Russ Vought

Russ Vought is a self-described Christian nationalist who was Trump’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Vought is behind Trump’s “Day One” plans for a sweeping expansion of executive power, including deploying the military to quash civil unrest, and seizing more control over DOJ (which he called “not an independent agency.”) Vought is the 2024 RNC Policy Director and founder of Center for Renewing America, a Project 2025 Advisory Board member.

In the years since Trump left office, Vought has drawn up detailed plans for a sweeping expansion of presidential power in a second Trump administration, calling his political strategy for razing long-standing guardrails “radical constitutionalism.” Vought has helped craft proposals for Donald Trump to, on Day One, deploy the military to quash civil unrest, seize more control over the Justice Department, and assert the power to withhold congressional appropriations.

In 2021, Vought founded the Center for Renewing America (CRA), a Project 2025 Advisory Board member that aims to provide “ideological ammunition to sustain” the MAGA movement. Vought, who was named by Trump and the RNC as policy director for the 2024 platform committee, is seeking to empower a presidential nominee who has openly vowed retribution, and he is poised to steer Trump’s agenda in a highly influential position such as chief of staff. Trump personally blessed Vought’s agenda at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser for CRA and said Vought would “do a great job in continuing our quest to make America great again.”

Vought’s tenure at OMB was characterized by unprecedented and norm-breaking moves. When Congress blocked additional funding for Trump’s border wall in early 2020, the budget office redirected billions of dollars from the Pentagon to what became one of the most expensive federal infrastructure projects in U.S. history. In 2019, Vought’s OMB unlawfully withheld military aid to Ukraine as Trump pressed the government to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, prompting the president’s first impeachment.

Vought also defied a congressional subpoena during the impeachment inquiry, which he mocked as a “#shamprocess.” In a report, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent Congressional watchdog, stated that the “faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law.” According to emails obtained by American Oversight and Just Security, Russ Vought and OMB General Counsel, Mark Paoletta, were well aware of concerns the Defense Department had regarding the freeze, despite claiming otherwise.

In May 2020, Vought broke the OMB’s long-standing practice of publishing updated economic forecasts, citing uncertainty caused by Covid-19. And, near the end of Trump’s presidency, Vought helped launch his biggest broadside at the “deep state” — an order to strip the civil service protections of up to tens of thousands of federal employees, called “Schedule F.”

After Biden won the 2020 election, Vought, in an “unprecedented” move, obstructed the incoming Biden Administration from meeting with career OMB officials, delaying the development of President Biden’s first budget proposal, including plans to address health care, climate change, and taxes. He also denied the Biden Transition Team from policy analysis and budget-preparation assistance that had been provided to previous presidents-elect, including Trump. According to William Hoagland, a former Republican Senate aide who worked on budget and appropriations for more than a quarter-century, no administration had ever prevented its successor from meeting with OMB staff up until this point.

During his time at OMB, Vought also helped oversee numerous Trump budget proposals which would significantly cut Medicare and Social Security over a ten-year period. In 2019, for example, Trump’s budget proposal called for slashing Medicaid by $1.5 trillion, Medicare by $845 billion, and Social Security by $25 billion over ten years. However, Vought claimed Trump was “keeping his commitment” to not cut entitlement programs. Trump’s 2020 budget proposal again called for slashing Medicare by $451 billion, with Vought defending the president saying, “reducing the cost of health care is not a cut.”

Vought’s Center for Renewing America is one of several Trumpist groups incubated by the Conservative Partnership Institute, which was launched in 2017 by former U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). At CRA, Vought employs officials who worked under him at the OMB, including Paoletta, and Ashlea Frazier, who worked as Vought’s chief of staff, where she “over[saw] agency staff transitions.” CRA also employs former Trump DOJ official Jeffrey Clark—CRA’s Senior Fellow and Director of Litigation—the Attorney General wannabe who was investigated for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and Kash Patel, a former Trump administration National Security Council official who pushed a false narrative that Trump declassified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago resort in August 2022.

