The "Project 2025 Man" Who Is Dismantling the State and the World – An Investigative Report

Anyone walking through the well-kept suburbs of Virginia would hardly suspect that behind a row of pastel-colored houses, built in 1949, in Arlington lies the nerve center of a political radicalization. Russ Vought, Donald Trump’s former budget director and current architect of “Project 2025,” lives here – inconspicuously, on a quiet street where neighbors pick up their children from the school bus and Labradors run across the lawns. But for weeks, many properties along Columbia Pike, South Glebe Road, and 7th Street South have displayed small yard signs reading in bold blue letters: “This house supports federal workers.” One of them stands right next to Vought’s driveway.

A chalk message in Russ Vought’s neighborhood, photographed and shared by a resident. It is not a crude scrawl but a silent indictment – the handwriting of a neighbor, or perhaps a former government employee who knew exactly what these cuts meant.

Such chalk protests have now become a regular sight in the area, usually appearing after new layoffs or another interview in which Vought defends his “reforms.” They disappear with the next rain, but their message remains: that even in the most well-kept streets of Washington, the brutality of his policies is not abstract but literally on his doorstep.

“So many people here work for federal agencies,” says Cathy Hunter, 60, an archivist and longtime resident of the neighborhood. “They do their jobs conscientiously and now just feel trampled on.” That Vought is now known in Washington as Trump’s “grim reaper” is not without symbolism. In a music video shared by Trump himself on Truth Social, an AI-generated Vought walks through a corridor lined with portraits of Democratic politicians, carrying a scythe. The text accompanying it: he is the man with “the pen, the funds, and the brain,” orchestrating the layoffs, slimming down the state, “cleansing” the system. What looks like a digital spectacle is, in reality, a grim political program.

For Vought, who once had the reputation of being a sober budget official, now leads Trump’s budget war with messianic zeal. In internal memos, he urges agency heads to cut programs that are “not consistent with the President’s priorities.” And he encourages them to use the opportunity to implement “Reductions in Force” – mass layoffs of civil servants who do not fit the ideological mold. One neighbor, who prefers to remain anonymous, says, “Everyone remembers when he said he wanted to cause ‘maximum trauma’ to federal employees. Nobody forgets that.”

The neighbors, many of them federal employees, contractors, or veterans, speak of fear and disbelief. Not just because their jobs are at risk, but because the man embodying that threat lives right next door. “He takes food off people’s tables, he cuts their health care – and calls himself a Christian,” says a woman who lives a few houses away. “It’s despicable.” The scene repeats itself everywhere Vought’s policies meet reality. After the restructuring of the “Department of Government Efficiency,” led by Elon Musk, entire agencies were dismantled – including the US development agency USAID. A neighborhood child recently wrote in chalk on the sidewalk in front of Vought’s house: “I was hungry and the USA fed me. Until Vought cut USAID.” Other messages have appeared since, each time following a new wave of layoffs.

Vought himself has not publicly commented on the protests outside his home. He prefers to appear on television. On Fox Business, he recently declared that the shutdown offers a historic opportunity: “We have the authority now to make permanent changes in the bureaucracy.” In Washington, Republican Senator Mike Lee calls him “a man who has been preparing for this moment since puberty.” Critics such as Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, on the other hand, see him as “a malignant political operative.” In fact, Vought is the enforcer of a project that seeks more than austerity: it aims to place the president above the administration and turn the civil service into an ideological instrument of power.

While Vought speaks of “efficiency” in interviews, cities like New York and San Francisco are experiencing the consequences. Infrastructure projects are being frozen, clean energy funding blocked – mainly in states governed by Democrats. At the same time, new money is flowing into programs that appeal to Trump’s core voters: border security, surveillance, and religious initiatives. A former staffer from Vought’s White House years, who wishes to remain anonymous, describes him as “intelligent but obsessed with control.” He regularly presented Trump with papers aimed at the complete disempowerment of independent agencies – including the Federal Reserve. Internal drafts that could be reviewed show that as early as 2024, Vought was working on a concept under which the president could use emergency powers to fire federal employees without congressional approval.

For the neighbors, none of this is abstract. They experience how their neighborhood has become a symbol of a moral conflict. “We live in a community where people look out for one another,” says Cathy Hunter. “But he – he lives as if we don’t exist.” An older resident puts it more soberly: “It’s strange. You see him with his briefcase, nodding politely – and at the same time you know he’s the man who just fired your son.”

Recently, residents report, an unmarked SUV has been driving through the street more frequently. Maybe security, maybe government staff – no one knows for sure. But one thing is certain: the man who wants to shrink the state has already put his own microcosm on alert. Because while Vought talks on television about “rolling back the overgrown bureaucracy,” the people outside his front door look him in the eye – and see a neighbor who has decided to make them expendable.