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"It's going to harm them," boasted Sen. Mike Lee, a top Trump cheerleader. "Russ Vought, the OMB director, has been dreaming about this moment... since puberty."
President Donald Trump is using the government shutdown to carry out an unprecedented attack on his enemies through more layoffs of federal workers and cuts to grants aimed at blue states.
In the Oval Office Tuesday, hours before the shutdown began, Trump told reporters that “when you shut it down, you have to do layoffs. So, we’d be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected, and they’re Democrats. They’re gonna be Democrats.”
In the days leading up to the shutdown, congressional Democrats attempted to force Republicans to roll back cuts to Medicaid and Affordable Care Act subsidies—cuts that are expected to result in as many as 15 million Americans losing their health insurance while raising premiums for tens of millions more. Trump and the GOP have blamed Democrats for the shutdown, falsely claiming that theyare pushing to fund free healthcare for "illegal aliens."
However, they've struggled to make this story land with the American public. A Washington Post poll released Thursday found that 47% of US adults blame Trump and Republicans for the shutdown, while just 30% blame Democrats and 23% say they are unsure. The sample was divided roughly equally between those who voted for Trump and those who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris (D) in 2024.
In what Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called an effort to use "taxpayer dollars to try and shift blame," the websites for numerous government agencies—including the US departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), as well as Justice, Agriculture, and several others—were updated with banners that blamed "Democrats" and the "Radical Left" for the shutdown.
Meanwhile, government employees, including those at the Small Business Administration (SBA) were directed to include similar partisan language in their out-of-office auto-reply emails.
Experts have told Politico that the use of taxpayer money for such explicit partisan messaging likely violates multiple ethics laws, including the Anti-Lobbying Act, which forbids the use of appropriated funds for lobbying activities designed to “support or defeat legislation pending before Congress.” It also pushes the boundaries of the Hatch Act, which requires federal programs to be used in a nonpartisan fashion.
The progressive consumer watchdog group Public Citizen said it has filed complaints against HUD and the SBA for what it said was an "obvious Hatch Act violation."
"The SBA and other agencies increasingly adopting this illegal, partisan tactic think they can get away with it because Trump has gutted any and all ethics oversight of the federal government," said Craig Holman, a government ethics expert with Public Citizen.
After being asked about Trump's promise to lay off "Democrats" at a press conference on Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance told reporters, "We are not targeting federal agencies based on politics."
But in a Truth Social post early Thursday morning Trump struck a somewhat different tone. He spoke of plans to meet with Russell Vought, the director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), "to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut. I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity."
Trump also proudly described Vought as "he of PROJECT 2025 fame," referencing his leading role in crafting the Heritage Foundation's infamous blueprint for a far-right takeover of government—a takeover carried out in part through the purging of civil servants disloyal to Trump. During the 2024 election, Trump repeatedly insisted that he had "nothing to do with" Project 2025.
Vought has already begun to unilaterally withhold congressionally appropriated dollars for projects specifically for blue cities and states.
On Wednesday, he said that $18 billion in subway and tunnel funding for New York City had been “put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional [diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)] principles.” Not long before that, Trump had threatened to entirely cut off federal funding to the city if its voters elect the democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee and current frontrunner, as its next mayor in November.
Vought then announced Thursday that he was also stripping away another nearly $8 billion worth of funding for climate-related projects, referring to it as "Green New SCAM funding to fuel the Left's climate agenda." Vought said that the funding was being withheld exclusively from projects 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.
House Republicans were reportedly told by Vought on Wednesday that mass firings would also begin in "one to two" days, though he did not outline specifics about who would be fired. However, a memo Vought issued last week instructed agencies to prepare to eliminate employees “not consistent with the president’s priorities," triggering a lawsuit from federal workers' unions.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told the press Thursday that Vought was carrying out these cuts "reluctantly" and is "not enjoying the responsibility" of deciding which programs and employees get the axe.
But in an interview on Fox News, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a top Trump cheerleader, was a bit more candid, proudly declaring that Trump and Vought are using the shutdown specifically to hurt Democrats.
"They're doing it deliberately. It's going to harm them," Lee said. "Because Russ Vought, the OMB director, has been dreaming about this moment, preparing for this moment, since puberty."
Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) said that "Vought is pushing a scheme to turn a government shutdown into a weapon to fire career civil servants and dismantle programs Congress has already passed into law. That is not only reckless. It is flatly illegal and unconstitutional."
"Have we ever had a president work so hard to hurt the people he represents?" asked Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). "I'm not going to be intimidated by these crooks."
Top Republicans have claimed that calling Trump “fascist” or “authoritarian” is an incitement to “terrorism." But party leaders have said nothing about an explicit call for violence from one of their own.
It has now been almost a full week since a Republican Arizona state representative called for the execution of Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal. But top Republicans in Congress and the White House have remained silent, even as they blame the left for escalating "political violence."
On Wednesday, in response to an out-of-context clip from Jayapal's (D-Wash.) YouTube channel posted to social media, state Rep. John Gillette (R-30) wrote that the Washington state Democrat—who discussed how protesters could become "strike ready or street ready"—was calling for the overthrow of the federal government.
“Until people like this, that advocate for the overthrow of the American government are tried convicted and hanged... it will continue,” he wrote on X.
