Russell Vought is the most dangerous man in Trump’s second administration—not because he shouts, but because he doesn’t have to. While Trump exercises power, Vought builds the machinery that makes it real: purges disguised as restructuring, obedience enforced through budgets, personnel, and DOGE’s data-driven loyalty indexing. This essay examines how Vought turns the administrative state into an ideological instrument, replacing competence with devotion and hollowing democracy from the inside out. Authoritarianism doesn’t need a coup when the rooms of government are emptied of anyone able—or allowed—to say no.
~Dunneagin
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