Shutdown Layoffs Threat Shows Limit of GOP’s Fear Tactics

One of the reasons congressional Democrats are unwilling to accept a “clean” stopgap spending bill that would avert a government shutdown until November 21 is the pattern of lawless power grabs by the Trump administration, and particularly by OMB director and Project 2025 co-architect Russell Vought . Indeed, the Democratic counterproposal to the GOP’s “clean” continuing resolution includes a demand that spending clawbacks by Vought be reversed and forsworn. But as the two parties drift toward a government shutdown in five days, with no negotiations in sight, Vought has now thumbed his nose at the Democrats, all precedents, and congressional authority over the federal government by announcing that agencies disfavored by the administration will have massive “reductions in force” i