Congress

How Russ Vought’s ‘trademark chaos’ is shaking up the shutdown fight

Published

1 year ago

September 26, 2025

Russ Vought careened into the escalating government shutdown fight this week, threatening mass layoffs of federal workers if Democrats don’t capitulate to President Donald Trump and fellow Republicans.

For those who know the White House budget director’s long history in Washington, it was only a matter of time.

“You could have anticipated what was coming,” Bill Hoagland, a former longtime top Senate GOP budget aide, said in an interview. “He is clever. But he has a clear intent here, which I think is to strangle the beast. And he knows how to play the game.”

With the layoffs threat Wednesday, Vought has cast himself as a main character in the shutdown standoff ahead of the Tuesday midnight funding deadline. It’s a role he is no doubt comfortable playing, having navigated dozens of spending fights as a congressional aide, think-tank operative and Trump official.

Now Vought, 49, is well positioned to further execute his long-held views on government spending if federal cash stops cold, after months of groundwork undermining bipartisan funding negotiations and upending the federal bureaucracy.

His ideological allies are already excited by what Vought might have in store at the Office of Management and Budget if the government does in fact shut down at midnight Sept. 30.

Paul Winfree, who served as Trump’s director of budget policy during his first term, called Vought’s threat a “brilliant” move.

During the last shutdown under Trump, which ended in early 2019, Vought served in an understudy role. Administration officials at the time sought to play down the impact on most Americans, Winfree noted.

“This time, Russ is putting the pain on the bureaucracy,” he said.

Democrats, meanwhile, are stewing and eager to make Vought a bogeyman of the partisan fight after sparring with him for years.

Soon after Blue Light News published the OMB memo Wednesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called him a “malignant political hack.”

“We will not be intimidated by your threat to engage in mass firings,” Jeffries wrote on social media. “Get lost.”

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who has long criticized the OMB chief as the House’s top Democratic appropriator, said in a statement Thursday that the layoffs threat was “Russ Vought’s trademark chaos.”

An OMB spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment about Vought’s approach to the potential shutdown. But what is clear from Vought’s history and his own statements is that he sees a method to the madness.

Speaking on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast last week, he called the shutdown deadline “a very critical juncture” and said that Republicans have Democrats “in a very good position, where they should be with us to fund the government.”

The OMB director’s latest move fits neatly into the playbook he articulated during vetting earlier this year for Senate confirmation, after helping write the Heritage Foundation’s controversial “Project 2025” recommendations during Trump’s campaign for a second presidency.

Put simply, he thinks Congress can set a ceiling for agency funding but a president can spend less.

One first-term Trump administration official said no one familiar with the administration’s strategy was surprised by Vought’s memo to agencies this week. Shutdowns “create a natural inflection point between essential and nonessential,” said the person, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about White House thinking.

“If the government can function with only essential employees and not inflict pain on the American people … then why would we not want that?” the former official added. “It proves the point the administration has been making from the campaign all the way to day one: That there is bloat and excess within the government.”

In the roughly 45 years Congress has been letting federal funding lapse amid partisan standoffs, OMB directors have frequently used their power to either lessen the impact of a government shutdown or maximize it, depending how the White House wanted to sway the negotiations.

Vought is now taking those powers to a new level. Threatening to terminate federal jobs during a funding lapse goes far beyond the usual discretion of a budget chief to determine “essential” and “nonessential” work during government shutdowns, further demonstrating how a motivated ideologue can torpedo norms in Congress as well as the executive branch by testing the limits of a typically bureaucratic and process-focused role.

Not every Trump ally understands the calculus, however. Another official who served in the first Trump administration, also granted anonymity to speak frankly about Vought’s moves, said it could be “just a really heavy-handed way of spooking Democrats.”

There is no obvious advantage to firing large swaths of federal workers during a government shutdown, besides applying pressure on Democrats, because the White House has already been executing those “reduction-in-force” layoffs, the former official said. And after the administration fired federal workers under the Department of Government Efficiency initiative earlier this year, the Trump administration has since rescinded many of those terminations.

“Most people I’ve talked to just assume it’s a scare tactic,” the person said. “Everyone was like: Well, why are they hiring all of these DOGE fires back, and then suddenly want to do another RIF? Why do you need a shutdown to do a RIF?”

Democrats so far are showing no sign of retreat. Rep. Glenn Ivey, who represents droves of federal workers in suburban Maryland, said in an interview Thursday that Vought is “clearly the bad cop” in the government shutdown standoff.

“We figured that out a long time ago, and also the fact that he’s not paying attention to following the law or the Constitution,” Ivey said. “So I think for Democrats on Blue Light News, we understand we’ve got to fight back. And this is the time to do it.”

Over the past eight months, Vought has been far bolder in testing the bounds of his role as budget director than he was during his initial stint leading the budget office during Trump’s first presidency, when OMB withheld aid to Ukraine in 2019, contributing to the president’s first impeachment.

He has since openly questioned the constitutionality of the federal law requiring presidents to get congressional approval before canceling federal cash — asserting that funding for programs Trump considers “woke and weaponized” can’t be spent in a way that’s consistent with the president’s agenda. Last month, he orchestrated a legally dubious move to unilaterally cancel billions of dollars in approved spending without the consent of lawmakers.

Over the summer, Vought told reporters he wants government funding negotiations on Capitol Hill to be “less bipartisan,” infuriating lawmakers of both parties who have long led those delicate talks.

“He becomes enemy No. 1 on the Democrat side,” Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), a senior appropriator, said in an interview this month.

“If you’re a Democrat — even just like a mainstream Democrat — your predisposition might be to help negotiate with Republicans on a funding mechanism,” Womack said. “Why would you do that if you know that whatever you negotiate is going to be subject to the knife pulled out by Russ Vought? That’s a challenge for us.”

