The Shadow President
October 23, 2025 at 04:30PMFrom the wholesale gutting of federal agencies to the ongoing government shutdown, Russell Vought has drawn the road map for Donald Trump’s second term as president. Vought has consolidated power to an extent that insiders say they feel like “he is the commander in chief.” Andy Kroll shows how, exactly, one man has destroyed so much in so little time. (This story was co-published with The New Yorker):
The centerpiece of Vought’s work during the Biden years was his campaign to popularize the concept of “woke and weaponized” government. The tagline brought together two of Vought’s rallying cries: “woke” policies, like diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and transgender rights, and a “weaponized” FBI and Justice Department that had allegedly been wielded against the Democrats’ political enemies, including, most notably, Trump. When the Center for Renewing America released a federal budget blueprint in late 2022, calling for nearly $9 trillion in cuts in the course of 10 years, the word “woke” appeared 77 times across 103 pages…. “We have to be able to defund agencies,” he said in the private speech in 2023. “That is why these things have to be indelibly linked, and that is why we are focussing so much on ‘woke and weaponized.’”
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/10/23/the-shadow-president/
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