The Senate is likely to confirm one of President Donald Trump’s most controversial nominees, Russell Vought, as director of the Office of Management and Budget—as Vought is expected to expand the agency’s power and exert outsized control over government spending, in line with the agendas he helped craft for Trump’s second term.
President Donald Trump’s nominee for Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought … [+] testifies during the Senate Banking Committee nomination hearing in the Dirksen Senate Building on January 22, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)
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Key Facts
The Senate is expected to vote Thursday to confirm Vought after it advanced his nomination Wednesday in a 53-47 procedural vote along party lines.
Senate Democrats protested Vought’s nomination overnight Wednesday, when dozens took to the Senate floor to attack Vought and several referred to him as Trump’s “most dangerous nominee,” citing Vought’s roles in the government assistance freeze Trump implemented last month and the controversial right-wing Project 2025 policy agenda Vought co-authored.
Republicans, however, have united behind Vought, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., defending Vought on the Senate floor Wednesday as someone who “will make getting rid of burdensome regulations a priority.”
Who Is Russell Vought?
Trump appointed Vought OMB director in 2020, after he served as deputy director in 2017 then acting director in 2019. Vought was a Senate aide before becoming executive director of the conservative Republican Study Committee caucus then policy director for House Republicans. After Trump left office, Vought founded the right-wing nonprofit Center for Renewing America and was a key adviser to the Heritage Foundation’s controversial Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump presidency. Vought, 48, received his bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College and his law degree from George Washington University.
What Is The Office Of Management And Budget?
The largest branch of the executive office of the president, the OMB prepares the president’s budget and oversees the implementation of the budget approved by Congress.
What Is The Center For Renewing America?
Vought founded the right-wing nonprofit in 2021 and staffed the organization with former Trump officials, including former Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark, former acting Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli and former senior budget official Mark Paoletta. The group helped ratchet up panic about illegal immigration ahead of the 2022 midterms by lobbying Arizona Attorney General Brnovich to use the rhetoric that the U.S. was under “invasion,” Vought said in a 2023 speech unearthed by ProPublica, and it fiercely advocates for the dismantling of critical race theory teachings in schools. Vought also said in a hidden camera interview conducted by the nonprofit Centre for Climate Reporting last year that the group helped Trump draft executive orders and Trump was “very supportive of what we do.” Vought said in the interview the group was “working doggedly” to “take control of” government “bureaucracies,” including by “destroying their agencies’ notion of independence” and outlining deportation plans. The organization has also advocated for Trump’s use of the Insurrection Act to deploy the military to stamp out protests, Politico reported.
Was Russell Vought Involved In Project 2025?
Vought authored a chapter in the right-wing policy agenda on the Executive Office of the President of the United States and reportedly helped craft the group’s plan for Trump’s first 180 days in office. Vought’s Project 2025 chapter discusses the role of the OMB in executing the president’s agenda, comparing it to an air-traffic control system “with the ability and charge to ensure that all policy initiatives are flying in sync and with the authority to let planes take off and, at times, ground planes that are flying off course.”
What Are Vought’s Plans For Omb?
The OMB director, Vought wrote in Project 2025, “must view his job as the best, most comprehensive approximation of the president’s mind as it pertains to the policy agenda.” Vought advocated for “the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power . . . to the American people.” The chapter calls for the OMB to be “intimately involved in all aspects of the White House policy process” and for its director to ensure the agency “has sufficient visibility into the deep caverns of agency decision-making.”
What Government Spending Cuts Has Vought Advocated For?
Vought’s group has advocated for slashing billions of dollars from the government budget, including cuts to low-income assistance and education programs, such as Head Start, a $25.8 billion cut to the Department of Housing and Urban Development and $1.1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and $766 billion in cuts to Medicare over 10 years, according to a 2022 proposal by the Center for Renewing America titled “A Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government,” The New York Times reported. The plan also recommends billions of dollars in cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and a significant increase to the Defense Department budget.
What Has Vought Said About Impoundment?
Vought is a key proponent of using what’s known as the president’s “impoundment” power to decline to spend money approved by Congress, and is a fierce critic of the Impoundment Control Act that requires congressional approval of presidents’ attempts to withhold spending. Vought said during his Senate confirmation hearing he believes the 1974 law is unconstitutional, telling the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last month “the president ran on that view. That’s his view, and I agree with it.” Trump and his allies cited impoundment in the sweeping order he issued last month temporarily pausing federal assistance programs—a move that was halted by a judge.
What Is Vought’s Role In “schedule F” And Firing Federal Employees?
Vought spearheaded the directive during Trump’s first term that reclassified federal civil service employees to make it easier for Trump to fire them. Trump has already reinstated Schedule F, which eliminates civil service protections for federal employees with policy-related jobs. Vought has spoken in sharp terms about wanting to root out “bureaucrats” in the federal government. “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said in a private 2024 speech, ProPublica reported. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as villains.” Vought called Schedule F “sound policy” in his Senate confirmation hearing and said it’s designed to ensure the president “has career civil servants that are going to give us all of their knowledge and expertise, and disagreement at times to what they think about a potential proposal.”
What Has Vought Said About “christian Nationalism”?
Christian nationalism is the idea that U.S. political ideology should be rooted in Christianity and that the U.S. is inherently “Christian.” The belief is widely criticized as a threat to religious minorities, the separation between church and state, First Amendment and anti-discrimination protections. Vought expressed support for Christian Nationalism in a 2021 Newsweek piece titled “Is There Anything Actually Wrong With ‘Christian Nationalism?’” that argued “the term need not be subjected to such intense scorn due to misunderstanding or slander.”
Further Reading
Here’s How Trump’s Executive Orders Align With Project 2025—As Co-Author Nears Senate Confirmation (Forbes)
Secretly Recorded Video Of Project 2025 Co-Author Says He’s Not Worried About Trump’s Distancing (Forbes)
