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russell vought
'Blatantly Illegal': Trump Admin Orders Review of Federal Funds to Democratic-Led States
"This is a blatant and dangerous abuse of power," said a Democratic senator representing one of the targeted states. "Trump does not care how many people he hurts to score cheap political points."
Jan 23, 2026
The Trump White House has reportedly ordered federal agencies to conduct a sweeping review of funding to more than a dozen states carried by former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, a move that lawmakers from the targeted states condemned as unlawful political retaliation.
The review, first reported by RealClearPolitics, was outlined in a data request that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) sent out on Tuesday. Every federal department and agency was included in the request except for the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state, and Washington, DC are the jurisdictions targeted by the OMB.
The OMB memo, according to the Washington Post, "requests agencies provide detailed information on all funds to those states, including money routed for state and local governments, nonprofit organizations, and higher education institutions." OMB claims it is trying to root out fraud.
"This is authoritarianism, plain and simple," said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), whose state is the only one on the list with a Republican governor.
"The Trump administration is targeting states that didn’t vote for him—including my home state of Vermont," Sanders added. "Using federal power to punish political opponents is anti-democratic and blatantly illegal."
US Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) similarly condemned the funding investigation as "more political retribution from Trump, the authoritarian strongman, and his crony Russ Vought," the head of OMB.
"This is a blatant and dangerous abuse of power," Merkley wrote on social media. "Trump does not care how many people he hurts to score cheap political points."
The OMB data request is just the latest instance of the Trump administration specifically targeting federal funds to Democratic-led states.
The White House budget office previously tried to cut off clean energy funds to Democratic-run states before being blocked in court. Earlier this month, the Trump administration froze $10 billion in childcare and social services funding for low-income families in five Democratic-led states, claiming fraud.
Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the administration's new funding investigation "follows a clear pattern" and marks "a harmful and shameful escalation of the administration's corrupt politicization of basic governance."
"Withholding federal funding can have grave consequences," said Parrott. "Just take the five-state freeze on childcare. In just those states, those funds are used to provide care to nearly 340,000 children. Without funding, childcare providers close, kids don’t get care, and parents can’t go to work."
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Democracy Watchdog Exposes 'Heartbreaking Catalog of DOGE's Depredations'
"Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s attacks on the federal government will have long-standing effects on the American public," said the group's research director.
Jan 20, 2026
Exactly a year after President Donald Trump returned to office and swiftly signed an executive order establishing the Department of Government Efficiency, the Revolving Door Project on Tuesday released a report detailing all the damage that DOGE has done.
"Under the banner of the so-called 'Department of Government Efficiency' (DOGE), Elon Musk and Russell Vought have eagerly shred political, professional, and legal precedent in their effort to dismantle the essential functions of the federal government—and most importantly, democracy at large," says the report, DOGE: From Meme to Government Erosion Machine.
In addition to being the richest person on Earth, Musk was DOGE's de facto leader until he left the administration at the end of May, on bad terms with Trump—a falling out addressed in the report. Meanwhile, Project 2025 architect Vought remains both director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
CFPB is among the 20 "agencies targeted by DOGE" that have their own sections in the report. Each section features a timeline of attacks, outlines impacts on capacity and material harms, and lists notable names of ousted leadership and DOGE agents.
"We hope that this report will show the public how dangerous a madman Elon Musk is, and why corrupt billionaires, with zero experience in governance, have no place making decisions for career officials."
"After Musk's exit, DOGE, filled with his lackeys, remained a feature in the federal government," the report states. "In fact, the guiding principles of DOGE—traumatizing federal workers, decimating government capacity, and slashing funding for people and places in need—were rejuvenated, albeit with a new, more effective and more discreet standard bearer."
Vought, the publication explains, "began firming up DOGE's legacy behind the scenes, using the power of his office to embed DOGE personnel in federal agencies as full time staff and institutionalize funding cuts through illegal use of the Impoundment Control Act."
