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President Donald Trump is utilizing the federal government shutdown to hold out an unprecedented assault on his enemies by extra layoffs of federal staff and cuts to grants aimed toward blue states.
Within the Oval Workplace Tuesday, hours earlier than the shutdown started, Trump informed reporters that “while you shut it down, it’s a must to do layoffs. So, we’d be shedding lots of people which might be going to be very affected, they usually’re Democrats. They’re gonna be Democrats.”
Within the days main as much as the shutdown, congressional Democrats tried to drive Republicans to roll again cuts to Medicaid and Reasonably priced Care Act subsidies — cuts which might be anticipated to lead to as many as 15 million Individuals dropping their medical health insurance whereas elevating premiums for tens of tens of millions extra. Trump and the GOP have blamed Democrats for the shutdown, falsely claiming that they’re pushing to fund free healthcare for “unlawful aliens.”
Nonetheless, they’ve struggled to make this story land with the American public. A Washington Put up ballot launched Thursday discovered that 47% of US adults blame Trump and Republicans for the shutdown, whereas simply 30% blame Democrats and 23% say they’re uncertain. The pattern was divided roughly equally between those that voted for Trump and people who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris (D) in 2024.
In what Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) referred to as an effort to make use of “taxpayer {dollars} to attempt to shift blame,” the web sites for quite a few authorities businesses — together with the US departments of Housing and City Growth (HUD), in addition to Justice, Agriculture, and a number of other others — had been up to date with banners that blamed “Democrats” and the “Radical Left” for the shutdown.
In the meantime, authorities workers, together with these on the Small Enterprise Administration (SBA) had been directed to incorporate comparable partisan language of their out-of-office auto-reply emails.
Specialists have informed Politico that the usage of taxpayer cash for such express partisan messaging possible violates a number of ethics legal guidelines, together with the Anti-Lobbying Act, which forbids the usage of appropriated funds for lobbying actions designed to “assist or defeat laws pending earlier than Congress.” It additionally pushes the boundaries of the Hatch Act, which requires federal packages for use in a nonpartisan style.
The progressive client watchdog group Public Citizen mentioned it has filed complaints in opposition to HUD and the SBA for what it mentioned was an “apparent Hatch Act violation.”
“The SBA and different businesses more and more adopting this unlawful, partisan tactic suppose they’ll get away with it as a result of Trump has gutted any and all ethics oversight of the federal authorities,” mentioned Craig Holman, a authorities ethics skilled with Public Citizen.
After being requested about Trump’s promise to put off “Democrats” at a press convention on Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance informed reporters, “We’re not concentrating on federal businesses primarily based on politics.”
However in a Fact Social submit early Thursday morning Trump struck a considerably totally different tone. He spoke of plans to fulfill with Russell Vought, the director of the White Home’s Workplace of Administration and Price range (OMB), “to find out which of the numerous Democrat Companies, most of that are a political SCAM, he recommends to be minimize. I can’t imagine the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented alternative.”
Trump additionally proudly described Vought as “he of PROJECT 2025 fame,” referencing his main function in crafting the Heritage Basis’s notorious blueprint for a far-right takeover of presidency — a takeover carried out partly by the purging of civil servants disloyal to Trump. Through the 2024 election, Trump repeatedly insisted that he had “nothing to do with” Challenge 2025.
Vought has already begun to unilaterally withhold congressionally appropriated {dollars} for tasks particularly for blue cities and states.
On Wednesday, he mentioned that $18 billion in subway and tunnel funding for New York Metropolis had been “placed on maintain to make sure funding just isn’t flowing primarily based on unconstitutional [diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)] ideas.” Not lengthy earlier than that, Trump had threatened to completely minimize off federal funding to town if its voters elect the democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee and present frontrunner, as its subsequent mayor in November.
Vought then introduced Thursday that he was additionally stripping away one other practically $8 billion value of funding for climate-related tasks, referring to it as “Inexperienced New SCAM funding to gasoline the Left’s local weather agenda.” Vought mentioned that the funding was being withheld solely from tasks in states led by Democrats: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington state.
Home Republicans had been reportedly informed by Vought on Wednesday that mass firings would additionally start in “one to 2” days, although he didn’t define specifics about who can be fired. Nonetheless, a memo Vought issued final week instructed businesses to arrange to remove workers “not according to the president’s priorities,” triggering a lawsuit from federal staff’ unions.
Home Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) informed the press Thursday that Vought was finishing up these cuts “reluctantly” and is “not having fun with the accountability” of deciding which packages and workers get the axe.
However in an interview on Fox Information, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a prime Trump cheerleader, was a bit extra candid, proudly declaring that Trump and Vought are utilizing the shutdown particularly to harm Democrats.
“They’re doing it intentionally. It’s going to hurt them,” Lee mentioned. “As a result of Russ Vought, the OMB director, has been dreaming about this second, getting ready for this second, since puberty.”
Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) mentioned that “Vought is pushing a scheme to show a authorities shutdown right into a weapon to fireplace profession civil servants and dismantle packages Congress has already handed into regulation. That isn’t solely reckless. It’s flatly unlawful and unconstitutional.”
“Have we ever had a president work so onerous to harm the folks he represents?” requested Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). “I’m not going to be intimidated by these crooks.”
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