Vought said. “We have to solve the woke and the weaponized bureaucracy and have the president take control of the executive branch.” … Vought is among a faction of MAGA supporters who have come to see the Federalist Society as too soft for an era in which, they believe, liberals and Democrats pose an existential threat to the nation.
Trump Picks Key Figure in Project 2025 for Powerful Budget Role
Russell Vought, who would lead the Office of Management and Budget, has spent years building plans to rework the American structure of government in ways that would enhance presidential power.
Nov. 22, 2024
Russell T. Vought played a pivotal role in Donald J. Trump’s first term, when he also served as budget chief.Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times
President-elect Donald J. Trump on Friday picked a key figure in Project 2025 to lead the Office of Management and Budget, elevating a longtime ally who has spent the last four years making plans to rework the American government to enhance presidential power.
The would-be nominee, Russell T. Vought, would oversee the White House budget and help determine whether federal agencies comport with the president’s policies. The role requires Senate confirmation unless Mr. Trump is able to make recess appointments.
The choice of Mr. Vought would bring in a strongly ideological figure who played a pivotal role in Mr. Trump’s first term, when he also served as budget chief. Among other things, Mr. Vought helped come up with the idea of having Mr. Trump use emergency power to circumvent Congress’s decision about how much to spend on a border wall.
Mr. Vought was a leading figure in Project 2025, the effort by conservative organizations to build a governing blueprint for Mr. Trump should he take office once again. Mr. Trump tried to distance himself from the effort during his campaign, but he has put forward people with ties to the project for his administration since the election.
Mr. Vought’s role in Project 2025 was to oversee executive orders and other unilateral actions that Mr. Trump could take during his first six months in office, with the goal of tearing down and rebuilding executive branch institutions in a way that would enhance presidential power.
In an interview with The New York Times in 2023, Mr. Vought laid out an agenda of eliminating the independence of certain regulatory agencies that operate outside the direct control of the White House, such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The independent structure of those agencies has been a central part of how Congress has set up the administrative state since the New Deal. But Mr. Vought sees the modern structure of government as a theft of the president’s rightful powers.
“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” Mr. Vought said at the time, adding of the Federal Reserve: “It’s very hard to square the Fed’s independence with the Constitution.”
Mr. Vought sees the modern structure of government as a theft of the president’s rightful powers.Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
Mr. Vought has a long history in the conservative movement, including stints working for the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation and for Mike Pence when he was a member of Congress. But it was in the Trump era — and especially after Mr. Trump’s presidency — that Mr. Vought became a figure of national prominence.
In the final week of Mr. Trump’s presidency, in mid-January 2021, Mr. Vought told Mr. Trump about his plan to set up the Center for Renewing America to keep his policies alive. Mr. Trump blessed the idea and later helped raise money for the group, hosting Mr. Vought at Mar-a-Lago and praising his efforts to a large gathering of wealthy donors.
Mr. Vought kept in close touch with Mr. Trump for the next three years, according to people with knowledge of the relationship. They would talk often by phone, and Mr. Vought made trips to Mr. Trump’s private clubs in Palm Beach, Fla., and Bedminster, N.J.
He also sought to maintain a productive relationship with Mr. Trump’s top political adviser, Susie Wiles, though Ms. Wiles and others in the senior ranks of the campaign occasionally expressed irritation privately at some of Mr. Vought’s more radical policy statements in the press, according to two people with knowledge of the comments. Mr. Trump has named Ms. Wiles chief of staff in his new administration.
Still, Mr. Vought was appointed to lead the policy platform committee for the Republican National Convention this year.
But as Project 2025 became more controversial, Mr. Vought’s relationship with the Trump campaign grew more distant. He receded from view and the Trump transition proceeded under the explicit directive, from its co-chair Howard Lutnick, to deny formal roles to anybody associated with Project 2025.
Now that Mr. Trump has won the election, Mr. Vought has come back into public view, including sitting for a lengthy interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, which he posted on social media on Monday. Mr. Carlson has broad influence in Mr. Trump’s circle.
In the interview, Mr. Vought laid out ideas for how Mr. Trump “has to move executively as fast and as aggressively as possible, with a radical constitutional perspective, to be able to dismantle” the power of federal agencies and civil servants.
“The American people currently are not in control of their government, and the president hasn’t been either,” Mr. Vought said. “We have to solve the woke and the weaponized bureaucracy and have the president take control of the executive branch.”
Mr. Vought sought to maintain a productive relationship with Mr. Trump’s top political adviser, Susie Wiles.Doug Mills/The New York Times
Even before Project 2025 became a campaign issue, Mr. Vought’s think tank was a home for proposals that were too radioactive even among the highly conservative audiences.
In one case, Mr. Vought’s group published a legal framework for Mr. Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy federal troops on domestic soil. Its public white paper on the topic framed the issue in terms of using the military to patrol the southern border against migrants. But the legal arguments would be the same to use troops to crush demonstrations by American protesters, like the racial justice protests that erupted in the summer of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, which sometimes turned violent.
Mr. Vought’s group listed using the Insurrection Act to stop riots as a “Day 1” idea, meaning one whose legal framework was already well established, and which could be put into effect by a president unilaterally, according to an internal email from early 2023 reviewed by The Times.
“Insurrection — stop riots ** — Day 1, easy,” the email said.
Mr. Vought also offered a professional home and employment to Jeffrey B. Clark, the former high-ranking Justice Department official criminally charged in Georgia in connection with efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 election loss in that state.
Mr. Clark wrote a paper, published by Mr. Vought’s group, that advocates eliminating the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department investigative independence from the White House — another idea listed on the group’s internal email.
Mr. Vought has proved more radical than others in the conservative movement in another way. In the first Trump administration, lawyers in the mold of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group, at times acted to constrain Mr. Trump’s impulses.
But Mr. Vought is among a faction of MAGA supporters who have come to see the Federalist Society as too soft for an era in which, they believe, liberals and Democrats pose an existential threat to the nation.
“The Federalist Society doesn’t know what time it is,” Mr. Vought declared in an interview last year.
Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent reporting on the 2024 presidential campaign, down ballot races across the country and the investigations into former President Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman
Jonathan Swan is a political reporter covering the 2024 presidential election and Donald Trump’s campaign. More about Jonathan Swan