Elon Musk may have left government, but DOGE's guiding principles still remain under the guidance of OMB Director Russel Vought. If anything, Vought will carry out the decimation of government capacity with an efficiency and ideological ruthlessness that Musk never possessed.
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— Revolving Door Project (@revolvingdoordc.bsky.social) January 20, 2026 at 11:23 AM
As OMB director, "Vought can review and reshape federal budget proposals according to his own ideological priorities, even if the agency leaders disagree," the document notes. "A supposed hyper-originalist and self-described Christian nationalist, Vought has used this leverage to reshape the federal government from the top down."
"The CFPB was a prime example of Vought’s vision of dismantling federal agencies that do not serve his interest," the report highlights, pointing to attack on personnel, agency funding, abandonment of key cases, and related legal battles. "The CFPB saga serves as a template of things to come with Vought at the helm of the DOGE mission."
Other targeted federal agencies include the Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, General Services Administration, Internal Revenue Service, Office of Personnel Management, United States Agency for International Development, US Institute of Peace, and US Postal Service.
As the report lays out, DOGE has also gone after the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, the Treasury, and Veterans Affairs.
Our report breaks down DOGE’s activity at individual agencies in narrative order with timelines of the incursions, DOGE’s impact on workforce capacity, the material harms that DOGE’s cuts generated, and the names of ousted agency leadership.
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— Revolving Door Project (@revolvingdoordc.bsky.social) January 20, 2026 at 11:23 AM
"DOGE agents—a cohort of unelected, unqualified, and unaccountable goons recruited from Elon Musk and Peter Thiel's orbit—have been given unfettered access to the internal machinery of federal agencies," the report says, naming another Big Tech billionaire. "From seizing control of the nation's payment system at the Treasury Department to orchestrating mass purges of the experts who ensure our food is safe, these actors bypassed traditional oversight to strip agencies of their ability to serve the American public."
Revolving Door Project deputy research director Christopher Lewis warned in a Tuesday statement that "Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s attacks on the federal government will have long-standing effects on the American public. From the cuts to the National Weather Service to the axing of fraud agents at the Federal Student Aid Office, every single American has and will continue to feel the effects of this administration's illegal and corrupt actions."
"We hope that this report will show the public how dangerous a madman Elon Musk is, and why corrupt billionaires, with zero experience in governance, have no place making decisions for career officials," he continued. "Our feckless Congress, especially Trump's enablers on the Hill, should be ashamed of themselves and what they have wrought."
"Our feckless Congress, especially Trump's enablers on the Hill, should be ashamed of themselves and what they have wrought."
Various recent analyses have exposed how US billionaires have benefited from Trump's second term and the Republican-controlled Congress while working-class Americans face an intensifying affordability crisis, struggling to afford everything from rent and groceries to soaring health insurance premiums.
"If anyone needed evidence that getting rich doesn't require brains or judgment, or that the private sector's supposed superiority over public servants was a myth, this heartbreaking catalog of DOGE's depredations should more than suffice," said Revolving Door Project executive director Jeff Hauser.
"The main lesson to be learned from Musk and DOGE," he added, "is that the next administration should pay careful attention to what DOGE did and proceed to do the exact opposite."
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Trump Is Out to Destroy the 'Meaning of Social Security'—in More Ways Than One
Trump spent 2025 doing everything in his power to demolish our invaluable Social Security system itself.
Jan 02, 2026
The walls of the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, which lies blocks from the US Capitol, are decorated with stunning New Deal-era murals. The most famous of these murals, "The Meaning of Social Security," depicts life before and after Social Security. The mural shows the best of America, what we can do when we all come together to build our Social Security system. Thanks to Donald Trump, "The Meaning of Social Security"—along with everything it represents—is now in grave danger.
The Trump administration is making moves to demolish the Wilbur J. Cohen Building, inevitably destroying "The Meaning of Social Security" in the process. Trump plans to take a wrecking ball to this key piece of Social Security’s history, just as he did to the east wing of the White House. But this is about more than just a mural. Trump spent 2025 doing everything in his power to demolish our invaluable Social Security system itself.