Video: Arizona's Family (3TV/CBS5)
But when the full video, published in March and titled "The Resistance Lab," was unearthed by the Arizona Mirror, it showed that Jayapal was discussing how to plan "nonviolent resistance actions." In fact, over the course of the hour-and-a-half training video, the words "nonviolent" and "nonviolence" were said a total of at least 18 times by Jayapal and other speakers.
"Getting strike ready," meanwhile, was a call for labor union members to prepare for work stoppages, which are legal.
Gillette has not apologized for his call to hang Jayapal. In fact, he doubled down, referring to the Mirror's reporting that he called for Jayapal's execution as "fake news," and reiterating the false claim that Jayapal "openly advocates for the violent overthrow of the US government."
On Friday, Jayapal issued a statement calling Gillette's comments "appalling, unacceptable, and dangerous from anyone, but particularly from an elected official."
Other Democratic lawmakers were quick to condemn the comments. Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-Ill.) said Gillette "must be held accountable for inciting violence against a member of Congress." Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said Gillette's incitement "puts [Jayapal] and all active participants in our democracy in danger." Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) called the comments "sick and wrong" and said that "Republican leaders need to condemn this heinous call for violence, and there needs to be real accountability."
As of Tuesday, not a single Republican in Congress appears to have publicly condemned Gillette's comments—a deafening silence at a time when top members of the party, including President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, have attempted to blame Democrats' rhetoric for recent acts of violence, like the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk and last week's shooting at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Dallas.
On Friday, as part of a new strategy to combat what it calls "left-wing domestic terrorism," Donald Trump directed law enforcement to "disrupt" individuals and groups “that foment political violence,” including “before they result in violent political acts.” Possible "indicators" of terrorism, the memo says, include "anti-capitalism," "anti-Christianity," and “hostility” toward traditional views on family or “morality.”
Top Trump ally Steve Bannon told the New Republic that he expects the government will begin to criminally investigate and prosecute groups and individuals that describe ICE as "authoritarian," agreeing with White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller that such First Amendment-protected criticism "incites violence and terrorism."
Following Kirk's assassination and the ICE shooting, liberal and leftist politicians, journalists, and activists across the board rushed to unequivocally condemn both acts of political violence, even while stating their disagreements with Kirk and with Trump's immigration policies.
Common Dreams contacted the offices of both Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) to ask if they would publicly condemn Gillette’s comments and urge others in their caucus to do the same. At press time, neither had responded.
No public condemnations appear to have come from Trump, Vance, or any other members of the Trump administration.
The local news network Arizona’s Family (3TV/CBS5) said it reached out to the office of Arizona’s House Speaker Steve Montenegro (R-21) to ask if Gillette would face any discipline over his comments. The office did not respond.
Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) harshly criticized their silence.
"Patriots don’t cower and meekly hide from condemning their political allies when they do stuff like this," he said. "Everybody should be condemning this call for violence. Period."
"What a sad, screwed up reflection of this unhinged administration and the harm they are inflicting on America," said one immigration advocate.
Elected officials in Washington are among those expressing outrage after federal agents took two firefighters into custody as they were helping to combat a local wildfire.
As reported by The Seattle Times, two firefighters were arrested on Wednesday while helping to put out the fire at Bear Gulch, located in Washington's Olympic Peninsula.
Sources told the paper that the arrests came after federal agents working in the area demanded that the two private contractors who were fighting the fire provide identification information on all their crew members.
One firefighter who was on the scene expressed incredulity that federal officials would conduct an immigration raid on a group of people who have been trying to put out a fire that is spread out across thousands of acres and is still far from contained.
"You risked your life out here to save the community," the firefighter told The Seattle Times. "This is how they treat us."
Local news station KING 5 confirmed that the two firefighters were taken into custody by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), although the specific reasons for the firefighters' detentions are still unknown.
Democratic Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson said that he was "deeply concerned" about the two firefighters being taken into custody, and he said he has "directed my team to get more information about what happened."
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) was far more critical and outraged in her reaction to the arrests.
"Trump’s ICE is arresting firefighters who are ACTIVELY FIGHTING ONE OF THE LARGEST WILDFIRES IN THE UNITED STATES," she wrote on social media. "There aren't words to describe this cruelty. It's absurd and completely against America's best interests."
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) described DHS's actions in detaining the firefighters as "fundamentally sick."
"Trump has wrongly detained lawful green card holders and even CITIZENS," she emphasized. "No one should assume this was necessary. These firefighters put their lives on the line for us ALL and Trump is detaining them."
Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the immigration advocacy organization America's Voice, described the arrests of the firefighters as a sad reflection of President Donald Trump's immigration policies as a whole.
"Perhaps nothing captures President Trump and Stephen Miller's obsession with mass deportation and purging the nation of immigrants than the news that, quite literally, this administration is prioritizing detaining firefighters over fighting fires," said Cárdenas. "What a sad, screwed up reflection of this unhinged administration and the harm they are inflicting on America."
The Trump administration in recent weeks has expanded the scope of immigration enforcement actions to include raids on California farms and on Home Deport parking lots where day laborers frequently gather. This appears to be the first time they have targeted firefighting crews in the middle of trying to contain a blaze, however.