Trump's Quest for Unchecked Power: A Video Roundup
Our early-October collection of clips on how the president is exploiting the government shutdown to serve his own ends
Dear Readers:
The most compelling justification for the recent government shutdown is that it is a necessary constitutional stand-off—a moment when Democrats use, and thereby refuse to forfeit, Congress’ power of the purse to resist an authoritarian executive. As The UnPopulist’s columnist, , recently argued, refusing to fund Trump’s government can function first and foremost as a defense of our fundamental constitutional system:
The question is not whether to fund or shut down the government—it’s whether to fund or shut down this government. There is no abstract, apolitical entity called “the government” that exists separate from the regime currently in charge. Today, it is Trump’s government, dominated and subordinated to his erratic dictates. To blindly fund that machine is to underwrite the very apparatus now being weaponized against American democracy.
Yet while Trump’s opponents wrestle with how to defend democracy, Trump has already found a way to weaponize the chaos. The shutdown has become his laboratory—a proving ground for Project 2025, a stage for partisan propaganda, and a smokescreen for dismantling oversight. While millions of Americans face furloughs, unpaid bills, and delayed benefits, the administration has turned national disruption into a chance to consolidate control.
Trump has harnessed the shutdown’s disruptiveness to create even more dysfunction. Each week of paralysis serves his purpose: to hollow out the independent checks on his power in the name of government downsizing and reshape the machinery of power around personal loyalty. The result is a government less capable of serving the public and more adept at serving him.
That is the story running through this week’s Executive Watch videos—a portrait of a leader exploiting a vulnerable moment to tighten his grip.
Watch and then follow/subscribe to our YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram pages to get our latest clips as soon as they’re released.
Landry Ayres
Senior Producer
Trump’s Great Leap Backward Toward One-Man Rule
October 10, 2025
The Trump administration is using the shutdown to ramp up its commitment to the Project 2025 blueprint for government. Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump White House, is one of Project 2025’s architects and tasked with deciding which agencies starve and which are permanently dismantled.
Our video probes how, while previous shutdowns were a byproduct of political gridlock, Trump has seized on the shutdown as an instrument for reengineering the state in Project 2025’s image.
Watch it below or on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram.
Trump Uses Shutdown Government Sites to Push Partisan Message
October 10, 2025
Across the federal government’s digital front, that reengineering of the state takes another form: propaganda. At the onset of the appropriations’ pause, taxpayer-funded websites began displaying banners blaming “Radical Left Democrats” for the crisis in a clearly coordinated, deliberate, and possibly illegal effort.
These aren’t updates meant to inform the public—they are illegal regime propaganda disguised as government service.
This entry, part of our Executive Watch series, documents how the administration turned the simple act of explaining a closure into a test of loyalty to the president.
Watch it below or on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram.
Trump Tries to Turn Watchdogs Into Lapdogs by Defunding Inspectors General
October 2, 2025
As the shutdown stretches on, Trump’s team has moved to eliminate the few institutions capable of calling out this corruption. The Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (or CIGIE), the independent body overseeing ethics, accountability, and misuse of public funds, was suddenly defunded, folded into the shutdown’s chaos as if it were just another “nonessential” function.
But accountability is arguably the most essential safeguard we have. It is the only barrier between a functioning democracy and the unchecked rule of one man.
Watch our video explaining this corrupt move below, or on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram.
© The UnPopulist, 2025
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