On the second day of the federal authorities shutdown, President Donald Trump shared an AI-generated video set to the basic music “(Don’t Concern) The Reaper” by Blue Öyster Cult. The star of that video, which shortly went viral, was Russell Vought, the president’s prime price range adviser. Greater than that, Vought is the architect of Trump’s broader plan to fireside civil servants, freeze authorities packages and dismantle total companies, and he’s a giant motive the second Trump administration has been simpler at undertaking its objectives than the primary. Within the video shared by Trump, Vought appeared because the scythe-wielding Grim Reaper of Washington, D.C.
Vought’s title is director of the Workplace of Administration and Funds. The OMB directorship is without doubt one of the strongest jobs in Washington, and Vought has used his place to wage a quiet battle to vary the form of your complete U.S. authorities. In Vought’s palms, OMB has acted as a choke level for the funding that Congress approves and companies depend on to run the federal government. Whereas he tends to function behind the scenes as a lot as attainable, his affect in Trump’s second administration is so pronounced that folks have described him as akin to a shadow president.
Listed below are among the key issues it’s best to find out about Vought. Learn ProPublica’s full investigation right here. (Vought declined to be interviewed for the article. A spokesperson for him at OMB wouldn’t touch upon the report in response to an in depth checklist of questions.)
1. Vought went from the mail room to changing into the chief antagonist of his personal occasion.
A local of Trumbull, Connecticut, and the son of an electrician father and a mom who spent a long time in public training earlier than serving to to launch a Christian faculty, Vought bought his first job in D.C. politics working within the mail room for Republican Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, a fierce price range hawk identified for criticizing members of his personal occasion for breaking what he seen as core conservative rules.
As Vought rose via the GOP ranks, ultimately happening to advise then-Rep. Mike Pence, he grew disillusioned with members of his occasion who claimed to care about balanced budgets and spending cuts but voted to approve payments loaded with pork-barrel spending and company giveaways.
In 2010, he give up Congress and helped launch an offshoot of the Heritage Basis assume tank known as Heritage Motion for America, which was tasked with strong-arming congressional Republicans to behave extra conservatively.
“I feel he thought the Republican management was an even bigger obstacle to conservative causes than Democrats had been,” a former Capitol Hill colleague of Vought’s mentioned.
2. OMB’s large energy supercharges Vought’s affect.
Whereas the Workplace of Administration and Funds is a part of the White Home, Vought is a member of Trump’s cupboard together with the secretary of protection and legal professional normal. OMB director has little of the cachet of these jobs, however it performs an important position. Each penny appropriated by Congress first passes via the OMB. It additionally critiques all important laws proposed by federal companies, vets govt orders earlier than the president indicators them and points office insurance policies for greater than 2 million federal staff.
“Each goddam factor within the govt department goes via OMB,” defined Sam Bagenstos, a former OMB official through the Biden administration.
3. Vought’s early work at OMB helped result in Trump’s first impeachment.
This isn’t Vought’s first stint as OMB director; he held the identical place through the first Trump administration.
In 2019, after the Trump White Home pressured Ukraine’s authorities to analyze then-candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, it requested Vought, then appearing director, to freeze $214 million in congressionally accredited safety help for Ukraine. He obliged.
This impoundment, later deemed unlawful by the Authorities Accountability Workplace, would set off congressional investigations and, in the end, Trump’s first impeachment. Throughout that course of, Vought refused to cooperate with investigators, calling the probe a “sham course of that’s designed to relitigate the final election.”
After the try to freeze the Ukraine funds in the end failed, Vought and Mark Paoletta, an legal professional and shut ally of Vought’s, spent the years between Trump’s presidencies creating a authorized argument that not solely are such impoundments authorized, however there’s a lengthy historical past of presidents utilizing the ability. (Authorized consultants have disputed Vought’s model of that historical past.)
4. Vought performed a shocking position in popularizing the phrase “woke and weaponized.”
In 2021, Vought launched the Middle for Renewing America, a assume tank dedicated to conserving the MAGA motion alive and making ready for a second Trump presidency. In accordance with beforehand unreported recordings obtained by ProPublica, Vought accepted an project from Trump to give you a approach for conservatives to counter Black Lives Matter. He popularized the idea of “woke and weaponized” authorities — a phrase embraced by GOP politicians and activists to disparagingly label insurance policies, folks and even companies that didn’t match with the MAGA agenda.
