Russell Vought, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be director of the Office of Management and Budget. Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/AP
On Thursday evening, the US Senate voted to confirm Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), a key arm of the executive branch in charge of the federal budget and agency regulations. Vought will officially return to his old job, which—as I wrote in a profile of him published last year—he sees as being the “keeper of ‘commander’s intent’” in a war to upend the federal bureaucracy.
The 53-47 vote to confirm Vought came after Democrats held the Senate floor in an overnight marathon to protest the nomination. One after another, they excoriated Trump’s pick to be head of OMB, perhaps more than any other controversial appointee.
“Of all the harmful nominees, of all the extremists that Donald Trump has elevated, of all the hard-right ideologies who have come before the Senate,” Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York said, “none of them hold a candle to Russell Vought. He is far and away the most dangerous to the American people.”
He added: “Most people have never heard of Russell Vought before, but make no mistake about it, my fellow Americans: he is the most important piece of the puzzle in Donald Trump’s second term. He will be the quarterback of White House policy.”
Describing Vought as the “godfather of the ultra-right,” Schumer called him “Project 2025 incarnate.”
Vought’s goals are not secret, nor are they subtle—we do not have to decipher anything here. He’s going to break laws, cut programs that help Americans, and funnel all that money to billionaires. I’m voting NO. pic.twitter.com/nlQ0A9PV1B
— Senator Patty Murray (@PattyMurray) February 6, 2025
A self-avowed Christian Nationalist, Vought is a wonky bureaucrat and Washington insider committed to Trump’s obsession with “draining the swamp.” During Trump’s first term, he tested the boundaries of the law to advance the president’s radical goals. Founder of the conservative think-tank Center for Renewing America, he is also one of the architects behind the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 mandate for Trump’s comeback, advocating for expanding presidential powers and subjugating the federal government.
As I wrote in a profile of Vought, if confirmed, he would be the man best positioned to realize Trump’s visions—and push the religious right’s agenda:
For Vought, politics is downstream from religion. He sees a strong presidency as a way to bring forth a Christian nation. Vought opposes abortion and has referred to transgender identity as a “contagion.” He has suggested migration policy should be rooted in Judeo-Christian principles, with immigrants tested on their readiness to “assimilate.” If Trump wins, Vought wants to infuse the next conservative administration with the values of Christian nationalism—the conviction that the United States is bound to the teachings of Christ, from which all else follows.
During a January confirmation hearing, Vought was pressed on his anti-abortion stance and support of cuts to federal programs like Medicaid. He also reaffirmed his belief that the Impoundment Control Act (ICA), which limits the president’s authority to withhold funds appropriated by Congress, is unconstitutional. “My view of the [OMB director] position is that you come into an administration and you do what the president ran on, what the president’s viewpoints are,” Vought testified. “You take the viewpoint and you dispense it throughout the agency.”
“This is like, everybody’s watched Game of Thrones,” Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii said on the Senate floor this week “he wants to be the king’s hand.” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren called Vought the “puppet master” behind the Trump administration’s brief but chaotic funding freeze of all federal grants and loans. “We don’t know how far Russ Vought’s extremism will go,” she said. “But we can’t afford to wait and find out.”
While in charge of OMB, Vought spearheaded the effort to implement Schedule F, an executive order meant to strip thousands of career civil servants from job protections and replace them with handpicked MAGA loyalists. Vought has talked about putting federal workers ‘in trauma” and make them “not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”
“In addition to Vought’s intention to dismantle the civil service,” a statement submitted by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) opposing his nomination reads “the Senate cannot ignore his willingness and intentions to misuse his own authority and craft plans for the president to subvert the law and, in the process, American democracy.”
