- by Peter Farmer
- The Guardian
- Issue #2166
Photo: rawpixel.com (CC0)
US President Donald Trump has said that his director of budget and management, Russell Vought, will use the government shut-down as rationale to start illegally firing thousands of additional federal workers as early as today.
Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries noted that “shutting down the government is something Trump has been doing ever since he got elected and he is doing it to save money for tax breaks for his buddies, the billionaires.”
The illegal mass firings come on top of Trump’s cancellation of billions of dollars in federal money already approved by Congress for critical infrastructure projects in 18 states that voted for Kamala Harris, another illegal and unconstitutional act in line with Vought’s stated desire to impose “maximum pain” on Trump’s political opponents. Vought, the author of the infamous extreme right Project 2025, which Trump disavowed when he was running for his second term, has now been given more power than both the US House and Senate in determining what happens in the country. Trump isn’t disavowing Project 2025 now.
