U.S. President Donald Trump makes an announcement regarding his administration's policies against cartels and human trafficking, from the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 23, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Trump and his handlers, including Project 2025 architect Russell Vought, were hoping to downgrade democracy into a Trump monarchy, but the dismantling is getting stalled and even hardline critics are getting depressed note.
New Republic writer Virginia Heffernan said that Vought must be able to tear down democracy quickly before Americans realize what’s happening, but Trump keeps getting stalled by courts, protests and Trump’s own neurotic obsessions.
“[Elon] Musk’s heavy-metal shtick managed to cut from the federal budget only about 5 percent of the $1 trillion in cuts that the big man promised,” Hefferman said. “Since then, Vought, with his stealthier tactics, has proven unable to fully demolish the rule of law. Of the 470 legal challenges to the Trump administration, a significant number have been filed against DOGE and OMB. Since April, Trump has signed only 66 Eos — and only one so far this month. Project 2025 has achieved fewer than half of its objectives.”
Hefferman said Vought planned to dismantle “the policy plans and preferences of a radical, supposedly ‘woke’ faction of the country.” Once that cartel of wokeness was gone, Hefferman said Vought expected America to “toss our hats in the air, and embrace Trump as our king.”
“But this liberation-by-king keeps not happening in America. Instead, six in 10 Americans blame Republicans for the shutdown, according to a new poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Trump’s approval rating remains solidly underwater,” Hefferman said.
Blogger and software developer Curtis Yarvin once told Politico he was excited about Vought’s willingness to “impound” money from Congress, thereby usurping its power of the purse. But these days, even Yarvin is getting discouraged.
“Yarvin, for his part, believes that if democracy were going to yield to Trumpocracy, it would have happened already. He’s now demoralized by the administration’s unwillingness to act more quickly — or violently — to wipe out democracy and the rule of law altogether. Earlier this month, he wrote dejectedly on his blog that the Trump administration is now “failing because it deserves to fail.”
Yarvin, who Hefferman describes as a “freako-extremist,” complains that Trump blew his energy on “getting rid of one liberal judge,” when he should have been “getting rid of the whole legal system” and “the whole philosophy of government.”
“Yarvin is now so panicked about Democratic victory in Congress and the coming liberal vengeance that he has plans to leave the country. The moment for the Dark Enlightenment revolution has passed,” Hefferman said.
Meanwhile the line of Trump’s opposition keeps growing, which Hefferman says includes “Democrats, progressives, mass mobilizations of protesters, and rank-and-file Trump disapprovers, meaning at least 50 percent of us.”
“More surprisingly, GOP showfolk are now gunning for the administration. Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene won’t stop hammering the Republican Party."
Read the New Republic report at this link.
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