Russell Vought, Office of Management and Budget director, listens as he addresses members of the media outside the West Wing at the White House in Washington, Monday, Sept. 29, 2025Mother Jones illustration; Evan Vucci/AP
On Thursday night, President Donald Trump shared a music video on Truth Social. In it, an AI-generated Russ Vought—Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget and a Project 2025 mastermind—is the grim reaper, carrying a scythe along a hallway lined with portraits of Democratic leaders. Vought, the video’s soundtrack explains, “wields the pen, the funds, and the brain” to enforce the president’s plans to axe federal workers.
“Everyone still remembers when he said he wanted to cause maximum trauma to federal workers,” one neighbor said.
The budget chief has been in the spotlight lately as Trump’s shutdown enforcer. He is pressing on with threats to permanently cut federal workers en masse during this crisis. It is part of his long-held dream of shrinking the federal government and giving the president unrestrained powers. Vought’s combination of bureaucratic know-how and hardline ideology has made him a star in right-wing circles.
But on the quiet, residential street tucked in the Virginia suburb where Vought lives, the perception of him and his role in the shutdown is less than favorable. Several homes in the neighborhood have a yard sign in the front proudly declaring: “This house supports federal workers.” That includes the house right next door to his.
“So many people in this neighborhood are federal workers,” said Cathy Hunter, a 60-year-old archivist who has lived in the area since 1993. “They do really good work and they just feel so disrespected.”
Residents said the signs started cropping up early on in the administration, after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) dismantled the US foreign aid agency and haphazardly purged government employees who are now being rehired by the hundreds. (A recent New York Times article included photos of a sidewalk chalk protest in the vicinity of Vought’s house that read: “I was hungry and the USA fed me. Until Vought cut USAID.”) Other chalk protests have popped up, too.
These days, the pro-federal worker signs have been sending an even louder message to Vought.
“People have strong feelings about him,” one person who lives further down the street told me, describing the neighborhood as solidly blue. “Everyone knows someone who lost their jobs.”
“He takes food and health care from the neediest and tries to, in his words, traumatize people—then he calls himself a Christian,” another neighbor told me. “Pretty despicable.”
Residents I talked to said that many federal employees, contractors, and active and retired military live in the area. “It’s a very friendly neighborhood,” one person said. “People look out for each other.” Of Vought, she said: “I don’t think he’s interacted with the neighbors at all.”
“Everyone still remembers when he said he wanted to cause maximum trauma to federal workers,” the neighbor said. “And that’s hard to forget.”
Most of Vought’s neighbors I talked to for this article declined to speak on the record or asked to remain anonymous. Some said they didn’t want to create a rift in an otherwise cordial neighborhood, while others worried about retribution or negative repercussions from their employers.
“I just wish he would have gotten to know us,” Hunter said. “We consider ourselves good Americans, we have good values. And I don’t think he’s been interested in getting to know any of us, in hearing if we might have a difference of opinion.”
Last week, Vought sent around a memo blaming Democrats’ “insane demands” for the imminent lapse in funding and instructing agency heads to start making plans to cut non-mandatory programs “not consistent with the President’s priorities” and “use this opportunity to consider Reduction in Force.” Appearing on Fox Business, Vought claimed an “authority to make permanent change to the bureaucracy here in government” during the shutdown.
He has since announced pauses to funding for infrastructure projects in New York—home state of House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York), who called Vought a “malignant political hack”—and slowdowns in clean energy projects in several blue states.
Vought, Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah said on Fox News, “has been dreaming about and preparing for his moment since puberty.”
As I wrote in a profile of Vought from 2024, the bespectacled official spent years as a Washington insider and government bureaucrat before becoming the architect of a supersized second Trump presidency.
An avowed Christian nationalist and dedicated America First warrior, he once described the job of OMB director as the “keeper of ‘commander’s intent” and criticized the federal bureaucracy for standing in the way of the president’s agenda. During Trump’s first term, Vought tried to implement an executive order that would have made it easier for political appointees to fire career civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists. Now, he’s getting to realize his vision while earning points with the president.
For some of his neighbors, it is personal. “You stare it in the face when he’s there,” one person said. “This is the guy, you know.”
Another neighbor I talked to, who also asked not to be named, said many in the neighborhood find Vought’s policies and actions “abhorrent.”
“He takes food and health care from the neediest and tries to, in his words, traumatize people—then he calls himself a Christian,” the neighbor said. “Pretty despicable. You asked what it is like living near such a man. Frankly, I’d rather not, but this is a wonderful neighborhood and, unlike Mr. Vought himself, we do not want our neighbors (even Mr. Vought) to be traumatized. So we just live with it.”
