Trump is using the government shutdown to do something no president has ever done

The United States government shutdown drags on, marking a pivotal moment in America’s fiscal and constitutional history. President Donald Trump, the negotiator-in-chief, isn’t blinking. He’s swinging the axe at bloated, Democrat-run bureaucracies that have taken trillions from hardworking Americans for decades. 

While Nancy Pelosi and her party claim “chaos” and Trump is turning crisis into clarity — freezing $26 billion in blue-state pork, halting green-energy pet projects and directing departments to prepare reduction-in-force plans as part of a broader review of spending and accountability. Those plans are now in motion: the Office of Management and Budget confirmed that federal layoffs have begun, with cuts underway in Health, Homeland Security and Commerce. Washington calls it chaos. I call it a cleanup — a reckoning long overdue in the deep-state swamp. For the first time in modern history, a shutdown isn’t about stalling — it’s about a president reshaping Washington for the people.

Shutdowns of the past stand in stark contrast to today. Under President Bill Clinton in 1995 and 1996, Washington clashed over how to balance the budget and rein in spending. The government shut down twice for 26 days as parks closed, workers were furloughed and each side blamed the other. It ended with both sides blinking. They struck a compromise that preserved the exact bureaucracy they fought over, and Clinton walked away with higher approval ratings while the deep state remained intact. Even during Trump’s 2018–2019 standoff — the longest in history at 35 days — Washington fell back into the same pattern. The fight over border funding and national security ended in another stalemate, yielding $1.375 billion for 55 miles of fencing, barely funding the wall and no reform to the bloated machine.

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For decades, Washington’s playbook during shutdowns has been the same: panic, finger-pointing and a “compromise” that keeps the bureaucracy alive. Washington promoted the lie that when the money stops, the people lose. Trump 2.0 flips the script to show when the right programs are protected and waste is halted, we win. From day one, the administration withheld $26 billion in earmarks for blue-state pet projects, windmills in California, green-energy programs and transit boondoggles in New York, while signaling layoffs in what Trump calls “Democrat agencies.” 

The administration also ordered federal agencies to prepare reduction-in-force plans, signaling that Trump is willing to fire bureaucrats who treat tax dollars as entitlements. No past president has dared to do that. The message is clear: you are neither entitled to nor guaranteed a job if your mission isn’t constitutional. He gave Democrats every opportunity to come to the table and keep the government working for the people. They refused and now those plans are being executed. “The RIFs have begun,” OMB Director Russ Vought confirmed on X that layoffs are officially underway.

Trump has already shown he isn’t afraid to act. Earlier this year, he dismissed inspectors general, ordered layoffs at ideological agencies like the National Endowment for the Humanities — which has poured taxpayer dollars into DEI vanity programs — and reduced staff at the EPA and NOAA long before the shutdown began.

Trump is executing a shutdown plan as an unprecedented audit — one no president has ever attempted. Legal scholars now debate the constitutionality of leveraging a funding lapse for structural reform. For the first time, a president is using a shutdown as a tool for permanent restructuring rather than a negotiation tactic, treating it as a wide-scale audit to align Washington’s priorities with taxpayers rather than its own self-interest.

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The constitutional implications are profound. Under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, presidents may defer spending when it isn’t necessary for the immediate execution of the law. Trump is using this authority to pause appropriations to ideological programs that are non-essential. 

Critics argue this is an unconstitutional “end run” around Congress’s power of the purse. Yet the Constitution’s Article II Take Care Clause vests the president with discretion to “faithfully execute” the laws responsibly — not rubber-stamp wasteful spending. Trump is posing the question: can the executive branch use a shutdown to impose fiscal restraint when Congress refuses to?

And there is precedent — thin, but real — tilting in his favor. On September 26, 2025, the Supreme Court granted the administration a stay allowing Trump to withhold nearly $4 billion in foreign aid pending appeal in Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition. The 6–3 order, with liberal justices dissenting, signaled a willingness to let the executive branch exercise broad discretion over deferred funds. While not a final ruling, it gives Trump clear constitutional footing — proof that his deferral strategy is grounded in precedent.

Democrats call this shutdown coercion, but Trump is using Washington’s dysfunction as a weapon for reform. If Republicans stand firm and refuse to blink, this will mark the beginning of a lean, accountable government that serves Americans rather than the swamp. America is ready for a reckoning. Trump is rebuilding government for the people who built this country.