Reports from various sources suggest that President-elect Donald Trump is poised to appoint Russ Vought, a prominent figure behind the contentious Project 2025, to lead the Office of Management and Budget.
As of now, an official announcement has yet to be made.
Vought previously held the same role during the final two years of Trump’s initial term, after serving as the deputy director of the office.
A contributor to Project 2025, Vought authored a section titled “Executive Office of the President,” and has advocated for bold measures to terminate federal employees by changing their classifications and removing their civil service safeguards.
Furthermore, Vought has argued that we exist in a “post-Constitutional era.”
“Radical measures are necessary to abandon or rethink the legal frameworks that have limited our capacity to revert to the original Constitution,” Vought expressed in a 2022 article, according to The Washington Post. “The arduous journey back to our cherished Constitution begins with self-honesty. It begins by acknowledging that we are indeed in a post-Constitutional era.”
He has been critical of “woke and weaponized” federal expenditures. It is anticipated that his advisor will be Elon Musk, who is co-managing the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency”—which is not an actual department, but is expected to have significant influence on federal oversight during a potential second Trump term.
Trump’s appointee for OMB has also expressed strong opinions regarding the non-existence of “independent” agencies—arguing that Trump should swiftly work to abolish the enduring convention of certain federal departments and agencies functioning without presidential guidance.
“My conviction, which I hope resonates with others, is that the President must act executive decisively and aggressively, from a radical constitutional standpoint, to dismantle that bureaucracy and its power structures,” Vought stated during an interview with podcast host Tucker Carlson earlier this week. “I believe there are a few approaches to achieve this—first and foremost, challenging the entire concept of independence. There are no independent agencies. Congress may label them as such—like the SEC, FCC, CFPB, and the rest of the alphabet soup—but that notion is foreign to the Constitution.”
