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President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that he has selected Russell Vought to again lead the White House budget office, returning the hard-charging conservative to a critical position in the federal Government.
Vought, who also led the White House Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s first administration, wrote a chapter of Project 2025 on transforming the executive office of the presidency and has embraced a strikingly aggressive set of legal theories for asserting presidential power. The budget office implements budget policy across the administration, overseeing spending and regulation. Trump repeatedly disavowed the Heritage Foundation project during his campaign, but that does not appear to have stopped the President-elect from returning one of its architects to the White House.
“Russ knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponised Government, and he will help us return Self Governance to the People,” Trump said in a statement.
Russell Vought is US President Donald Trump's nominee to be director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Photo / Bloomberg via Getty Images
The move would have dramatic consequences for the US Government. Vought has been a lead proponent of a reclassification of the federal workforce that would give Trump the authority to fire thousands of government employees who are now considered civil servants, which Trump implemented at the very end of his administration before it was rescinded by President Joe Biden.
Vought has pushed other novel legal theories asserting that Trump has the power to unilaterally rescind spending programmes without consulting Congress. Since 2021, Vought has outlined in greater depth his vision of “radical constitutionalism,” crafting plans for Trump to deploy the military in response to civil unrest and assert more control over the Justice Department.
“We need to be radical in discarding or rethinking the legal paradigms that have confined our ability to return to the original Constitution,” Vought wrote in a 2022 essay. “The long, difficult road ahead of returning to our beloved Constitution starts with being honest with ourselves. It starts by recognising that we are living in a post-Constitutional time.”
US President-elect Donald Trump says Vought knows how to "dismantle the Deep State". Photo / Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Although little-known beyond Washington, the White House budget office occupies a central position in the operation of the federal Government. It crafts the President’s annual budget proposals to Congress and helps approve spending decisions across the federal agencies. It also oversees the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which reviews and implements draft regulations across the executive branch. In Trump’s first term, Vought sought to leverage these powers more aggressively than did his predecessors, while emerging as a loyal defender of Trump’s policy agenda.
“It makes sense for lots of reasons,” said Marc Short, who served as a senior aide to former Vice-President Mike Pence. “He’s an incredibly smart guy who is very committed to the President’s cause, and I think he’ll serve Trump well.”
Vought is expected to work closely with the new “Department of Government Efficiency,” led by billionaire Elon Musk and 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, on cutting government spending and regulations. Musk and Ramaswamy wrote Wednesday in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that their group would “work in the new administration closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget”. Trump aides have eyed using a novel legal theory spearheaded by Vought to give Musk and Ramaswamy the authority to cancel federal spending without congressional approval – a move that could spark a constitutional showdown. In their Wall Street Journal op-ed, Musk and Ramaswamy said they thought the Supreme Court would side with Trump if that theory were tested.
Vought has also repeatedly denounced “woke and weaponised” federal spending efforts.
Vought’s most immediate effect on Washington could be his efforts to overhaul the federal workforce. Trump in January 2021 moved forward with an effort to shift many federal workers to a new job classification called Schedule F, which would have stripped them of civil service protections and made them political appointees instead. The effort would have removed protections for tens of thousands of career federal employees, but the Trump administration ran out of time before it could be implemented.
Vought has been a key figure in conservative Washington budget circles for decades. He was the executive director of the conservative House Republican Study Committee and joined the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation. He also worked for Texas Republicans in Congress, including Senator Phil Gramm and Representative Jeb Hensarling.
