The Revolving Door Project, a Prospect partner, scrutinizes the executive branch and presidential power. Follow them at therevolvingdoorproject.org.
The Revolving Door Project recently published a comprehensive accounting of Trump 2.0’s deadly rampage across the federal government. “DOGE: From Meme to Government Erosion Machine” is a nearly 70-page audit of the Department of Government Efficiency’s origins, architects, and scorched-earth campaign against the federal government’s public-interest responsibilities.
More than a timeline of DOGE’s infiltration of the Treasury Department, Environmental Protection Agency, and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to name a few of the agencies covered, the report details how former shadow president Elon Musk and current Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought “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.”
From rural elders forced to live in dilapidated homes to families abandoned in the midst of carbon pollution–intensified disasters, real people are experiencing material harms as a result of DOGE’s attacks on the administrative state. DOGE, foolishly embraced by lawmakers across the political spectrum, should have never existed.
Although Musk’s wrecking crew officially disbanded last year, many of its operatives have “burrowed into” federal agencies “like ticks,” Wired has reported. Moreover, the reality is that DOGE’s reactionary mission was being carried out in parallel—and continues to be executed today—by Vought, a far quieter, but no less villainous, figure.
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It makes sense why public outrage over Trump 2.0’s anti-government agenda was directed at Musk. It’s hard to miss when the world’s richest man constantly brags about taking food and medicine away from the world’s poorest children. (Tesla shareholders approved Musk’s $1 trillion pay package one day after it was reported that the Musk-led shutdown of the United States Agency for International Development had already caused 600,000 deaths, with as many as 14 million additional deaths projected by 2030.)
But the Trump regime’s war on government in the public interest did not stop when Musk’s DOGE initiative was sidelined. Before, during, and after Musk’s short-lived White House stint, Vought has been advancing plutocratic interests, as co-author Chris Lewis has detailed for the Prospect before. In fact, the Republican operative has spent his entire career dreaming of, and planning for, this political moment.
Through his role as the main architect of Project 2025 and as a proponent of impoundment—that is, illegally refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated—during the first Trump administration, Vought served in many ways as the inspiration for DOGE, understood as an anti-democratic effort to concentrate federal spending power in the executive branch, and an omnidirectional war against state capacity in general.
It should not come as a surprise that Vought, who admitted that his goal is to traumatize federal workers and drastically slash funding for social programs, has institutionalized DOGE in his role as OMB director. From breaking the civil service through mass firings (including the euphemistically named reduction-in-force, or RIF, orders) to unlawfully canceling the disbursement of funds appropriated by Congress (including through so-called pocket rescissions), Vought has been at the forefront of achieving DOGE’s mission.
Of course, this requires understanding that DOGE’s objective was never to save taxpayer dollars. Musk did not “fail,” as some credulously argued, but succeeded in a spectacularly evil goal. DOGE was—and remains, through Vought’s OMB—an effort to extinguish the existing government and create a new one in the image of oligarchs and far-right ideologues. Vought, it’s worth noting, has no issue with a $1 trillion military budget. Climate science, environmental and health regulations, and social welfare spending, on the other hand, are treated as unacceptable impediments to unfettered profitmaking.
It’s easy to see the continuity between Musk’s DOGE and Vought’s OMB when considering their shared method: baselessly claim that something is an example of “waste, fraud, and abuse,” and then take a chainsaw to it. Defunding projects that clash with Donald Trump’s right-wing goals is the through line, and it was presaged in Project 2025.
Here’s an example. Last February, a few days after DOGE infiltrated the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and gained access to sensitive data, Musk asserted without evidence on X that the agency was housing undocumented immigrants in “luxury hotels.” Like most claims that come out of Musk’s mouth, it was not true, but almost immediately, FEMA officials froze funding and imposed spending reviews. Soon after, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ordered the agencies under her purview to cut off funding to so-called “sanctuary jurisdictions” that don’t cooperate with Trump’s mass deportation policies. By June, Noem had implemented a requirement that she personally approve any spending over $100,000. As a result, there’s now a $17 billion backlog of federal disaster aid—an expenditure that Vought is hell-bent on minimizing.