Vought was also “involved in the negotiations” and helped to write the rules package for MAGA Republicans for the 118th Congress, which he revealed during a Fox appearance. Vought pushed the House Republican leadership to align themselves with the House Freedom Caucus, arguing that GOP voters expect to get a House Freedom Caucus member when voting for a Republican candidate.

Vought, who referred to Kevin McCarthy “the cartel candidate,” became heavily involved in obtaining concessions from McCarthy and his allies in response to the looming government shutdown over federal spending and the national debt. In the weeks that followed, several Republican lawmakers acknowledged talking to Vought “at least once a week” and he briefed nearly every GOP senator over lunch about his debt limit strategy. Later, he provided strategies for negotiating with the Biden Administration, guides on how to deal with the media, and a 104-page memo outlining spending levels for every agency.

Through his position at CRA and the RNC, Vought is pushing a strategy he calls “radical constitutionalism.” As he wrote in a 2022 essay: “Our need is not just to win congressional majorities that blame the other side or fill seats on court benches to meddle at the margins. It is to cast ourselves as dissidents of the current regime and to put on our shoulders the full weight of envisioning, articulating, and defending what a Radical Constitutionalism requires in the late hour that our country finds itself in, and then to do it.”

As Beth Reinhard wrote in the Washington Post: this could mean reinterpreting parts of the Constitution to achieve policy goals — such as by defining illegal immigration as an “invasion,” which would allow states to use wartime powers to stop it. Vought has also pushed for “boosting White House control over other federal agencies that operate somewhat independently” such as the FTC and FCC, and plans on using so-called presidential “impoundment” power to withhold funding appropriated by Congress. That practice was outlawed after President Richard M. Nixon left office, a move Vought declares is “unconstitutional,” despite the Constitution giving Congress the power of the purse. Vought has also supported invoking the Insurrection Act, a law last updated in 1871 to allow the president to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement under some circumstances.

Vought has also argued “that protocols intended to shield criminal cases from political influence, which were adopted in the wake of the Watergate scandal, have allowed unelected prosecutors to abuse their power… . Vought wants to gut the FBI and give the president more oversight over the Justice Department.” As Vought claimed at a Heritage Foundation event, the “Department of Justice is not an independent agency…If anyone brings it up in a policy meeting in the White House, I want them out of the meeting.” Vought also supports prosecuting officials who investigated the president and his allies: “It can’t just be hearings,” he told right-wing operative Charlie Kirk on his podcast, adding “It has to be investigations, an army of investigators that lead to firm convictions.”

Vought has also said he is preparing to infuse ‘Christian Nationalism” into the next “conservative” administration. Vought has criticized Christian leaders who have a more compassionate view towards Christians who immigrate to the U.S., and chastised Christians who have spoken against the Trump Administration as well as political appointees from the first two years for “refus[ing] to occupy the moral high ground.”

He has also claimed “we need to have a rigorous assessment about whether legal immigration is healthy… we’re in the midst quite frankly of a cold Civil War. How does assimilation occur in this environment? The reality is that it doesn’t and in this environment immigration only increases and exasperates the divisions that we face in the country.” In a 2016 op-ed, Vought asserted that “Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology, they do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ His Son, and they stand condemned.” He also insisted that one cannot “know God” without focusing on Jesus. Vought claims that Christians in this country are under assault and discussed policies that he would pursue in response.

Vought has also called for Congress to outlaw the drugs used in medical abortions. In the chapter he wrote for Project 2025–on the Executive Office of the President of the United States–Vought envisions a new special assistant to the president to ensure “implementation of policies related to the promotion of life and family.” As reported by Beth Reinhard: “To Vought, this means curbing abortion — and boosting the birthrate… . [and,] when Trump said this spring that abortion limits should be left to the states and was silent on a national ban, disappointing some anti-abortion leaders, Vought urged them not to lose faith. ‘Trust the man who delivered the end of Roe when all the other pro life politicians could not,’” Vought said.