Shanti Menon 5 minute read

Trump nominee and Project 2025 architect Russell Vought has drastic plans to reshape America

Vought’s “trauma”-inducing agenda, in his own words.

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After denying any association with Project 2025, the deeply unpopular manifesto that calls for a presidential power-grab, President-elect Donald Trump has selected one of its chief architects to serve in a key White House position. Project 2025 advocates draconian actions that would add to the burdens facing families today, such as stripping environmental protections, eliminating national flood insurance and increasing pollution from dirty energy.

Russell Vought standing at a podium next to Donald Trump
Russell Vought seeks to aggressively expand presidential authority. (Official White House Photo/Shealah Craighead)

Russell Vought, Trump’s pick to run the federal Office of Management and Budget, wrote Project 2025’s chapter on aggressively expanding the powers of the president to achieve the project’s goals.  

Vought’s public statements alone have generated criticism from across the political spectrum. But his complete agenda has yet to be revealed. 

This summer, in a video recorded by undercover U.K. journalists, Vought spoke about the existence of hundreds of detailed, specific action items that have not been made public.  

We’ve got about 350 different documents that are regulations and things of that nature that are, we’re planning for the next administration.

Russell Vought Centre for Climate Reporting, hidden camera interview, Aug. 15, 2024

While these documents remain undisclosed, Vought’s own words still make the broad strokes of his agenda clear.  

A presidential power grab, executed by Vought and OMB 

In Project 2025, Vought describes “the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch.” He lays out his plan to concentrate power in the hands of the president and his appointees and eliminate the independence of federal agencies, asserting: 

It is the President’s agenda that should matter to the departments and agencies that operate under his constitutional authority.

Russell Vought Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership

OMB, the office Vought would lead, is central to the Project 2025 agenda. In a lengthy interview with Tucker Carlson, Vought describes OMB as the “nerve center” of the federal government.  

Office of Management and Budget has the ability to turn off the spending that’s going on at the agencies. It has all the regulations coming through it to assess whether it’s good or bad.

Russell Vought Tucker Carlson interview, Nov. 18, 2024

Vought goes on to explain that control of how the government spends taxpayer dollars lies with the President and OMB — not the people’s representatives in Congress.  When Vought served at OMB during the first Trump administration, his office withheld taxpayer funds in defiance of Congress, resulting in Trump’s impeachment. (Vought refused a Congressional subpoena to testify on the matter.) 

By using OMB to control funding regardless of what the elected legislature decides, Vought says:  

…you have the ability at that point to bring them, to come to heel, and to do what the president has been telling them to do.

Russell Vought Tucker Carlson interview, Nov. 18, 2024

According to the National Constitution Center, only Congress holds the power to specify how much, when, and for what purpose federal money should be spent. 

“Congress’s 'power of the purse' is at the foundation of our Constitution’s separation of powers, a constitutionally mandated check on Executive power,” writes Yale law professor Kate Stith.    

Removal of independent experts from federal agencies 

In his previous stint at OMB, Vought says he was frequently blocked from pursuing his agenda by nonpartisan staff. That opposition was “the most infuriating thing you can imagine,” he told Carlson.  

This time around, Vought plans to remove that opposition by ousting experts and replacing them with political appointees. Federal agencies like the EPA are staffed by people hired on the basis of merit, not political loyalties, with good reason. They use their expertise to protect the public rather than politicians and special interests. By law, these workers have job protections that shield them from political backlash. But Trump and Vought plan to strip these protections for thousands of dedicated public servants, making it possible to fire them at will.  

There certainly is going to be mass layoffs and firings, particularly at some of the agencies that we don’t even think should exist. 

Russell Vought Tucker Carlson interview, Nov. 18, 2024

In another secretly recorded speech, this time at a Center for Renewing America event in 2023, Vought made clear his disdain for public service and the EPA in particular.  

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.

Russell Vought Center for Renewing America speech, 2023 (recording obtained by Propublica)

Widely criticized for these remarks, Vought doubled down, telling Carson:  

Yeah, I called for trauma.

Russell Vought Tucker Carlson interview, Nov. 18, 2024

Attacking clean cars, clean energy and climate protection 

Climate change is another bugbear for Vought, who demonizes efforts to support clean cars and clean energy. In Project 2025, he proposes abolishing the Office of Domestic Climate Policy and suggests that the president should refuse to accept federal scientific research, such as the U.S. National Climate Assessment. In fact, Vought wants to remove any consideration of climate in government — as if that might erase the climate impacts people are already facing, such as excessive flooding, the high cost of home insurance, unhealthy air and killer heat waves.   

The Biden Administration’s climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding. 

Russell Vought Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership

That climate criticism extends to the U.S. military, which has been documenting the national security challenges posed by climate change for more than 30 years. This includes concerns about newly opened sea passages through melting Arctic sea ice, mass migrations and unrest driven by drought and crop failure, and sea level rise swamping U.S. military installations.  According to Vought, anyone voicing these “non-defense” concerns should be a red flag for the National Security Council. 

The NSC should rigorously review all general and flag officer promotions to prioritize the core roles and responsibilities of the military over social engineering and non-defense matters, including climate change.

Russell Vought Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership

What happens next 

Vought and his colleagues at CRA have been advocating for presidential nominees to bypass the normal Senate confirmation process. That idea was echoed by Trump in a post on X, and was promptly lambasted as “awful and unconstitutional” by legal scholar and Trump ally Ed Whelan in The National Review

If the confirmation process does take its normal course, after a background check and ethics investigation, Vought will likely appear before the Senate early next year for a hearing. The vast majority of nominees that make it to the hearing end up getting confirmed.  

But given Vought’s track record of defying Congress and his intention to centralize executive power, it’s possible that some senators could think twice about handing over the reins of government to him. At least one Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, has stated concerns about Vought’s connection to Project 2025. 

The global nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, which rarely comments on political appointees, has strongly voiced its opposition to Vought, given his plans to gut the Environmental Protection Agency and replace health and science experts with political appointees.  

“Russ Vought has made clear his contempt for the people working every day to ensure their fellow Americans have clean air, clean water and a safer climate. This is not the leadership America needs,” said EDF Executive Director Amanda Leland. 

For his part, Vought appears more than ready to step into a role he has spent the last four years envisioning. He told Carlson he found his confirmation hearings “exhilarating” the last time around. “It prepares you to take on enemy fire.” 

Hope for a warming planet

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