What you should know about Russ Vought, Trump’s shadow president

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox On the second day of the federal regime shutdown President Donald Trump shared an AI-generated video set to the classic song Don t Fear The Reaper by Blue yster Cult The star of that video which promptly went viral was Russell Vought the president s top budget adviser More than that Vought is the architect of Trump s broader plan to fire civil servants freeze ruling body programs and dismantle entire agencies and he s a big reason the second Trump administration has been more effective at accomplishing its goals than the first In the video shared by Trump Vought appeared as the scythe-wielding Grim Reaper of Washington D C Vought s title is director of the Office of Management and Budget The OMB directorship is one of the the bulk powerful jobs in Washington and Vought has used his position to wage a quiet war to change the shape of the entire U S authorities In Vought s hands OMB has acted as a choke point for the funding that Congress approves and agencies rely on to run the administration While he tends to operate behind the scenes as much as feasible his influence in Trump s second administration is so pronounced that people have described him as akin to a shadow president Here are chosen of the key things you should know about Vought Read ProPublica s full inquiry here Vought declined to be interviewed for the article A spokesperson for him at OMB would not comment on the record in response to a detailed list of questions Vought went from the mail room to becoming the chief antagonist of his own party A native of Trumbull Connecticut and the son of an electrician father and a mother who spent decades in general guidance before helping to launch a Christian school Vought got his first job in D C politics working in the mail room for Republican Sen Phil Gramm of Texas a fierce budget hawk known for criticizing members of his own party for emerging what he viewed as core conservative principles As Vought rose through the GOP ranks eventually going on to advise then-Rep Mike Pence he grew disillusioned with members of his party who claimed to care about balanced budgets and spending cuts yet voted to approve bills loaded with pork-barrel spending and corporate giveaways In he quit Congress and helped launch an offshoot of the Heritage Foundation think tank called Heritage Action for America which was tasked with strong-arming congressional Republicans to act more conservatively I think he thought the Republican leadership was a bigger impediment to conservative causes than Democrats were a former Capitol Hill colleague of Vought s reported OMB s massive power supercharges Vought s influence While the Office of Management and Budget is part of the White House Vought is a member of Trump s cabinet along with the secretary of defense and attorney general OMB director has little of the cachet of those jobs but it plays a vital role Every penny appropriated by Congress first passes through the OMB It also reviews all major regulations proposed by federal agencies vets executive orders before the president signs them and issues workplace policies for more than million federal employees Every goddam thing in the executive branch goes through OMB explained Sam Bagenstos a former OMB official during the Biden administration Vought s early work at OMB helped lead to Trump s first impeachment This isn t Vought s first stint as OMB director he held the same position during the first Trump administration In after the Trump White House pressured Ukraine s governing body to investigate then-candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter it appealed Vought then acting director to freeze million in congressionally approved protection assistance for Ukraine He obliged This impoundment later deemed illegal by the Executive Accountability Office would trigger congressional investigations and ultimately Trump s first impeachment During that process Vought refused to cooperate with investigators calling the probe a sham process that is designed to relitigate the last poll After the attempt to freeze the Ukraine funds ultimately failed Vought and Mark Paoletta an attorney and close ally of Vought s spent the years between Trump s presidencies progressing a legal argument that not only are such impoundments legal but there is a long history of presidents using the power Legal experts have disputed Vought s version of that history Related Project architect validated as OMB head Vought played a surprising role in popularizing the phrase woke and weaponized In Vought launched the Center for Renewing America a think tank devoted to keeping the MAGA movement alive and preparing for a second Trump presidency According to previously unreported recordings obtained by ProPublica Vought accepted an assignment from Trump to come up with a way for conservatives to counter Black Lives Matter He popularized the concept of woke and weaponized regime a phrase embraced by GOP politicians and activists to disparagingly label policies people and even agencies that didn t fit with the MAGA agenda If you re watching television and the words woke and weaponized come out of a politician s mouth you can know that this is coming from the strategies we re putting out Vought boasted in a recording obtained by ProPublica When Vought s think tank disclosed a federal budget blueprint in calling for trillion in cuts over years the word woke appeared times across its pages Vought s vision for what would become Project began during Trump s first term In while an adviser at OMB Vought played a lead role in trying to implement a Trump executive order that called for a top-to-bottom reorganization of the federal administration A former OMB senior staffer stated Vought initially craved to eliminate the U S Agency for International Advancement and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and to fold the Department of Guidance and the Department of Housing and Urban Improvement along with food stamps programs into a new Department of Welfare They longed to call it that because they think it sounds bad a former OMB analyst stated There were very inadequate if any debates where Russ wouldn t take the the majority extreme option available to him the largest part conservative the the majority budget-cutting Trump s Cabinet secretaries at the time resisted wholesale cuts and insufficient of the plans reached fruition But Vought s suggestions now read like a guide to the second Trump administration which has gutted both USAID and the CFPB and is hollowing out the Department of Schooling I didn t realize it then the former OMB staffer revealed but I was writing the first draft of Project Vought s role shows Project has indeed shaped the administration Vought was a key figure in the work of Project the coalition of conservative groups that created a roadmap and recruited future appointees for the next Republican administration He led Project s transition portion which included writing certain executive orders regulations and other plans to more fully empower the president I don t want President Trump having to lose a moment of time having fights in the Oval Office about whether something is legal or doable or moral Vought mentioned in a private speech During the campaign Trump repeatedly claimed to have nothing to do with Project His campaign aides criticized the initiative and news reports suggested that Project leaders would be blacklisted from working in the Trump White House But Vought deftly navigated the argument and Trump brought him back to OMB Meanwhile the administration has moved speedily to fulfill multiple of Project s initiative objectives Early on in this month s establishment shutdown when Trump reported that he would soon meet with Vought to decide which Democrat Agencies to temporarily or permanently cut he referred to his budget director as Russ Vought he of PROJECT Fame Elon Musk and DOGE often acted at Vought s direction insiders say Elon Musk Tesla s CEO and the world s wealthiest person may have grabbed the headlines as his Department of Ruling body Efficiency took a chainsaw to budgets and staffing But court records interviews and other accounts from people close to Vought show that DOGE s efforts were guided more than previously known by the OMB director I can t imagine that the DOGE squad knew to target all these little parts of the cabinet without Russ pointing them there a former OMB branch chief informed ProPublica In May an official with Citizens for Renewing America a group founded by Vought credited Vought with steering DOGE s cuts DOGE is underneath the OMB the official explained according to a video of her remarks Honestly a lot of what Elon began pinpointing was at the direction of Russ An administration official who has worked with Vought and Musk described ProPublica that DOGE presented Vought that it was realizable to ignore legal challenges and take dramatic action He has the benefit of Elon softening everyone up the official commented Elon terrified the shit out of people He broke the status quo Vought has used OMB to try to pressure Democrats into reaching a deal with Republicans to end the shutdown Vought has frozen billion in federal funding for infrastructure and clean capacity projects in blue states in the days after the federal regime shut down on Oct The executive has also followed through on Vought s earlier threat to fire a massive number of civil servants if the shutdown were not averted We work for the president of the United States a senior agency official who regularly deals with the OMB notified ProPublica But right now he added it feels like we work for Russ Vought He has centralized decision-making power to an extent that he is the commander in chief Kirsten Berg contributed research Read more about this topic Vought could expand power of Trump s budget office Russ Vought Mild-mannered mastermind One major part of Project is falling apart The post What you should know about Russ Vought Trump s shadow president appeared first on Salon com