Congress

‘Pain on the bureaucracy’: Russ Vought’s crusade upends the shutdown fight

Published

9 months 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

Johnson says he will send housing bill to Trump on Monday

Published

16 hours ago

June 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Speaker Mike Johsnon said he plans to send President Donald Trump a bipartisan housing bill Monday, just days after the president abruptly canceled a signing ceremony for the legislation after Congress failed to pass his elections security act.

Speaking with Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Johnson said the 21st Century ROAD To Housing Act is a Republican priority for lowering costs for Americans.

“I’m going to send the bill over to him on Monday, and it will become law,” the Louisiana Republican told host Maria Bartiromo. “I certainly want him to take the biggest, boldest marker that he has and do that big Trump signature proudly on that legislation because we’re delivering for the people, and that’s what he wants to do.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Johnson’s remarks.

The bill is the product of almost a year of back-and-forth between all four congressional corners and aims to increase affordability by boosting housing supply and home ownership. It passed both chambers of Congress with wide bipartisan support.

Trump was scheduled to sign the bill into law last week but canceled the ceremony “until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency.”

Trump’s SAVE America Act would require voters to present a photo ID at the ballot box and effectively end mail-in voting. Trump has also said he would like the bill to include prohibitions on transgender athletes competing. But Republican leaders have repeatedly indicated the legislation does not have enough votes to pass.

Congressional leaders appeared taken aback by Trump’s signing cancellation, but Johnson on Sunday said he and the president have since met in the Oval Office to discuss the housing bill “in great detail.”

“We made a lot of promises to the voters, and we’re fulfilling those every single day of this Congress,” Johnson said. “This is a big part of that because this will increase the availability, the access to more housing, bring down cost, cut regulations, do the things we know are very important for that market. The president and I talked about that at length. Of course he wants to do those things.”

But if Trump does not sign the housing bill into law within the next few days, it would still become law unless he were to veto it. Congress also has the power to override a presidential veto.

Congress

Sen. Thom Tillis rails against Trump’s fixation on voting legislation

Published

16 hours ago

June 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Thom Tillis on Sunday expressed frustration with President Donald Trump’s continued fixation on passing the SAVE America Act.

In an interview with BLN’s “Face the Nation,” the retiring North Carolina Republican lamented “the impossible task” of implementing the requirements of the legislation ahead of November’s crucial midterms.

“Why are we doing more things to undermine our confidence in elections, rather than getting the strong message out that will win for Republicans this year?” Tillis said.

Rather than promoting the bill — which would require voters to present a photo ID at the ballot box and effectively end widespread mail-in voting — Tillis said Republicans should tell voters about “the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America” while accepting the current voting laws.

“Win by the good results that Republicans have produced and stop undermining the confidence in the elections,” said Tillis. “This is a bedrock of our 250-year history of success as the democracy that changed the world. Let’s not mess with that between now and November.”

Trump has said the SAVE America Act is his “No. 1 priority” ahead of midterms, going so far as to abruptly cancel a bill signing for major bipartisan legislation on housing affordability until Congress passes his elections bill. But many Democrats are staunchly against the bill, arguing it could disenfranchise millions of voters, and Republican leaders in Congress have repeatedly indicated it does not have the votes to pass.

Tillis co-sponsored the original SAVE America Act but has objected to Trump’s version of the legislation, which would also bar transgender athletes from women’s sports.

It’s not the first time Tillis has clashed with Trump.

Earlier this year, Tillis blocked Trump’s Fed chair nominee, Kevin Warsh, until the Justice Department dropped an investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. He has also spoken out against the Justice Department’s $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” calling it a “payout for punks.” And he has emerged as a fierce critic of Bill Pulte, Trump’s interim director of national intelligence.

“Let’s try and figure out a way to completely and finally end these distractions so that we can focus on the damage Democrats could do if they take the House, if they beat incumbent Republicans in the Senate. That’s what Republicans need to be talking about between now and November,” Tillis said Sunday.

Congress

Sen. Bill Cassidy on Trump: ‘Sometimes he acts as if Congress is merely an appendage’

Published

17 hours ago

June 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Bill Cassidy appeared to question President Donald Trump’s view of Congress, saying in an interview that he is not sure Trump grasps that Congress “is a separate body, separate from the presidency.”

“Sometimes he acts as if Congress is merely an appendage, and, frankly, sometimes Congress acts like it’s an appendage,” the Louisiana Republican said in a pre-taped interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation” that aired Sunday.

The latest criticism in a public clash between the two leaders, Cassidy also told host Margaret Brennan that he would be focused on affordability, including the cost of health care and groceries, if he were president.

“If I were president, I would be focused on those people that they have, my people, our people, us at the kitchen table. How do you make their life better? And that’s what I think the president should be focused on,” Cassidy said.

The relationship between Cassidy and Trump has been rocky for some time. Cassidy was one of only a handful of Republican leaders who voted to convict Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Trump and Cassidy recently clashed in a closed-door meeting between GOP leaders, with Cassidy admitting he raised his voice to “match” the president’s.

“The president said something negative about me. I received it as attempting to bully me from asking a question that I think the American people need to know, and I’m not going to be bullied,” Cassidy said at the time.

However, after receiving a special briefing from Vice President JD Vance and special envoy Steve Witkoff, Cassidy changed his vote on a resolution designed to rein in Trump’s power to wage war against Iran.

“They said right now the negotiations are delicate, and they could collapse if they’re not nursed along in the appropriate way. I can accept that,” Cassidy said.

“That’s the reason they said for their kind of lack of being forthcoming. I can accept that, but my goal was to be briefed, to have the truth in order to make a decision for the benefit of my country, and that was satisfied.”

Still, Cassidy’s stance against Trump has cost him: After serving more than a decade in the Senate, Cassidy lost his campaign for renomination after Trump endorsed against him. Rep. Julia Letlow will be the Louisiana Republican Senate candidate this fall.