Donald Trump could not be more plain: He is planning to use the government shutdown to take revenge against Democrats.
During a Cabinet meeting Thursday, the president announced that the White House would be cutting congressionally approved programs during the government closure—but only those supported by America’s liberal party.
“We’ll be making cuts that will be permanent, and we’re only going to cut Democrat programs, I hate to tell you,” Trump said. “I guess that makes sense, but we’re only cutting Democrat programs.
“We’ll be cutting some very popular Democrat programs that aren’t popular with Republicans, frankly, that’s the way it works,” he continued. “They wanted to do this, so we’ll give them a little taste of their own medicine.”
Trump: We will be cutting some very popular Democrat programs that aren’t popular with Republicans, frankly. That’s the way it works. They wanted to do this so we will give them a little taste of their own medicine pic.twitter.com/A3DCnBJy5Q
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 9, 2025
For the record, that’s not how the government is supposed to work. The Impoundment Control Act was passed in 1974 for exactly this purpose: to prevent the executive branch from withholding funds in a way that would undermine Congress’s “power of the purse.” Regardless of Trump’s bravado, a government shutdown doesn’t suddenly suspend the law.
It’s not the only law that the Trump administration has decided could be flouted. So far, the shutdown has furloughed more than half a million federal employees, according to a New York Times monitor. That includes 89 percent of the Environmental Protection Agency, 87 percent of the Education Department, and 71 percent of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Forty-five percent of the civilian workforce of the Defense Department has also been temporarily let go.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has insinuated that not every furloughed federal worker will be eligible for back pay, despite a bipartisan-supported 2019 law that mandates they are.
In other seismic executive oversteps, the White House has promised to target liberals in a forthcoming mass firing and, last week, issued ideological messaging via executive agency heads to thousands of federal employees, in potential violation of the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch and the Hatch Act.
The post Trump Proudly Announces His Shutdown Revenge on Democrats appeared first on New Republic.
