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Donald Trump had a cautionary message for the opposition party.

In the near future he will determine what "Democrat agencies" he would cut and whether those reductions would be temporary or permanent.

He said the federal closure, which started this week, had afforded him an "unprecedented opportunity."

"I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, known for his role in Project 2025," he posted on his Truth Social website on Thursday morning.

The Project 2025 Connection

The budget director, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, may not be widely known to the public.

But Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for governing put together mostly by former Trump officials like Vought when the GOP was not in control, featured prominently during the recent election cycle.

The 900-page policy document contained proposals for significant cuts in the size of federal government, expanded presidential authority, rigorous immigration enforcement, a national prohibition on abortion and other elements of an ultra-conservative social agenda.

It was frequently touted by Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, as what she called a risky proposal for the future if he was to be elected.

At the time, trying to calm undecided voters, Trump tried to distance himself from the proposal.

"I know nothing about the 2025 plan," Trump wrote in July 2024. "I disagree with certain aspects of their proposal and some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal."

Shifting Approach

Now, however, Trump is using the conservative blueprint as a threat to get the opposition to accept his budgetary demands.

And he is highlighting the budget director, who wrote a section on the employment of presidential authority, as a kind of budgetary angel of death, ready to take a scythe to government programmes near and dear to the opposition party.

To make the point even clearer, on Thursday night Trump shared an computer-created spoof video on Truth Social with Vought portrayed as the figure of death, accompanied by changed words of the rock band's Don't Fear the Reaper.

Political Reactions

On Capitol Hill, Republican leaders have echoed Trump's characterisation of the director as the White House heavy.

"We don't control his actions," Republican Senate Majority Leader the senator said. "This represents the danger of closing federal operations and handing the keys to the budget director."

Senator Mike Lee of his state told Fox News that the director had been "preparing for this moment since puberty."

That may be a bit of an overstatement, but the director, who cut his teeth as a congressional staffer for GOP fiscal conservatives and helped run the advocacy division of the conservative think tank, has a wealth of experience examining the intricacies of the federal budget.

The Bean-Counter Behind the President

He spent a year as the deputy director of the federal budget agency during Trump's first term, advancing to become its director in that year.

In contrast to numerous others who worked for the president during that initial term, Vought had staying power - and was promptly reappointed as director of OMB when Trump returned this year.

"Many individuals who didn't return embody outdated approaches," said a policy expert, a think tank official who, similar to the director, started his professional life in GOP fiscal policy networks.

"The director was innovative in the initial administration and right on time currently."

Although Vought isn't one to avoid controversial statements – he previously stated that he hoped to become "the individual who dismantles the bureaucratic establishment" – he doesn't particularly appear the role of conservative villain.

Balding and bespectacled, with a greying beard, the director's remarks typically have the measured cadence of a numbers expert or professor.

He doesn't possess the narrow-eyed glower and heated language of another advisor, another longtime Trump adviser who manages administration border measures.

Seizing Opportunity in Shutdown

Now Trump has threatened to unleash Vought at a time when, because of the legal limbo created by the federal closure, their cuts might be deeper and more durable than those implemented previously.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a veteran of the big shutdown fights of the 1990s, told the media outlet that Vought and his team have been getting ready for precisely this situation while they were in the political wilderness during the Biden years.

"Everyone understood a government shutdown was possible," he said. "I believe they concluded from the beginning that you're only going to get the level of transformation they want if you're determined and resolute and every chance you get, you seize the moment."

The advantage this shutdown presents for spending reducers like Vought is that, without congressionally approved funding, the federal operations continue in a legal grey area with reduced spending constraints.

The White House can, theoretically, cut budgets and personnel deeper than it could earlier in the year, when expenditures followed standard funding levels.

And while permanent layoffs would still have to follow a two-month warning, Vought could start that clock ticking whenever he, and the president, so choose.

Present Measures and Coming Conflicts

Vought already has announced significant construction initiatives in the largest city and Chicago are on hold, citing the need for a examination of questionable employment policies - a examination that he said cannot occur during the closure.

He's also cancelled almost eight billion dollars in renewable energy initiatives across multiple states, all of which backed the Democratic candidate, Trump's opponent, in the recent election.

Democrats and federal worker unions have promised to fight these reductions in the legal system and stated that Trump is making mostly bluffs to try to force them to abandoning the fight.

Many economists have noted that the administration cutbacks have been accompanied by other spending-increasing measures, which could undercut their attacks on Democrats for being the party of fiscal irresponsibility.

"Republicans are increasing spending in different sectors and reducing revenue at the identical period," Brett House, an academic expert at the Columbia University School of Business commented.

"The notion that they're committed to fiscal prudence is not borne out by their actions."

Political Risks

Certain GOP legislators have expressed concern that the visible enthusiasm with which the president is promoting director-mandated reductions could alienate voters if the closure continues.

Republicans have been warning of the dire consequences of the closure on public operations - part of a concerted effort to depict the opposition as the responsible party.

Doing so while applauding the methods the government is cutting programs could undermine that approach.

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

"Our party have never possessed this much moral high ground on a spending measure in recent memory… I just don't see why we would squander it, which represents the danger of being aggressive with presidential authority in this moment."

Thom Tills, a legislator who has chosen not to run for another term, warns that government representatives "need to be really careful" in how they present any new cuts.

The efficiency group-mandated job cuts and programme cuts were largely unpopular, according to polling data, negatively affecting the leader's popularity.

A reprise of that might prove perilous.

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

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