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The President had a warning for the opposition party.

Soon he will decide what "Democrat agencies" he would cut and whether those cutbacks would be short-term or permanent.

He said the government shutdown, which started this week, had given him an "unprecedented opportunity."

"Today I'm meeting with Russ Vought, known for his role in Project 2025," he posted on his social media platform on Thursday.

Linking to the 2025 Plan

Vought, the head of the federal budget office, may not be a household name.

But the 2025 initiative, a conservative blueprint for administration put together primarily by previous administration figures like Vought when the Republicans were out of power, played a significant role during the recent election cycle.

The comprehensive policy guide contained proposals for dramatic reductions in the federal bureaucracy, expanded presidential authority, rigorous immigration enforcement, a nationwide abortion ban and other components of an ultra-conservative social agenda.

It was often highlighted by Democratic presidential nominee the former vice president, as what she called a risky proposal for the coming years if he was to be elected.

At the time, seeking to reassure swing voters, the president attempted to separate himself from the proposal.

"I know nothing about Project 2025," Trump wrote in July 2024. "I don't agree with some of the things they're saying and some of the things they're saying are completely unreasonable and abysmal."

Shifting Approach

Now, however, the president is employing the conservative blueprint as a threat to get the opposition to agree to his budgetary demands.

And he is highlighting Vought, who authored a chapter on the use of executive power, as a sort of financial grim reaper, prepared to make cuts to federal programs near and dear to the opposition party.

To make the point even clearer, on Thursday night Trump shared an AI-generated parody music video on Truth Social with the director depicted as the grim reaper, accompanied by changed words of the rock band's Don't Fear the Reaper.

Washington Responses

On Capitol Hill, Republican leaders have repeated the president's description of Vought as the administration enforcer.

"We don't control what he's going to do," Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune said. "This represents the danger of shutting down the government and handing the keys to Russ Vought."

The Utah senator of Utah told Fox News that the director had been "getting ready for this situation for many years."

This might be somewhat exaggerated, but Vought, who gained experience as a congressional staffer for GOP fiscal conservatives and helped run the lobbying arm of the conservative think tank, has extensive background examining the complexities of government spending.

The Numbers Expert in the Administration

He spent a year as the deputy director of the federal budget agency during the initial administration, rising to be its director in 2019.

In contrast to numerous others who served with Trump during that initial term, the director maintained his position - and was promptly reappointed as head of the budget office when Trump returned this year.

"A lot of those who didn't return represent an old way of thinking," said a policy expert, a Heritage economic policy director who, similar to the director, began his career in conservative congressional budget circles.

"The director was innovative in the first term and right on time currently."

While the director doesn't tend to shy away from controversial statements – he once said that he hoped to become "the person who crushes the deep state" – he doesn't exactly look the part of a Republican bogeyman.

Thinning hair and wearing glasses, with a salt-and-pepper facial hair, the director's remarks typically have the measured cadence of a numbers expert or professor.

He lacks the narrow-eyed glower and heated language of another advisor, a different presidential consultant who manages administration border measures.

Capitalizing on Government Closure

Now Trump has threatened to unleash Vought at a time when, because of the regulatory uncertainty caused by the federal closure, their reductions could become deeper and more durable than those instituted earlier this year.

Ex-congressional leader the political veteran, a participant in the big shutdown fights of the 1990s, told NPR that the director and his staff have been getting ready for exactly these kind of circumstances while they were in the political wilderness during the previous administration.

"They all knew a federal closure was possible," he said. "I think they had decided early on that significant change requires the level of transformation they want if you're very tough and resolute and every chance you get, you take the opportunity."

The advantage the closure offers for spending reducers like the director is that, lacking legislative authorization, the federal operations continue in a legal grey area with fewer budgetary restrictions.

The White House can, theoretically, cut budgets and personnel deeper than it could previously, when expenditures followed baseline appropriation amounts.

And while job eliminations would still have to follow a 60-day notice, the director could begin the countdown when he, and the president, so choose.

Present Measures and Coming Conflicts

The director has declared significant construction initiatives in New York City and the midwestern metropolis are on hold, citing the need for a review of questionable employment policies - a examination that he said cannot occur during the closure.

He's also terminated nearly $8bn in clean energy projects across multiple states, all of which backed Harris, Trump's opponent, in the recent election.

Democrats and federal worker unions have promised to fight these cuts in court and claimed that Trump is making largely empty threats to try to force them to abandoning the fight.

Numerous financial experts have noted that the White House reductions have been accompanied by other deficit-ballooning policies, which could undercut their attacks on Democrats for being the party of fiscal irresponsibility.

"The GOP is raising expenditures in different sectors and cutting taxes at the identical period," an economics professor, an academic expert at the Columbia University School of Business commented.

"The notion that they're devoted to fiscal prudence is not borne out by what they're doing."

Political Risks

Some Republicans in Congress have voiced worry that the apparent glee with which the president is promoting director-mandated reductions could turn public opinion against them if the closure continues.

Republicans have been warning of the serious effects of the closure on public operations - part of a concerted effort to depict the opposition as the ones to blame.

Engaging in this while applauding the methods the administration is slashing programmes could derail those efforts.

"The director is less politically aware than his boss," The legislator the senator, a member of the "Doge caucus", told the news website Semafor.

"We, as Republicans have never had so much moral high ground on a government funding bill in our lives… I just don't see why we would waste it, which represents the danger of being aggressive with presidential authority in this moment."

The North Carolina senator, a legislator who has chosen not to run for re-election next year, warns that government representatives "must exercise caution" in how they present any new cuts.

The Doge-directed layoffs and programme cuts were largely unpopular, according to polling data, negatively affecting the leader's popularity.

A reprise of that might prove risky.

As the expert stated, however, the White House, and the director, may view the long-term benefits as well worth the short-term challenges.

"For the director, for me, for anybody who's in the budget space, this country is going bankrupt,"