would increase their chances of preserving a Republican governing trifecta.
President Donald Trump gestures as he boards Air Force One before departing Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, on March 1, 2026. (Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images)
HOUSE REPUBLICANS PUSH ELECTION OVERHAUL WITH VOTER ID, MAIL-IN BALLOT CHANGES AHEAD OF MIDTERMS
Currently, Republicans hold just four more seats than Democrats in the House of Representatives.
The GOP holds six more than Democrats in the Senate.
To keep the numbers in their favor, Republicans will need to beat historical trends. In the vast majority of past cases, parties that capture the White House in presidential elections face blowback in the midterms. Notably, the last time a majority party gained seats in both chambers of Congress in the midterms came under the Bush administration in 2002, following devastating attacks on the World Trade Center.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, left, and President Donald Trump shake hands during an Invest America roundtable in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, District of Columbia, on June 9, 2025. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
REPUBLICANS, TRUMP RUN INTO SENATE ROADBLOCK ON VOTER ID BILL
Trump said he believes Republicans have a shot at bucking the trend come November if they focus on his list.
“It’ll guarantee the midterms,” Trump said of his legislative priorities.
Republicans have already taken strikes towards two of them through the SAVE America Act, a piece of legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and cast a ballot. That bill cleared the House last month for a second time in the 119th Congress.
Its future is uncertain in the Senate, where Republicans would need the assistance of seven Democrats to overcome the 60-vote threshold to defeat a filibuster. Democrats, for their part, believe the legislation would disenfranchise voters who cannot readily provide documented proof of citizenship through a passport, REAL ID, or birth certificate.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. has promised a vote on the package despite its long odds.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, talks with a guest during a “Only Citizens Vote Bus Tour” rally in Upper Senate Park to urge Congress to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
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Several members have introduced bills on transgender issues, although none of them have cleared either chamber.
“I’ve never been more confident that if we keep these promises and deliver on this popular agenda, the American people will stand with us in overwhelming numbers, just as they did in 2024,” Trump said.
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Trump reveals top issues GOP should focus on to secure midterms victory: ‘I’ve never been more confident’
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