Project 2025 is Trump's government shutdown playbook. It always was. | Opinion

• President Trump is embracing the government shutdown, which complicates Republican efforts to blame Democrats.
• The president is using the shutdown to advance goals of Project 2025, such as firing federal workers.
• Recent polling indicates that the shutdown, Project 2025 and related initiatives are unpopular with Americans.
• The shutdown is creating political challenges for Republican gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey.

President Donald Trump’s gleeful embrace of the government shutdown that he caused is wreaking havoc with the cover story his Republican allies in Congress are spreading in their desperation to blame Democrats.

Trump is also openly embracing Project 2025, the controversial MAGA blueprint for his second term that he attempted, unconvincingly, to distance himself from while running for reelection.

Trump wants to weaponize the shutdown to fire more federal workers, a key goal of Project 2025, and an echo of his early administration efforts to have the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) dismiss thousands of employees.

But the shutdown is unpopular, with more Americans blaming Trump and Republicans than Democrats. And Project 2025 has been widely perceived as negative. And DOGE is disliked by a majority of Americans.

So Trump is playing with a trifecta of political pitfalls. And still he talks like he has a winning hand.

"I can't believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity," Trump posted on social media on Oct. 2, praising Project 2025 and citing his desire to make more cuts at federal agencies.

This is the same Trump who, in July 2024, posted this on social media: "I know nothing about Project 2025. I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well-received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it."

Trump is at least consistent in his inconsistency, also blaming "Radical Left Democrats" in that post for – accurately – linking him to Project 2025.

Trump's cabinet of Project 2025 curiosities (and lies)

Anyone who follows Trump's public statements can't really claim to be surprised that he lied in 2024 about having no knowledge of Project 2025 and then immediately started to implement that plan when he took office in January, and again now during the shutdown.

As I wrote in August, Trump's own Truth Social chatbot called him a liar. I checked back in with the bot on Oct. 3. It still offers the same conclusion.

Trump knows his MAGA base has two camps: supporters who don't believe anyone who calls out his lies, and supporters who just don't care that he is a liar. They are the ones he is playing to now with this shutdown, which happened because he ordered the Republicans who hold majorities in Congress not to negotiate with Democrats on a continuing resolution to fund our government.

But Trump's allies are already feeling blowback in races for governor in November.

Former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee for governor in Virginia, a state that about 150,000 federal workers call home, has been using the shutdown to draw distinctions with the Republican nominee, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who recently tried to duck the issue.

Trump's budget director, Project 2025 author Russell Vought, used the shutdown to freeze billions of dollars in infrastructure funding for projects between New York and New Jersey. U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic nominee for governor in New Jersey, has targeted her Republican opponent, Trump-endorsed Jack Ciattarelli, for that.

The Washington Post, in an Oct. 2 scoop, cited "senior federal officials" as tapping the brakes on the new Trump-Vought firing spree, expressing worries that it could violate the law.

Sounds like chaos, right? But it also sounds familiar. Just a couple of weeks ago, Trump's administration was working to reinstate hundreds of employees DOGE had fired.

That doesn't seem very efficient. A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll in April showed that the more Americans saw DOGE in action, the less they liked it.

Project 2025 isn't polling too well

The polling was even worse for Project 2025. Consider this outtake from a September 2024 NBC News poll on a variety of topics, including Project 2025: "It was the least popular of all the subjects tested in the September NBC News poll ‒ a battery that included socialism, capitalism, both presidential and vice presidential candidates, the Republican and Democratic parties, Taylor Swift and Elon Musk."

Sensing a theme? Now consider how Americans see Trump's shutdown. A Washington Post poll on Oct. 1, the first day of the shutdown, found that 47% of those surveyed blame Trump and Republicans for the shutdown, while 30% blamed Democrats and 23% were not sure who to blame.

Those numbers can only trend badly for Trump as more people see him gleefully empowering Vought to fire more federal employees ‒ not because they deserve it but because Trump and Vought desire it.

And Americans will find less and less credible the bogus accusations from Trump's Republican allies in Congress that Democrats caused this shutdown, as he revels in the chaos they created for him.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.