President Donald Trump posted his intention to restructure government closures as an opportunity to restructure federal workforce and punish detractors, and cut down on social media what he described as a “Democrat agency.”
On Thursday, Trump announced he will be using his post on True Social to meet with budget director Russ Vote, who can speak through “temporary or permanent” spending cuts, and could set the loss dynamics for Democrats.
Recommended Stories
List of 3 itemsEnd of the list
He wrote that he and Vought would “determine which of the many Democratic institutions will be cut.”
“I can’t believe the radical left Democrats have given me this unprecedented opportunity,” Trump said. “They are not stupid people, so this may be the way to hope to make America great again, quietly and quickly!”
The post was notable for the explicit embrace of Project 2025, a controversial policy blueprint drafted by the Conservative Heritage Foundation that Trump distanced during the 2024 reelection campaign.
The effort aims to restructure the federal government on right-wing policies, and Democrats have repeatedly pointed out its goal of warning of the outcome of the second Trump administration.
Trump later reiterated the threat to Democrats’ priorities in an interview with the Right-wing channel One America News (OAN) network.
“There could be fired, and that’s their fault,” Trump said of the Congressional Democrats.
“We can cut down on the projects they wanted, the favorites they’re going to be cut forever,” he continued, adding, “We’re allowed to cut things that were never approved in the first place, so we’ll probably do that.”
Vought on Wednesday offered the opening salvo of pressure he hoped to place in the Democrats. He announced that he has withheld $18 billion for the Hudson River Railroad Tunnel in New York City and the Second Avenue Metro Line in New York City.
Vought has also cancelled $8 billion on the Green Energy Project, along with a democratic senator.
Meanwhile, the White House is preparing for mass firing of federal workers, similar to normal practices during the closures, rather than simply cutting it off. White House spokesman Karoline Leavitt said earlier this week that the layoffs were “immediate.”
“If they don’t want to further harm their home members, they need to reopen their government,” Leavitt said of the Democrats on Thursday.
Trump’s announcement on his true social website has now entered the second day of the government’s suspension, with 750,000 employees expected to be sent home without paying at a wide range of agencies.
Leavitt told reporters Thursday that the cuts in jobs would be “in thousands.”
Meanwhile, Schumer and Jefferies dismissed the threat of job cuts in an attempt to intimidate, saying that massive shootings would not rise in court.
“All of these are things the Trump administration has been doing since January 20th,” Jeffries said, referring to the president’s first day in office. “The cruelty is the key.”
The Senate has not voted on Thursday for Jewish Yom Kipper’s holiday, but on Friday and most days, another vote is expected until the standoff is resolved.
Five more Democratic votes will be needed to reach the 60-vote threshold for 100 senators to greenlight the bill passed by the House in September.
Republicans reportedly were pondering about sending senators home after the vote, as Democrats hope to stop Republicans’ reopening plans again.
But House Speaker Mike Johnson, whose members have been on a week off, told reporters that Senate leaders need to stick to their initial plans for working in Washington over the weekend.
“And hopefully next week they’ll send us something to work and we can get back to work and do people’s business,” Johnson said at a press conference at the Capitol.
He denounced the Democrats, saying, “They effectively turned off the legislative division,” and “we handed over to the president.”
For now, Democrats are quickly holding their demands to maintain healthcare funds, refuse to support bills that do not, warning of a surge in prices for millions of Americans across the country.
With no easy endgames at hand, the standoffs drag deeply into October when federal workers staying at work begin to lose wages. The Nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that around 750,000 federal workers will lose $400 million daily in wages on certain days during the closure.
Economic impacts can ripple over the wider economy. Past closures “have driven down GDP, lowered the total private sector demand for goods and services,” the CBO said.
“Federal spending on goods and services has resulted in losses in private income, further reducing the demand for other goods and services in the economy,” he said.
Overall, the CBO said there was a “damping of economic production,” but that turned it around once people returned to work.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bescent also told CNBC on Thursday that the closure could undermine US economic growth.
“This is not a way to shut down the government and lower GDP,” he said.
