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US President Donald Trump has threatened to slash more US agencies on the back of the federal shutdown that began this week, ahead of a meeting on Thursday with Russ Vought, his budget director who has long championed shrinking the government.
Trump made the comments on his Truth Social platform after his administration vowed to fire thousands of federal workers and close government infrastructure and clean energy programmes in Democrat-controlled states as it uses the shutdown to cut spending.
“I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent,” Trump wrote. “I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.”
Democrats accuse the Trump administration of using the shutdown as cover for long-standing plans to gut the government and punish its political opponents.
“For the last nine months of this administration, there has been incredible harm inflicted on my constituents,” Pat Ryan, a Democratic congressman from New York, told CNN on Thursday.
“And now, instead of responding to that, the president’s essentially doubling down, cutting infrastructure funding, bipartisan infrastructure funding. It’s just not what the people want,” he added.
Vought, a powerful figure in the administration, is a conservative ideologue who contributed to the rightwing “Project 2025” manifesto for Republican control of the White House, which Trump distanced himself from during last year’s election campaign but is now embracing.
During the first months of his second term, Trump has shuttered the US Agency for International Development and sought to gut other agencies he associates with left-wing priorities, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where Vought was chosen to be acting director.
Since the shutdown began early on Wednesday, Vought has announced that $18bn of infrastructure projects in New York City were being “put on hold” — including the Hudson Tunnel refurbishment and work on the Second Avenue Subway — to review whether federal funding was based on “unconstitutional DEI principles”.
Vought also said that $8bn of clean energy funding he described as the “Green new scam funding to fuel the left’s climate agenda” was being scrapped in states that have recently voted for Democrats in presidential elections and statewide congressional races.
Many Republicans have defended the cuts. “OMB director Russ Vought has been dreaming about and meticulously preparing for the ‘Schumer shutdown’ since puberty,” Mike Lee, the Utah Republican senator, quipped on X. “This is going to be the Democrats’ worst nightmare.”
On Thursday morning, US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent defended the White House’s threats of permanent spending cuts and mass firings of federal workers. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the president to use all the levers,” he said.
He acknowledged the shutdown could dent economic output, saying: “We could see a hit to the GDP, a hit to growth, and a hit to working Americans.” But he also blamed Democrats, comparing them with “terrorists” and warning that the government was being held “hostage” by the party’s need to satisfy progressives.
“They want to say, like, this is what we have to have. And if we don’t get it, we’re going to close down the government.”
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