Trump taps key Project 2025 architect Russ Vought to head budget office
In paragraph 18 corrects Elon Musk to owner of X, not CEO
Vought to help set budget priorities, roll back regulations
Vought was OMB chief during Trump's 2017-2021 term
Vought has played a major role in Project 2025
By Gram Slattery and Tim Reid
Nov 22 (Reuters) -U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Russ Vought, a key architect of "Project 2025," the controversial conservative plan to overhaul the government, to be director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, a powerful agency that helps decide the president's policy priorities and how to pay for them.
Vought, whowas OMB chief during Trump's 2017-2021 term, would play a major role in setting budget priorities and implementing Trump's campaign promise to roll back government regulations.
Since Trump left office, Vought has been deeply involved in Project 2025, a series of detailed policy proposals for Trump's second term drawn up by hundreds of high-profile conservatives.
Among other measures, Project 2025 calls for a broad expansion in presidential power by boosting the number of political appointees and increasing the president's authority over the Justice Department. The project also proposes enforcing laws that make it illegal to mail abortion pills over state lines, criminalizing pornography and eliminating the Department of Education.
The project's authors, Vought included, have also advocated for the reclassification of parts of the federal workforce that would give Trump the authority to fire tens of thousands of government employees.
During his election campaign, Trump repeatedly denied he had any links to Project 2025, even though many of its authors were former officials from his first administration. With Vought's selection, the president-elect has now tapped several former aides with Project 2025 links for key administration roles.
DAY ONE PROPOSALS
During the election campaign, Trump's Democratic opponents made a concerted effort to raise public awareness of Project 2025 among voters, warning it was a blueprint for a hard-right political shift they said would occur under Trump.
Their effort succeeded in making Americans widely aware of the project's existence, and opinion polls showed voters broadly disapproved of the effort.
The Trump campaign expressed increasing annoyance with the project, repeatedly emphasizing that itsproposals were separate from the campaign's official policy platform.
Vought wrote a chapter for Project 2025 centered on the management of the president's executive office. While many of the suggestions he laid out are highly technical, they are for the most part aimed at expanding the president's authorities and lessening the power of career civil servants.
"After months of lies to the American people, Donald Trump is taking off the mask: He's plotting a Project 2025 Cabinet to enact his dangerous vision starting on day one," said Alex Floyd, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee.
Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Trump never had anything to do with Project 2025, and that all his cabinet nominees and appointments were "whole-heartedly committed to President Trump's agenda, not the agenda of outside groups."
Vought has helped craft several executive orders that could be implemented on Day One of Trump's term, according to two people involved in the project. They include an order instituting Schedule F, which would re-categorize thousands of civil servants to enable Trump to fire them shouldhe want to, said those people, who requested anonymity to discuss the project's internal deliberations.
Trump's other nomineeswith Project 2025 tiesinclude Brendan Carr, who wrote the project's chapter on the Federal Communications Commission. Carr is now set to lead that agency.
Carr has criticized the FCC's decision not to finalize nearly $900 million in broadband subsidies for Elon Musk's SpaceX satellite internet unit Starlink, as well as the Commerce Department's $42 billion broadband infrastructure program and President Joe Biden's spectrum policy.
Other Project 2025 contributors who have been named by Trump as officials in his new administration are Tom Homan, Trump's "border czar," John Ratcliffe, his incoming CIA director and Pete Hoekstra, Trump's choice for ambassador to Canada.
Stephen Miller, one of Trump's incoming deputy chiefs of staff, founded a conservative legal and advocacy group known as America First Legal, which contributed to the project.
At OMB, Vought will work with X owner Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to carry out Trump's campaign pledge to slash government spending and regulations.
Musk and Ramaswamy have been tapped by Trump to co-lead a newly created Department of Government Efficiency, an entity Trump has indicated will operate outside the confines of government.
Reporting by Tim Reid and Gram Slattery; Editing by Ross Colvin and Daniel Wallis
Latest News
Disclaimer: The XM Group entities provide execution-only service and access to our Online Trading Facility, permitting a person to view and/or use the content available on or via the website, is not intended to change or expand on this, nor does it change or expand on this. Such access and use are always subject to: (i) Terms and Conditions; (ii) Risk Warnings; and (iii) Full Disclaimer. Such content is therefore provided as no more than general information. Particularly, please be aware that the contents of our Online Trading Facility are neither a solicitation, nor an offer to enter any transactions on the financial markets. Trading on any financial market involves a significant level of risk to your capital.
All material published on our Online Trading Facility is intended for educational/informational purposes only, and does not contain – nor should it be considered as containing – financial, investment tax or trading advice and recommendations; or a record of our trading prices; or an offer of, or solicitation for, a transaction in any financial instruments; or unsolicited financial promotions to you.
Any third-party content, as well as content prepared by XM, such as: opinions, news, research, analyses, prices and other information or links to third-party sites contained on this website are provided on an “as-is” basis, as general market commentary, and do not constitute investment advice. To the extent that any content is construed as investment research, you must note and accept that the content was not intended to and has not been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research and as such, it would be considered as marketing communication under the relevant laws and regulations. Please ensure that you have read and understood our Notification on Non-Independent Investment. Research and Risk Warning concerning the foregoing information, which can be accessed here.
