Project 2025 Architect Russell Vought Expands His Influence In Trump Admin
OMB Director & Project 2025 Author Russell Vought's authoritarian view of executive power helped shape Trump's attack on the federal bureaucracy. Now, he's seizing control over independent agencies.
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The power of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Stephen Miller within the second Trump Administration has been widely reported. But there’s one person whose vast influence is under-discussed: Russell Vought.
Vought was the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in Trump’s first term and was brought back for Trump’s second term in the same role. There’s a reason for that.
Trump’s unlawful federal funding freeze, the mass firings of civil servants, and this week’s executive order granting the White House control over independent agencies are actions straight out of Russell Vought’s mind and Project 2025.
Vought is a self-proclaimed Christian Nationalist and was the key connective point between Project 2025 and Trumpworld. Vought was in charge of crafting Project 2025’s first 180-day plan and authored the chapter on executive power. Vought’s Center for Renewing America was also a partner organization of Project 2025. This is where the connection gets undeniable.
In May 2024, the Republican National Committee and the Trump Campaign released a joint press release announcing the appointment of Vought as the policy director of the RNC’s platform writing committee. You read that right. Vought helped lead policy at both Project 2025 and the RNC, a connection I pointed out on MSNBC last Summer.
Vought spent the past year charting out the strategy for Trump’s second term and drafting secret executive orders.
In August, CNN published a secret recording of Vought, which showcased him discussing his work preparing for a second Trump Administration and the fact that Trump was supportive of that work. From CNN:
Vought said his group, the Center for Renewing America, was secretly drafting hundreds of executive orders, regulations, and memos that would lay the groundwork for rapid action on Trump’s plans if he wins, describing his work as creating “shadow” agencies. He claimed that Trump has “blessed” his organization and “he’s very supportive of what we do.”
“Eighty percent of my time is working on the plans of what’s necessary to take control of these bureaucracies,” Vought said. “And we are working doggedly on that, whether it’s destroying their agencies’ notion of independence … whether that is thinking through how the deportations would work.”
Now, at the one-month mark of Trump’s second term, Vought’s influence can be seen in almost everything Trump has done so far. In fact, over two-thirds of Trump’s executive orders align with Project 2025.
Vought’s embrace of the unitary executive theory and call for “radical constitutionalism” pervade Trump’s efforts to unilaterally dismantle agencies, fire thousands of federal workers, and freeze congressionally approved funds.
Vought is obsessed with challenging the constitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, and the funding freeze is part of that. Vought’s expansive view of executive power can also be seen in Trump’s latest executive order, which directly empowers Vought.
On Tuesday, President Trump signed a new executive order that showcases exactly how much influence Russell Vought now has within the administration.
The executive order, titled “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies,” brings independent government agencies under direct White House control. It’s a key objective of Project 2025 that I’ve been warning about since 2023.
These agencies were created by Congress to act semi-independently of the President. The President appoints leaders on fixed terms, but decisions are made independently of the White House.
The agencies impacted include the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the National Labor Relations Board. The executive order only partially applies to the Federal Reserve, maintaining interest rate decisions at the Fed’s Board of Governors.
The move will surely see swift court challenges.
The New York Times reported on the details of the order:
The order requires independent agencies to submit their proposed regulations to the White House for review, asserts a power to block such agencies from spending funds on projects or efforts that conflict with presidential priorities, and declares that they must accept the president’s and the Justice Department’s interpretation of the law as binding…
The order declared that the White House’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell T. Vought, can withhold funding for any projects or initiatives that conflict with Mr. Trump’s policies and priorities.
Specifically, it said, Mr. Vought will have the power to “adjust such agencies’ apportionments by activity, function, project, or object, as necessary and appropriate, to advance the president’s policies and priorities,” including by prohibiting them from expending funds on matters Mr. Trump does not like.
Of course, unilaterally freezing congressionally approved funds is in direct violation of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. It’s also clearly outlined in the Constitution that Congress has the power of the purse.
Nonetheless, Vought, who ran the Budget Office in Trump’s first term, sees controlling federal funds as a key way to inflict Trump’s will. During a confirmation hearing last month, Vought was asked about Trump’s view that he can use the power of impoundment to unilaterally withhold congressionally approved funds. Vought reaffirmed that Trump thinks the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 is unconstitutional.
This new executive order appears to be a calculated challenge to the constitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 - a challenge the Trump Administration likely hopes the Supreme Court will take up.
The order goes further than granting Vought the power to control funds at independent agencies. It effectively grants Vought supervising power over these agencies. Politico reported:
The executive order requires Vought, as the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to “establish performance standards and management objectives” for the heads of independent agencies and “report periodically to the President on their performance and efficiency in attaining such standards and objectives.” It also requires Vought to review and make changes to the agencies’ budgets “as necessary and appropriate, to advance the President’s policies and priorities.”
“For the Federal Government to be truly accountable to the American people, officials who wield vast executive power must be supervised and controlled by the people’s elected President,” the executive order states.
This expansive view of executive power aligns with the unitary executive theory, which I’ve written about extensively. It’s the central thesis of Trump’s second term and Project 2025. The theory declares that Article II of the Constitution renders the president an all-powerful figure above accountability and checks on their power.
The theory can be summed up in President Richard Nixon’s infamous words: “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” Or, in Donald Trump’s more precise words, “Then I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”
Trump recently expanded on this belief in a post that echoed a quote often attributed to Napoleon, declaring: “He who saves his Country does not violate any law.”
The modern unitary executive theory perverts Hamilton’s original use of the term and runs contrary to the separation of powers laid out in the Constitution. It’s the false basis for Trump’s style of authoritarianism.
Russell Vought opens his chapter in Project 2025’s policy playbook (Page 43) by quoting Article II of the Constitution in his very first sentence. Vought lambasts the federal bureaucracy and the notion of “independence.” Vought argues that the President must act with a “boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will.”
The ongoing mass firings and chaos in the federal government are certainly part of that bending of the bureaucracy.
In October, ProPublica published a recording that revealed Vought wants federal workers to be “in trauma”:
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected… When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down… We want to put them in trauma.”
That is exactly what has played out over the past month.
In Project 2025, Vought also outlined a framework for OMB to act as the “President’s air-traffic control system with the ability and charge to ensure that all policy initiatives are flying in sync and with the authority to let planes take off and, at times, ground planes that are flying off course.” This is effectively how federal funds are being wielded right now in the Trump Administration.
In a November interview with Tucker Carlson after Trump won, Vought outlined a lot of what we’re seeing right now. Vought discussed how Trump would need to take a “radical constitutional perspective,” dismantle agencies, and eliminate independence:
“My belief, for anyone who wants to listen, is that the president has to move executively as fast and as aggressively as possible with a radical constitutional perspective to be able to dismantle that bureaucracy in their power centers. I think there are a couple of ways to do it.
Number one is going after the whole notion of independence. There are no independent agencies. Congress may have viewed them as such, SEC or the FCC, CFPB, the whole alphabet soup. But that is not something that the Constitution understands. There may be different strategies with each one of them about how you dismantle them. But as an administration, the whole notion of an independent agency should be thrown out, particularly with a Department of Justice in which there's literally no law.”
The moves Trump has made over this past month, and the executive order Trump signed on Tuesday, are accomplishing exactly that.
The scope of Project 2025’s influence is no longer theoretical. Russell Vought spent years helping to design the blueprint for a far-right takeover of the federal government. In just one month, Trump has already put this plan in motion.
Absolutely terrifying, Ahmed. The only bright spot may be that this “bridge too far” could be the impetus that solidifies the resistance. Here’s hoping anyway.