Natalie Kitroff

We're six days into the government shutdown, and the Trump administration is capitalizing on the moment.

by freezing billions of dollars in spending in cities and states run by Democrats and threatening to lay off thousands of government workers.

So who is the man who appears to have the high trust of President Trump and gets to decide which federal workers will stay and which will go?

The man at the center of that push to dismantle and reshape the American government.

Is White House budget director Russell Vogt.

Today, my colleague Coral Davenport explains how Vote, a once obscure bureaucrat who worked on Project 2025, became one of the most influential figures in Washington.

It's Monday, October 6th.

Coral, Russell Vogt is someone I've generally been aware of.

But right now, because of the shutdown, he has taken on much more of a protagonist role in the Trump administration.

Everyone seems to be talking about him.

So just to start, who is Russ Vogt?

Okay, so setting aside the question of whether we can fact check the AI imagery in this truly wild video, you're saying it accurately assesses votes roll, right?

Wow.

Okay, you described him as a true believer.

How does he arrive at those beliefs?

How does he get to where he is now on this mission to radically change the shape of government?

It sounds like he was kind of turned against the idea of big government from the very beginning as a child seeing his parents navigate this country.

So it's passion that's combined with this really intense work ethic.

And what does he do in that first Trump term?

So the firing of these civil servants, it sounds like, is very much about going after what Trump and his allies see as the deep state, this group of people that are working against him and his agenda from within.