The Shutdown Is a Purge

Ted Cruz, “It will last for weeks, and Trump will get rid of democrats”

TL;DR: The 2025 government shutdown isn’t about budgets. It’s also not directly about power. Republicans control the House, Senate, and White House. They engineered this. Republicans triggered a shutdown. Thus, one of the remaining options is that the shutdown is about deliberate restructuring of the foot soldiers.

Ted Cruz: “The White House has instructed every cabinet agency to prepare a plan for a RIF, a reduction in force, to give permanent layoffs, pink slips, to left-wing bureaucrats who are advancing the priorities of the Democrat party,” Cruz announced. “So, what you are going to see in the next few days is bureaucrats at the EPA fired; you’re going to see bureaucrats at the Department of Labor fired; you’re going to see bureaucrats at the IRS fired.”

MAGA is weaponizing the chaos to get rid of the federal workforce, with staffing infrastructure already in place to replace career civil servants with loyalists handpicked by the Heritage Foundation.

What appears to be another round of government dysfunction may be the execution of their plan to remove non-loyalists, fortifying the bureaucratic sections of the government to be MAGA.

Combining Three Elements:

1) Long-term: The Heritage Foundation’s recruitment drive

Image linked to Axios article

2) Actionable positions: Shutdown, Schedule F, Vought

Image linked to “Protect Democracy” article

One of the key architects of Project 2025 is Russell Vought. He’s mostly flying under the radar, but is in control of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He released a memo last week (excerpt):

RIF notices will be in addition to any furlough notices provided due to the lapse in appropriation. RIF notices should be issued to all employees working on the relevant PPA, regardless of whether the employee is excepted or furloughed during the lapse in appropriations (Full memo on Politico.com).

Edit: Trump just posted this, removing all doubt of the agenda.

Ted Cruz frames it with greater clarity

3) Foresight

Anticipating that Americans will wake up and become ungovernable, which will begin in blue states and cities, Trump dropped the agenda at the 44th minute of his monologue to the assembly of military brass:

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What’s Happening Right Now

The federal government shut down at 12:01 AM on October 1st after MAGA rammed it down Democrats’ throats. This shutdown is different, though.

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers are furloughed. The Congressional Budget Office estimates their daily compensation at $400 million. That’s money they won’t see until the shutdown ends, if it ends the way previous shutdowns have. If they get laid off, they’ll get what’s afforded to them by law, and that’s where the music stops.

87% of the EPA is gone. 87% of Education, 81% Commerce, etc.

But which one of these professionals will return to their jobs?

Cruz made that explicit. This is “frankly an excuse for the Trump administration to do what they wanted to anyway, which is get rid of left-wing bureaucrats.”

The Infrastructure of Replacement

In January 2025, Trump revived Schedule F, which is now rebranded as “Schedule Policy/Career”. It’s an executive order that strips civil service protections from federal employees in “policy-influencing” positions. The order makes them at-will employees, fireable without the due process protections that have insulated the civil service from political purges since the 1880s. Here’s the explanation.

The Office of Personnel Management estimates 50,000 positions will be reclassified under Schedule Policy/Career. That’s not the full federal workforce, but it’s a critically large number, especially when it affects employees who write regulations, conduct scientific research, and enforce laws. With the shutdown, the regime can now work on its plans to eliminate those who can say “no” when a political appointee wants to ignore environmental law or labor protections.

Also, the Heritage Foundation aimed to recruit 50,000 loyalists. Coincidence?

Heritage Foundation (July 7, 2024)

The Quantico Message (it matters)

The day before the government shutdown, the Secretary of War commanded approximately 800 generals and admirals, basically every one-star general and rear admiral or higher, to travel from posts around the world on just days’ notice. Military experts said the gathering was highly unusual. Especially since the military can hold secure meetings remotely. Assembling the top brass in person, at significant cost and operational disruption, requires a compelling reason.

Grandstanding in front of disciplined professionals, Hegseth opened with a speech about “warrior ethos” and railing against “woke” culture at the Pentagon. He announced new fitness requirements, banned beards, and said he didn’t want to see any more “fat generals and admirals.” He promised to return combat fitness standards to “the highest male standard” and end diversity efforts. Hegseth’s stage dance was hardly significant enough to call an “all hands on deck” meeting.

Then Trump took the podium.

The speech was expected. Incoherent rambling, digressive, touching on everything from his love of gold-edged commissioning paper to how carefully he walks down stairs (unlike Biden, who “falls down stairs every day”). He talked about nuclear submarines he may or may not have positioned near Russia.

He said “nuclear” was one of two “n-words” Americans can’t use. What’s the other?

Somewhat on the fly, and sandwiched between the boasts and grievances were these lines:

“I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard, but military.”

And: “a war from within.”

The speech was met with silence. Trump himself noted it: “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before.”