“When you’re watching tv and the phrases ‘woke and weaponized’ come out of a politician’s mouth, you’ll be able to know that that is coming … from the methods we’re placing out,” Vought boasted in a recording obtained by ProPublica.
When Vought’s assume tank launched a federal price range blueprint in 2022, calling for $9 trillion in cuts over 10 years, the phrase “woke” appeared 77 occasions throughout its 103 pages.
5. Vought’s imaginative and prescient for what would turn out to be Undertaking 2025 started throughout Trump’s first time period.
In 2017, whereas an adviser at OMB, Vought performed a lead position in attempting to implement a Trump govt order that known as for a top-to-bottom reorganization of the federal authorities. A former OMB senior staffer mentioned Vought initially needed to remove the U.S. Company for Worldwide Growth and the Client Monetary Safety Bureau, and to fold the Division of Training and the Division of Housing and City Growth, together with meals stamps packages, into a brand new Division of Welfare. “They needed to name it that as a result of they assume it sounds dangerous,” a former OMB analyst mentioned. “There have been only a few, if any, debates the place Russ wouldn’t take probably the most excessive possibility out there to him, probably the most conservative, probably the most budget-cutting.”
Trump’s Cupboard secretaries on the time resisted wholesale cuts, and few of the plans reached fruition. However Vought’s recommendations now learn like a information to the second Trump administration, which has gutted each USAID and the CFPB and is hollowing out the Division of Training.
“I didn’t understand it then,” the previous OMB staffer mentioned, “however I used to be writing the primary draft of Undertaking 2025.”
6. Vought’s position exhibits Undertaking 2025 has certainly formed the administration.
Vought was a key determine within the work of Undertaking 2025, the coalition of conservative teams that created a roadmap and recruited future appointees for the subsequent Republican administration. He led Undertaking 2025’s transition portion, which included writing some 350 govt orders, laws and different plans to extra totally empower the president. “I don’t need President Trump having to lose a second of time having fights within the Oval Workplace about whether or not one thing is authorized or doable or ethical,” Vought mentioned in a non-public 2024 speech.
In the course of the 2024 marketing campaign, Trump repeatedly claimed to don’t have anything to do with Undertaking 2025. His marketing campaign aides criticized the initiative, and information reviews instructed that Undertaking 2025 leaders can be blacklisted from working within the Trump White Home.
However Vought deftly navigated the controversy, and Trump introduced him again to OMB. In the meantime, the administration has moved shortly to meet lots of Undertaking 2025’s coverage targets. Early on on this month’s authorities shutdown, when Trump introduced that he would quickly meet with Vought to determine which “Democrat Businesses” to quickly or completely lower, he referred to his price range director as “Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame.”
7. Elon Musk and DOGE typically acted at Vought’s course, insiders say.
Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO and the world’s wealthiest individual, could have grabbed the headlines as his Division of Authorities Effectivity took a chainsaw to budgets and staffing. However courtroom data, interviews and different accounts from folks near Vought present that DOGE’s efforts had been guided, greater than beforehand identified, by the OMB director.
“I can’t think about that the DOGE crew knew to focus on all these little elements of the federal government with out Russ pointing them there,” a former OMB department chief informed ProPublica.
In Might, an official with Residents for Renewing America, a gaggle based by Vought, credited Vought with steering DOGE’s cuts. “DOGE is beneath the OMB,” the official mentioned, in response to a video of her remarks. “Truthfully, quite a lot of what Elon started pinpointing … was on the course of Russ.”
An administration official who has labored with Vought and Musk informed ProPublica that DOGE confirmed Vought that it was attainable to disregard authorized challenges and take dramatic motion. “He has the advantage of Elon softening everybody up,” the official mentioned. “Elon terrified the shit out of individuals. He broke the established order.”
8. Vought has used OMB to attempt to strain Democrats into reaching a take care of Republicans to finish the shutdown.
Vought has frozen $26 billion in federal funding for infrastructure and clear vitality tasks in blue states within the days after the federal authorities shut down on Oct. 1. The federal government has additionally adopted via on Vought’s earlier menace to fireside a large variety of civil servants if the shutdown weren’t averted.
“We work for the president of america,” a senior company official who recurrently offers with the OMB informed ProPublica. However proper now, he added, “it looks like we work for Russ Vought. He has centralized decision-making energy to an extent that he’s the commander in chief.”
Kirsten Berg contributed analysis.
