Russell Vought sees the Office of Management and Budget as a “nerve center” that can be used to curtail DEI programs and purge the federal workforce of Trump’s perceived enemies.
This story was originally reported by Amanda Becker of The 19th. Meet Amanda and read more of her reporting on gender, politics and policy.
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The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved Project 2025 architect Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on a party-line vote after Democrats held the floor overnight in an attempt to delay the confirmation since they did not have the numbers to block it.
Vought was confirmed by a vote of 53-47.
For 30 hours, starting on Wednesday afternoon and into Thursday evening, Democrats took turns on the Senate floor to protest Republican President Donald Trump’s nomination of Vought, who also led OMB at the tail end of Trump’s first administration.
“This is really important, that we raise the alarm as to what is happening,” said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who spoke from 2-5 a.m., longer than most of his colleagues.
During his first stint at OMB, an under-the-radar entity that wields immense influence over the federal government by crafting the president’s budget, Vought helped Trump come up with a plan to jettison job protections for thousands of federal workers and assisted with a legally ambiguous effort to redirect congressionally appropriated foreign aid for Ukraine. In the years since, Vought founded two pro-Trump groups whose work has focused on discrediting structural racism and curtailing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. The chapter that Vought wrote for Project 2025 detailed how the budget agency could be used to withhold money appropriated by Congress and eliminate dissent within agencies by purging them of employees.
Trump said repeatedly during his campaign that he had not read Project 2025 and did not know its authors, though at least 60 percent of its more than 350 contributors were linked to the president. These include appointees and nominees from his first administration, members of his prior transition team and unofficial advisers.
Project 2025 is a 920-page roadmap from the conservative Heritage Foundation about how Trump’s second administration could use the federal government to enact a far-right Christian agenda. If implemented — and some of the Trump administration’s earliest moves track the blueprint’s objectives — it has the potential to redefine rights long held by all Americans, with disproportionate impacts for women, LGBTQ+ people, people of color and vulnerable populations like the elderly and disabled.
“What was in Project 2025 that made it so widely hated across the political spectrum? A few things: firing civil servants, weaponizing the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, unleashing force onto protestors, and targeting political opponents, restricting abortion nationwide, ripping retirement and health care benefits from seniors, dismantling public education,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Wednesday evening on the Senate floor in a speech opposing Vought’s nomination.
Warren noted that Vought has called on Congress to outlaw medication abortion and encouraged discrimination against transgender people in the workplace. She continued: “Now, Donald Trump has named the lead architect of Project 2025, Russ Vought, to oversee the federal government’s entire budget office … to carry out the Republican blueprint to make our government force people to live in the image that Russ Vought and other extremist Republicans approve of.”
Last week an OMB letter sent by acting director Matthew Vaeth instructing federal agencies to pause “all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance” sent shock waves across Washington. The White House moved to quell the backlash. A federal judge earlier this week issued a temporary restraining order, extending a pause on implementing the directive.
Vought, in an interview with conservative activist Tucker Carlson shortly after Trump’s reelection, discussed how the incoming administration could force federal agencies to “come to heel and do what the president has been telling them to do.” He likened OMB to the “nerve center” through which Trump could ensure his policy directives trickle down through the federal agencies that employ more than 2 million Americans.
Many of these federal workers received an email last week from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which acts as the federal government’s human resources department, with the subject line “Fork in the Road.” The email offered them a chance to opt into a “deferred resignation” program intended to trim the federal workforce and set an acceptance deadline of February 6. Already, federal employees identified as working on DEI programs had received letters notifying them that they were placed on leave and could be fired. Some have sued the administration.
Labor unions representing federal employees also sued over the resignation offer and deadline, and a federal judge on Thursday blocked OPM from enforcing it. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that about 40,000 workers had already accepted the offer and the White House expected that number to grow. Leavitt said she was not part of discussions about next steps or whether layoffs would follow if enough employees did not resign.
“Americans need to know that OMB is extremely powerful, with oversight over the president’s budget and functionally all federal agency actions, including regulatory decisions,” Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii said Thursday.
“With such responsibility, the person leading this office needs to be level-headed and impartial. They need to put loyalty to the Constitution above loyalty to the President,” she added. “Mr. Vought, however, is the ultimate yes-man.”
