Trump seizes on shutdown to punish political foes
- The San Juan Daily Star
- Oct 7
- 5 min read
By TONY ROMM
President Donald Trump has embarked on a legally dubious campaign to weaponize the federal budget during a contentious government shutdown, halting more than $27 billion in approved funding in a bid to punish Democratic-led cities and states.
Rather than broker a legislative truce or seek to ameliorate the fallout of a costly fiscal stalemate, the president has leveraged the crisis to exact revenge on rivals, slash federal spending and pressure Democrats into accepting his political demands.
Since the shutdown started Wednesday, the Trump administration has canceled or delayed federal aid to 16 states, most of them run by Democrats. In the latest example, Russell Vought, the White House budget director, said Friday that the administration would halt about $2.1 billion in approved funding for long-planned transit improvements in Chicago.
Vought claimed the pause was necessary to ensure that the city, which is led by a Democratic mayor in a state with a Democratic governor, had not engaged in “race-based contracting.”
The White House has also targeted New York, the home state of Democrats’ congressional leaders, and canceled nearly $7.6 billion in federal green energy funding, predominantly in Democratic-led states. On Friday, the Trump administration said it could look to slash unspecified aid to Portland soon, after earlier stripping away some of Oregon’s infrastructure money.
“Without a doubt, blue states are on the front lines of the attacks,” said New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat. “They’re coming after us.”
Throughout last week, the president’s deputies maintained that they were not politicizing the shutdown and that they sought only to save money and prevent waste. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters Friday that the administration had to conduct “a massive review of the bureaucracy to be good stewards of the American taxpayer dollar” during the shutdown.
But Trump has undercut his aides at every turn. He has suggested that he may try to enact permanent cuts on “Democrat agencies,” potentially through mass layoffs, and on social media Friday he shared a parody video that referred to Vought as the Democrats’ “reaper.”
Budget experts said they could not recall a time when a president had weaponized funding in this manner during a shutdown, even when Trump occupied the White House during the longest closure in U.S. history — a five-week interruption in late 2018 and early 2019.
Matthew Lawrence, a law professor at Emory University who studies federal spending, said the tactics evinced Trump’s belief that he possessed vast “unilateral” power over the budget, which he could use to “coerce states, institutions and individuals,” while controlling the narrative on the shutdown.
“I can’t think of a historical parallel of an administration publicly cutting funds in a shutdown like this,” Lawrence said.
The funding cuts are a stark escalation in Trump’s campaign to cut federal spending and reconfigure the budget in service of his political priorities. Since returning to office, the president has closed agencies and programs while halting or canceling billions of dollars in enacted funds, acting out of a belief that he can override lawmakers to achieve his agenda.
Trump has attacked funding for science and research, public education, public broadcasting, green energy, transportation infrastructure, disaster response, federal oversight and foreign aid. He has often blocked this money because he believes it was being spent wastefully or fraudulently, or because it did not conform to his views on policies like immigration.
States and other recipients have filed dozens of lawsuits to force the release of federal aid, claiming that the president has broken the law by withholding congressionally approved funds. A federal court ordered the Trump administration last week to restore $187 million in counterterrorism funding to New York, which the federal government had stripped without explanation.
But Trump has remained undeterred by legal threats and unconstrained by Republicans in Congress. He and Vought, an architect of the conservative Project 2025 blueprint, have instead seized on the moment to test the limits of their powers.
“We have the authority to make permanent change in the bureaucracy here in government,” Vought told Fox Business on the eve of the shutdown.
Hours into the shutdown, Vought began by taking aim at New York City. He wrote on social media that the administration would halt $18 billion in infrastructure funding “to ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional DEI principles,” using the initials for diversity, equity and inclusion.
The move interrupted two big projects: the Hudson Tunnel Project, meant to improve transit under the river between New York City and New Jersey, and the Second Avenue subway on the east side of Manhattan. The Transportation Department said it could not complete a review of the funding “thanks” to Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the two New Yorkers who lead the Democrats in Congress.
Hochul said her state had spent “decades of waiting and waiting and waiting” for the money. “We are definitely being punished, not just for being a blue state but for being the home of the leaders,” she said.
The next day, Vought took aim at almost $7.6 billion in clean energy funding for 223 projects across 16 states, including California, Illinois and New York. He called the money “Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda.”
Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Fox Business on Friday that the government was blocking the money, for now, because it was “punishing the wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars.”
The Department of Energy considered more extensive cuts, totaling about $20 billion in a broader roster of states led by both parties, according to a person familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to describe private budget records. The administration chose to slash funds in 16 states, for now, many of them led by Democrats.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment about its funding cuts and delays. The Department of Energy also did not respond to a request for comment.
In the opening days of the shutdown, Republicans rallied behind the White House, arguing that Democrats were to blame because they did not accept the president’s demands and support a short-term measure to fund the government into November. Democrats had opposed the approach because it would not have extended expiring subsidies that help millions afford health insurance.
“What they have to do is make very difficult decisions,” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said of the White House last. He said Vought “takes no pleasure in this.”
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