Meredith Lee Hill, Nicholas Wu and Sophia Cai contributed to this report.

Congress

Trump apparently shares Tom Cotton’s phone number in push to make Daylight Saving Time permanent

Published

1 hour ago

October 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump appeared to share Sen. Tom Cotton’s phone number in a Saturday morning social media post imploring the Arkansas Republican to get behind a bill to make Daylight Saving Time permanent.

“Almost everybody wants “The Sunshine Protection Act” to pass, except for Tom Cotton,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “To the Great People of Arkansas, please let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself.”

The president has spent months personally pushing Senate Republicans to end the practice that sees Americans change their clocks twice a year, cementing more sunlight hours in the evening for all twelve months of the calendar. Cotton, whom Trump called “a friend of mine” in the Saturday post, has long argued that making daylight saving time permanent would leave children, farmers and other early risers in the dark for hours on winter mornings.

One of Trump’s key selling points on Saturday: the PGA tour.

“The PGA TOUR, as an example, needs more Daylight in the afternoon in order to finish their Tournaments,” he said, attaching a letter from PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp endorsing the bill. ”Likewise, regular Golfers, Tennis Players, Hunters and, perhaps most importantly, Farmers who want more Daylight to play or work.

A Blue Light News call to the cellphone number went to voicemail. A spokesperson for Cotton did not respond to a request for comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The current version of the bill was introduced in the House in January 2025 by Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), with Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) leading the Senate version. The legislation would make daylight saving time permanent across most of the country, ending the twice-yearly clock changes. The legislation has been stalled in the Senate since July.

The president encouraged supporters of the bill, dubbed the “The Sunshine Protection Act,” to call Cotton to “let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself.”

During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, he publicly gave out the personal cellphone number of then-rival Sen. Lindsey Graham after the South Carolina Republican criticized him. Trump, who came to count on Graham as a reliable Senate ally after he won the presidency, revisited the moment during Graham’s funeral in July, acknowledging that sharing the number was something he “shouldn’t have done.”

Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.

Congress

Sanders to rally for Troy Jackson in Maine

Published

21 hours ago

October 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Bernie Sanders will hit the road for Troy Jackson in Maine starting Oct. 10, the first time the progressive leader will stump for the candidate this cycle.

The Vermont independent plans to hold three rallies with Jackson, according to an itinerary shared first with Blue Light News: first in Bangor on Oct. 10th followed by Lewiston and Biddeford on Oct. 11.

The Maine swing will kick off Sanders’ travel for the final stretch of the midterms, covering ground throughout October for House and Senate candidates, POLITICO reported.

“Bernie and Troy know that working people built this country and deserve a government that fights for them,” Jackson spokesperson Dan Gottlieb told Blue Light News. “Susan Collins has had nearly 30 years to deliver, and working Mainers are still getting squeezed while she serves the billionaires and corporate interests who bankroll her campaigns. Mainers don’t need another six years of excuses.”

Sanders campaigned ahead of major wins for progressives in the primary season, speaking at more than 60 rallies since last year’s Fight the Oligarchy tour and endorsing more than 90 candidates up and down the ballot.

He’s also opening his substantial $23 million campaign war chest, POLITICO reported, and contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars toMinnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s Senate campaign and others including Angie Nixon in Florida and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison,

Sanders will return to Maine after initially backing Graham Platner’s campaign for Senate. Allegations reported by POLITICO ultimately led him to call on the Democratic nominee to drop out of the race.

Sanders had not formally endorsed Jackson since he clinched the nomination from Platner, though he previously backed Jackson’s initial run for governor.

Congress

Hill: Trump’s ‘lack of favorability’ creating challenging politics

Published

22 hours ago

October 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Financial Services Chair French Hill said he has “no concerns” about winning back his Arkansas seat in the upcoming midterm elections, but the six-term House member acknowledged the political headwinds for his party.

“I consider the atmosphere a very tough political environment right now because of President [Donald] Trump’s lack of favorability at the top, and you know people are concerned about, as I say, what it’s like to live under an inflated economy the last four years,” Hill said in an interview.

Hill is in a solidly red district, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, and said he is up against a “weaker candidate this time than I’ve had in past races.” Polling in the district, however, has shown a tighter race. The two polls done this year placed Democratic challenger Chris Jones ahead of Hill by a few percentage points. Any perceived polling victory for Jones is still well within the margin of error, and one of the polls had a Democratic sponsor.

Stephannie Lane Baker, a spokesperson for Jones, said that “of all the Republicans in Congress, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee doesn’t get to dodge responsibility for this economy. He’s in trouble, and he knows it.”

Additionally, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s PAC, Ready for the Fight, committed more than $1 million in television ads through the next five weeks for Jones’ race in Arkansas’s 2nd District, Jordan Abudayyeh, a spokesperson for the PAC confirmed. Overall Democratic spending on advertising for the race was just over $1 million, primarily made up by contributions from the Ready for the Fight PAC, with Republicans spending almost $2.7 million on ad buys, according to AdImpact, an advertising tracking service.

Hill said he has addressed affordability concerns “head on” this Congress.

“My work on housing, my work on the Price Stability Act, my work to try to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse, and drop the federal budget deficit as a percentage of GDP,” Hill said. “All these things can contribute to a more affordable environment for people. So I’ve tried to make that a forefront of my campaign this year.”

Hill was a key architect of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bipartisan housing affordability bill that became law in July. The Price Stability Act, which is unlikely to become law this year, would narrow the Federal Reserve’s current dual mandate of pursuing maximum employment and price stability to focus exclusively on containing inflation.