The government shutdown in the United States is still going on, and it is a very important time in the country’s financial and constitutional history. Donald Trump, the president and chief negotiator, isn’t backing down. He’s swinging the axe at big, bloated government agencies run by Democrats that have been stealing trillions from hard-working Americans for decades.
Nancy Pelosi and her party say there is “chaos,” but Trump is turning the crisis into clarity by freezing $26 billion in blue-state pork, stopping green-energy pet projects, and telling departments to make plans for cutting jobs as part of a larger review of spending and accountability. The Office of Management and Budget has confirmed that federal layoffs have begun and that cuts are being made in Health, Homeland Security, and Commerce. Washington calls it a mess. I call it a cleanup—a long-overdue reckoning in the deep-state swamp. For the first time in a long time, a shutdown isn’t about putting things on hold; it’s about a president changing Washington for the better.
Shutdowns in the past are very different from shutdowns now. In 1995 and 1996, when Bill Clinton was president, Washington fought over how to keep the budget balanced and spending in check. The government shut down twice for 26 days. Parks were closed, workers were sent home, and both sides blamed the other. In the end, both sides gave in. They reached a deal that kept the same bureaucracy they had been fighting over, and Clinton’s approval ratings went up while the deep state stayed the same. Washington went back to the same pattern even during Trump’s 2018–2019 standoff, which was the longest in history at 35 days. The fight over money for the border and national security ended in another stalemate. The wall got $1.375 billion for 55 miles of fencing, but it didn’t get enough money and the bloated machine didn’t get any reforms.
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.
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.
Mehek Cooke is an attorney, political strategist and former state and U.S. counterterrorism adviser.
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