The Database of Change

During the campaign, Trump denied any knowledge of Project 2025. He called it “radioactive”, and once he learned more, said that it’s “awful”. His transition co-chair, Howard Lutnick, swore on CNBC that they wouldn’t touch the Heritage Foundation’s infamous personnel database. “Zero,” he said. “Clear, clear, clear.”

Obviously, the second they open their mouths, they lie.

In November 2024, NBC News reported that Trump’s transition team was actively using Project 2025’s database to identify potential hires. A source familiar with the plans told NBC: “There’s a lot of positions to fill and we continue to send names over, including ones from the database as they are conservative, qualified and vetted. Hard to find 4,000 solid people, so we are happy to help.”

The database isn’t some hypothetical future threat. It’s operational. Heritage Foundation officials did not screen for expertise, but for ideological purity. The questionnaire doesn’t ask about your qualifications. It asks when you “got red-pilled.” It asks which public policy figure you admire. It asks if you’ve ever appeared in the media to comment on Trump.

And the loyalists administering the Heritage Foundation’s plans within the US government? They’re already in the administration. At least 32 of the 40 named authors of Project 2025 have ties to Trump’s past or current administrations. Eight are currently working in executive agencies or were appointed by Trump to federal positions.

Russell Vought wrote the Project 2025 chapter on expanding presidential power. Brendan Carr, heads the FCC. Tom Homan, the “border czar”? He’s also a Project 2025 contributor. And there are more. Just click the link above.

Evidence of Danger: Everything is as it seems

Recipe of Restructuring

1. First, Recruiting and Schedule F.

2. Then, add Shutdown and Layoffs.

3. Last, the Military is on notice in the event of public objections.

Step One: Furlough workers during a shutdown triggered by the Republicans.

Step Two: Announce plans for Reductions in Force (RIF), resulting in permanent layoffs, targeting agencies Republicans have wanted to gut for decades: EPA, Labor, IRS, Education. Use Schedule Policy/Career authority to reclassify the emptied positions as at-will, stripping civil service protections. Fill the restructured positions with loyalists from the Project 2025 database who have already been screened for ideological alignment.

Step Three: Anticipate that a long-term shutdown may result in public mutiny, and brief the military that “blue cities” will be training grounds, and that there is a war from within. In addition, Trump mentioned two “n” words that cannot be said. One is clearly targeting the word “nuclear”. The other is likely the word “No”. Loyalty and execution at Trump’s beck and call are expected.

You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist when you have a roadmap published by the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation is explicit about this. Project 2025 director Paul Dans said the goal is to “destroy the administrative state.” Kevin Roberts, Heritage’s president, said: “People will lose their jobs. Hopefully, their lives are able to flourish in spite of that, but buildings will be shut down.”

The only remaining question is whether this shutdown lasts long enough for them to complete the swap, or if it even matters, because they’ll force it through anyway.

The American Public Will Only See the Surface

Most Americans will only notice the immediate damage, from delayed services to our national parks being closed. Food inspections won’t happen, and airport security lines are getting longer as TSA agents, working temporarily without pay, start calling in sick.

The more significant impacts will happen in offices that most people have never heard of. Professionals who sat in the cubicles where regulations are written. In the labs where water samples are tested. In the regional offices where inspectors decide whether to investigate a company’s safety violations. The people being targeted aren’t bureaucratic dead weight. They’re scientists at NOAA who track hurricane paths. Inspectors at the EPA who investigate lead in drinking water. Economists at the Labor Department who calculate inflation and unemployment. Attorneys at the DOJ who prosecute white-collar crime.

These are people who have institutional memory. Who know which chemical companies have been caught dumping toxins before. Who understand how tariffs ripple through supply chains. Who can tell a political appointee “that’s illegal” and have the credentials to back it up.

Whenever the government reopens, it won’t be the same one that closed. It will be smaller, yes. But more importantly, it will be loyal, not to the Constitution, not to the law, and certainly not to the American public. They will, however, be loyal to the regime that hired them.

This Is the Heritage Agenda

This is a systematic effort to dismantle professional civil service and replace it with a patronage system loyal to the executive. We spent 140 years building guardrails against this kind of political purge.

Now they have their shutdown, where watchful eyes are blinded, and they can continue their mission.

The infrastructure exists. They have the authority to do as they please, and the only variable is whether the shutdown lasts long enough to execute the swap, while Americans are too distracted by the spectacle of closed monuments and unpaid workers.

With that, the question isn’t whether the shutdown ends. Every shutdown ends. The question is what the United States will look like when it reopens.

When the government reopens, check who’s sitting in those cubicles. Check whether the inspector from before the shutdown is still there, or whether they’ve been replaced by someone whose resume went through Heritage Foundation screening for ideological purity.

That’s when you’ll know whether this was an actual shutdown or a cleansing.

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~Z.