Vought: The Ideologue with the Budget Knife (🇺🇸 US-UK🇬🇧 Edition)

Russell Vought is the most dangerous man in Trump’s second administration—not because he shouts, but because he doesn’t have to. While Trump exercises power, Vought builds the machinery that makes it real: purges disguised as restructuring, obedience enforced through budgets, personnel, and DOGE’s data-driven loyalty indexing. This essay examines how Vought turns the administrative state into an ideological instrument, replacing competence with devotion and hollowing democracy from the inside out. Authoritarianism doesn’t need a coup when the rooms of government are emptied of anyone able—or allowed—to say no.~Dunneagin🎧 Find Civics Unhinged on your favorite platform:* Apple Podcasts (accepts PayPal if available in your country)* Spotify (accepts PayPal if available in your country)* Pocket Casts* 📡 Prefer RSS feed? Copy and paste this URL (https://dunneagin.substack.com/feed/podcast) into your preferred RSS reader🗣️ Political satire that stings. Essays, mock memos, and podcasts chronicling the slow implosion of the American Republic — in English, French, and German.💬 On Bluesky? Join the conversation at @dunneagin.bsky.social📚 Support this work — and get three free eBooks!Paid subscribers help keep this circus running without corporate ads, think tank donors, or truth-averse billionaires. Join them.As a thank you, all yearly paid members receive:📕 Trump’s Big Top: How Politics Became a 3-Ring Circus📕 The Liar’s Guide to Autocracy📕 Mr. Dunneagin Speaks, Volume 2👉 Thank you for joining the inner circle. Get full access to ~ Civics Unhinged: Dispatches From Trumpistan ~ at dunneagin.substack.com/subscribe