Trump ran on a promise to protect Social Security. Not surprisingly given his past history, he betrayed that promise over and over again in 2025.
Notably, Trump chose Russell Vought to be his powerful head of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought, the lead architect of Project 2025, made the Trump administration’s agenda plain, infamously declaring: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work…”
The very sense of security that lifted us out of the Great Depression is what Trump is destroying—and he wants to erase the memory that another way is possible.
True to that goal, Trump and Vought gave Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) unprecedented power over the federal government, including Social Security. Musk and his underlings used that power to:
- Force out thousands of the dedicated civil servants who run Social Security, disproportionately those with the most experience and institutional knowledge. That despite the fact that the Social Security Administration was already extremely understaffed and overburdened, with 12,000 Americans turning age 65 every day.
- Copy the American people’s most personal data to an insecure server for an undisclosed purpose. The data is now vulnerable to hackers—including foreign governments.
- Promote lies about Social Security. Musk and his acolytes falsely claimed that Social Security is full of fraud and improper payments, a lie Trump repeated to a huge national audience during his televised March 4 address to Congress. In fact, Social Security has a payment accuracy rate of over 99%—far better than private sector retirement programs.
In short, Trump, Vought, and Musk spent 2025 creating chaos, havoc, and trauma for the hardworking employees of the Social Security Administration, which translates to vastly diminished service to the public.
Elon Musk is no longer officially in government, but Vought still is, and Musk’s DOGE minions can still be found at SSA. Moreover, Trump’s choice to lead Social Security is Frank Bisignano, a self-described “DOGE person.” Though Bisignano has no background in Social Security, he does have expertise in hollowing out companies.
Before running Social Security, Bisignano was the head of Fiserv, a financial services company, where he laid off thousands of workers. Fiserv’s stock recently dropped by 40%. The company’s current CEO blamed Bisignano, saying that “many of the assumptions and projections set by prior leaders were too rosy.” Bisignano is now a defendant in several lawsuits brought by Fiserv investors.
Bisignano appears to have brought his Fiserv tricks to Social Security. Under his leadership, the Social Security Administration has removed longstanding metrics from its website. Bisignano is touting rosy new metrics, but the truth is that he is cherry picking data. For example, Bisignano says that wait times on Social Security’s 1-800 number are down. What he doesn’t mention is that calls may be picked up by an AI chatbot or by workers who have been diverted from elsewhere and are undertrained in responding to caller concerns. It doesn’t matter how quickly a call is answered if the caller does not get the help that they need.
Moreover, between pushing people out and reassigning others to the 1-800 number, field offices are increasingly understaffed. That means longer waits to get in-person help. Essential work is not getting done. That means millions of Americans may get hit, in six months or a year, with official notices informing them that they have been overpaid, and demanding that within the next month, they pay the government thousands of dollars. Millions more will likely be underpaid but never know it.
Importantly, Social Security is facing a financial shortfall in less than a decade. Rather than addressing it by requiring billionaires like himself to pay their fair share, however, Trump is doing everything he can to make the shortfall worse. His tariffs, record deficits, and other policies are leading to high inflation, which means Social Security is paying out larger amounts. Those policies, together with his deportation of hard-working immigrants, are also leading to unemployment and stagnant wages, so less is being contributed to Social Security.
Though the shortfall is manageable, Trump’s actions give Congress less time to act and increase the chances politicians will go behind closed doors to cut working families’ benefits.
What is happening is unprecedented in Social Security’s 90-year history. No president has come close to undermining it the way Donald Trump has done—and it’s been less than a year. President George W. Bush sought to privatize Social Security, but to his credit, he was totally transparent about his proposal. In stark contrast, Trump is seeking to destroy Social Security in the dark.
The very sense of security that lifted us out of the Great Depression is what Trump is destroying—and he wants to erase the memory that another way is possible. He wants a second American gilded age, with gold-plated everything for elites and suffering for the rest of us.
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