Project 2025

Trump’s Shutdown Is the Trojan Horse for Project 2025

A Trojan horse of policies: Trump’s allies are weaponizing the government shutdown to roll Project 2025 into reality — one spreadsheet at a time.

By the GOPocalypse Now Editorial Team

Donald Trump isn’t running for the White House, he is in it. Since taking office in January 2025, he and his inner circle have been methodically assembling the tools to turn the U.S. government into something unrecognizable. The current shutdown? It’s not dysfunction. It’s a test drive, a Trojan horse rolling through the gates.

As Associated Press recently reported, “since his swearing in, Trump has been pursuing plans laid out in Project 2025 to dramatically expand presidential power and reduce the size of the federal workforce.” AP News The shutdown fight now is not a prelude, it is full-blown operational mode. He is openly “embracing Project 2025 more openly during the government shutdown fight, turning to its architects for advice and signaling his willingness to adopt its playbook.” AP News

This is no amateur hour. This is governance-by-grip. And if we don’t call it what it is, we’ll look back on these days as the moment democracy slipped.

From Transition to Takeover

Project 2025 was never a fringe manifesto. It long ago became the instruction manual for the second Trump administration. Russ Vought, now OMB director and one of Project 2025’s chief architects is no longer on the backbench. He is delivering. Under his hand, the administration is reorganizing agencies, freezing grants, and reorienting federal priorities. AP News

The AP notes the current shutdown fight is being used “as a rehearsal for the kind of hardball governance they want to bring to Washington in 2025.” AP News Rehearsal. They’re running the drills in real time. Every agency shaken, every budget line threatened, every civil servant’s loyalty tested.

The Rulebook They’re Rewriting

Project 2025 is not a set of benign proposals. It’s a roadmap to centralizing executive supremacy, weakening independent oversight, and converting the federal apparatus into a political arm. Under this regime:

Career civil servants are purged and replaced with loyalists
Independent regulatory bodies become echo chambers
Grant programs, especially in blue states, are frozen or canceled AP News
“Democrat agencies” are stigmatized and starved of resources

And what’s worse: Trump is now more candid about it. The AP writes he once distanced himself from Project 2025 — now, he’s embracing it openly. AP News

This isn’t governing by consent or compromise. It’s governing by command.

The Shutdown as Weapon

Shutdowns are normally political standoffs. But this one has been weaponized. The administration is using the crisis as leverage to strip power, reassign agencies, and punish political adversaries.

Consider that Trump has paused billions in infrastructure funding for Democrat-led states. Such actions aren’t bureaucratic missteps. They’re saying: we can shut off your money. He’s also leaning on Vought to target “Democrat agencies.” That’s not horseshoe-throwing politics — that’s the architecture of dismantling opponents via government control.

This is not brinkmanship. This is blueprint deployment.

Democracy Under Siege

We have seen fill-in-the-blanks coups. We’ve seen attempts by mob, rally, and insurrection. That failed. What we’re witnessing now is a coup by spreadsheet, a technocratic takeover masked in membranes of legality.

They’re not dropping bombs; they’re shifting budgets. They’re not undoing elections; they’re suppressing agency autonomy. They are not storming halls, they are storming finance, enforcement, data, oversight, and personnel.

It’s not just dangerous. It’s existential.

As AP warns, Trump’s allies see this shutdown as “a rehearsal for the kind of hardball governance they want to bring to Washington.” AP News They’re not testing power. They’re consolidating it.

The Alarm Blared — will we heed it?

Donald Trump is not jockeying for the keys to power. He is already in the driver’s seat. And the shutdown is the engine test. Each day, each threatened cut, each frozen grant, and each agency reconfiguration is a proof-of-concept: that government is no longer a shared space but a command zone.

If you still believe that checks, courts, civil servants, or public institutions can hold him in check, this is your wake-up call. This is more than politics. It's a battle for the soul of the republic.

Share this. Talk about it. Support independent media and watchdogs. Organize. And if there’s ever a moment to vote like democracy depends on it — this is it. Because this time, it does.