Trump depicted him as the Grim Reaper. His neighbors think he wants to cause “maximum trauma.” Senate Leader John Thune told Democrats to brace for impact.
And those who know Russ Vought best say, good. Democrats should be scared. Because if unleashed, Trump’s two-time Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought has a swift and thorough plan to downsize the government that he has been preparing for years.
“Russ has been working on this type of plan for the government since a lot of these staff were in diapers,” Rachel Bovard, vice president of programs at Conservative Partnership Institute told the Daily Caller.
Vought issued a memo to federal agencies on Sept. 24 as the government inched toward a shutdown asking them to prepare for widespread layoffs and programmatic cuts through Reduction-in-Force measures. The memo was also a warning to Democrats: refuse to back a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open and their beloved administrative state would face the consequences.
The government officially shut down on Oct. 1 after Senate Democrats voted against the CR, demanding increased funding for Medicaid, including for reimbursements for state spending on illegal aliens, and Affordable Care Act subsidies.
To turn up the heat, Trump and Vought met to discuss which federal agencies could be downsized. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Caller on Wednesday that layoffs were “imminent.” She estimated that thousands would be let go.
Vought and Mark Paoletta, the general counsel for OMB — who also served in the same position in the first Trump administration — are the brains behind the effort to slash government programs and employees amid the shutdown, Ken Cuccinelli, a senior fellow at Center for Renewing America (CRA), told the Caller. Vought founded CRA upon leaving the White House in 2021.
“As we’re seeing with the shutdown, or I think we’re about to see with the shutdown, it turns into a bit of judo. Your move gets used against you. So, now the Dems want to shut it down. Well, guess what? Russell is going to take you up on that threat, and make it work for the president’s agenda,” Cuccinelli told the Caller.
“And there’s just very few people who are as strategically prepared to do that as he is. He didn’t start planning for the shutdown in September. I guarantee you he started planning for the shutdown in 2021,” Cuccinelli added.
The impending cuts have garnered the same reaction from Democrats as those of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). (RELATED: ‘It’s Really Difficult’: Elon Musk Reflects On Successes, Challenges Of DOGE At 100 Days)
🚨 JUST IN: Nationwide, Democrats are in full-blown panic mode upon hearing that Russ Vought is being unleashed to fire federal workers during the Schumer Shutdown.
“It is deeply offensive that the president is threatening to FIRE workers!”pic.twitter.com/D0CRlrfdpA
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 1, 2025
WATCH: Russ Vought has Democrats PARALYZED right now, many are worried that party apparatuses and assets will be crippled during the shutdownpic.twitter.com/P4FHcfOKp4
— Brendon Leslie (@BrendonLeslie) October 3, 2025
“But effectively you have an OMB director, out of the White House, who is effectively running the federal government and making massive decisions,” Vaughn Hillyard, NBC News’ White House correspondent, complained.
“They could essentially cripple some of these agencies, which we should be clear, as he wrote in Project 2025, he has argued that some of these agencies are too big and have hurt Americans,” the NBC reporter continued.
But unlike Musk’s DOGE, Vought has been methodical with the way he has approached slicing down the federal government. Cuccinelli predicted Vought’s meticulous planning means there will be fewer “unintended consequences” that could harm Republicans politically or procedurally.
Vought’s focus on budgetary issues started in Republican Texas Sen. Phil Gramm’s office, Bovard explained. Gramm was well known for his fiscal austerity and championed legislation that pushed to eliminate the federal budget deficit over a few years.
After leaving Gramm’s office, Vought worked as policy director for the House Republican Conference under then-Chairman Mike Pence and then later as executive director of the Republican Study Committee.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought arrives for a September 11th observance event in the courtyard of the Pentagon September 11, 2025 in Arlington, Virginia. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“[This was through] those Tea Party years, which, cutting the fat, getting at the deficit, all of this was a very important part of the conservative movement … That’s been the through line of his career,” Bovard told the Caller.
Vought went on to serve as Heritage Action for America’s vice president for seven years.
Then, prior to Trump’s election, Vought considered leaving Washington, D.C. to go to seminary and become a pastor, the New York Times reported. The now-OMB Director is a devout Christian and leads adult Bible studies at his Baptist church.
His faith, Cuccinelli told the Caller, is what shapes Vought’s strong backbone and fortitude to “stay on the line.”
Instead of moving away from the nation’s capital, Vought was tapped to assume the role of acting OMB director in January 2019 after Mick Mulvaney left the agency to be Trump’s chief of staff. Vought was confirmed by the Senate in July 2020.
After Trump’s first term, Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, an organization dedicated to rooting out the federal bureaucracy that “resisted the agenda of the president.”
“Vought is seen as the disciplined architect who channeled the passion of MAGA into an actionable policy blueprint.”@RussVought is doing what few in Washington are bold enough to do. He’s dismantling the deep state one dollar at a time, cutting woke, weaponized, and wasteful… pic.twitter.com/RPUIdfN0JN
— Center for Renewing America (@amrenewctr) September 29, 2025
What America is seeing today during the government shutdown is a continuation of that project, those close to Vought told the Caller.
“His first term experience, he developed a lot of this stuff very fast and evolved it very fast. There frankly just wasn’t enough time to get to anywhere near a significant portion of what Russ had in his head in the first term,” Cuccinelli told the Caller.
Cuccinelli said Vought refers to the first term as the “pre-season” or “Triple-A baseball.” Now, they’re in the World Series.
Ned Ryun, the CEO of American Majority and a long-time friend of Vought’s, told the Caller that Vought has been preparing for this moment for years. He’s an official Americans should be thankful for, Ryun added, explaining that he believes if Vought is allowed to fulfill his plan it will be a pivotal moment in American history.
“Not sure how many other moments we will get like this, and I truly believe if Trump fully empowers Russ, this could potentially be the beginning of the end of the administrative state,” Ryun told the Caller.
Those close to Vought all emphasized one thing above all when talking about the OMB Director: his humility. When this term is up and Vought’s work is over, Bovard told the Caller he won’t be bragging to the press, cashing in or looking for work on K Street.
And for now, he is focused on finishing the job and winning the game.
“To Russ, this is like Tom Brady about to throw the winning touchdown,” Bovard told the Caller. “There is nothing but pure adrenaline and focus.”
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