We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma.

Vought's description in 2023 of his intent to destroy morale within the United States civil service in order to drive staff to resign. Over 300,000 federal employees have either resigned or been fired since Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025. As quoted by Molly Redden and Andy Kroll, ProPublica, and Nick Surgey, Them in Trauma”: Inside a Key MAGA Leader’s Plans for a New Trump Agenda", Propublica (28 October 2024)