Noem is not the only cabinet member whose insistence on personally reviewing all grants and contracts valued over $100,000 has disrupted an agency’s work. Such onerous reviews are one way that the Trump regime has continued to prevent the allocation of congressionally approved money even after Vought’s OMB rescinded its January 27, 2025, impoundment memo, which was ruled illegal. Research compiled by the Democratic staffs of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees found that the White House unilaterally blocked more than $410 billion in appropriated funds during the last fiscal year, with devastating consequences.
Last fall, Vought used the government shutdown as an opportunity to withhold more money, especially from Democratic-led districts. Adding insult to injury, Vought disingenuously blamed Democratic lawmakers as he escalated the illegal power grab he had already been doing.
Just days ago, amid the Trump administration’s violent invasion of Minneapolis, Vought ordered a review of all federal funding sent to Minnesota and 13 other states that voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election (13 of the 14 states have Democratic governors). The order also targets Washington, D.C., which voted for Harris and is led by a Democratic mayor. Specifically, Vought instructed every federal agency except the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide spending information to “facilitate efforts to reduce the improper and fraudulent use of those funds.”
While the OMB memo claims that the effort is part of a “data-gathering exercise” and “does not involve withholding funds,” it should be abundantly clear to everyone that Vought is attempting to coerce blue states into complying with Trump’s agenda, including the ongoing ethnic-cleansing crusade being carried out by his masked paramilitary forces. After all, it’s not like red states are free of welfare fraud scandals—just look at how Mississippi’s Republican former governor steered millions of dollars to family and friends, including ex-NFL star Brett Favre.
The OMB memo followed a speech in which Trump said that as of February 1, the federal government would cease making “any payments to sanctuary cities, or states having sanctuary cities.” Notably, the White House froze federal child care subsidies and other funding destined for Minnesota and four other Democratic-led states on January 6. Though a federal judge promptly halted the freeze, Trump had already intensified his deadly occupation of the Twin Cities on the same day the funding pause was announced. All of this happened after the dissemination of a viral video in which a right-wing YouTuber lied about “Somali fraudsters” running day cares.
Vought’s new effort to force Democratic-led jurisdictions to accept ICE terror serves as a timely case study of his governance approach more broadly. Unlike Musk, Vought is more subtle in his efforts to dismantle democratic, public good–oriented government and replace it with an authoritarian, revanchist state. Rather than embody the drunkenly destructive impulses of the rest of the Trump administration, Vought generally prefers to keep a lower profile while attacking the administrative state from within. By targeting procedural complexities, like federal rulemaking processes or the disbursement of appropriated funds, Vought is able to launch deeper attacks against democratic government.
This approach has arguably made Vought more effective than his former collaborator at remaking the American government into a handmaiden to corporate interests. While Musk and DOGE’s escapades regularly captured public attention, Vought’s successful and unprecedented assault on the regulatory state is less widely known.
And with Stephen Miller increasingly filling the void left by Musk as Trump 2.0’s most culturally salient villain, Vought may very well be able to continue destroying the foundations of government in relative anonymity.
But that’s not a foregone conclusion. Congressional Democrats can make the reclusive Vought’s actions just as infamous as Musk’s higher-profile DOGE blitz.
Democrats should be getting into fights, using discharge petitions to force House votes that expose Vought’s most dangerous moves, generating social media, and holding contests on how to make Vought a toxic meme. Sadly, basic societal functions Americans have taken for granted for generations are visibly rotting if not near to collapse due to Vought; if and when that happens, Democrats must be the active agent responsible for driving an accountability agenda.
Relentlessly drawing attention to how Vought’s actions are hurting people—not only driving up the cost of living but also facilitating Trump’s fascist takeover of U.S. cities—might help Democrats win back one or more chambers of Congress. And if that happens, they need to turn Vought’s ensuing Hill testimony into a spectacle that can be used to educate voters about the lethal consequences of Republican governance.
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