Andy Kroll

He he.

did not choose to be in this situation, Russ Vogt, but he saw a way that he could use it to his advantage based on all of the interviews, all of the documents I've read, and he took that opening.

We're seeing this play out right now as we approach a month of a federal government shutdown here in Washington.

Vote and OMB sent out this memo a few days before the shutdown telling agencies to put together plans to lay off workers en masse during the shutdown.

Now, that is something that

All the legal experts I talked to, the congressional staffers, people steeped in the law of how personnel actions work in the federal government, say you can't do.

You can't use a shutdown as an opportunity to lay off tens of thousands of people.

That is exactly what Vogt told agencies to do.

That's exactly what he has given interviews saying he wants to do.

This is one of those examples of what you're talking about.

It has teed up a legal fight that's playing out.

A federal judge on the West Coast.

has, for now, temporarily halted Vote's actions, these agency actions to lay off workers.

But this seems like one of those moments where Vote is testing the limit.

He's looking for ways to potentially get new precedent, change the law.

And I think you see a number of those attempts across the board, freezing programs, laying off workers.

That is very much a part of this strategy.

looking for ways to get these questions in front of judges and try to change laws, find certain laws unconstitutional, or just shift the line a little bit of what the executive power that a president has looks like.

Vote sees shutdowns as these rare opportunities, though they're increasingly less rare lately, to achieve big policy outcomes that you can't get through the normal course of Congress or the normal course of the federal government's business.

I quote him in the story in one of...