Russell Vought is just the man to implement Trump’s autocratic vision

With everyone I know giving thanks for the blessing that former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) won’t be the next attorney general, most have lost sight of Russell Vought, whom Trump will nominate to be the next head of the Office of Management and Budget.

Trump has hit the jackpot in his quest to destroy the American government. He has chosen a secretary of Defense without experience, who allegedly bought off a rape charge, and wants to remove women from combat roles and fire all the “woke” generals; a director of National Intelligence who is a security risk; a secretary of Health and Human Services who is anti-science; and a director of OMB who wants to fire 50,000 federal workers.

No wonder many in the Kremlin are jubilant that a Trump presidency might bring about the collapse of the American state.

Even conservative senators should find Vought problematic. Senators are wary of presidential appointees who hold views outside the spectrum of the political mainstream, and Vought fits this definition neatly. He believes that our 230-year-old system of checks and balances must be abrogated, with all power going to the president.

For example, he has written himself down as wanting to bypass the Senate in making presidential appointments. His think tank lobbied strongly in recent weeks for recess appointments — a means by which Trump could attempt to circumvent the Senate’s confirmation process. Trump was quick to follow Vought’s lead, as he posted on Truth Social (partly in caps), “Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments,” adding: “We need positions filled IMMEDIATELY!”

Vought is not only the intellectual architect of the Trump effort to remake the federal government, but a master of mano-a-mano bureaucratic slashing. He did not get full control of the reins at OMB until late Trump’s first term, but he has since spent four years planning for what would happen when he gets OMB back — helpfully laying it all out in a 25-page Heritage Foundation manifesto. He argues that “a sprawling federal bureaucracy all too often is carrying out its own policy plans and preferences — or, worse yet, the policy plans and preferences of a radical, supposedly ‘woke’ faction of the country.”

Vought is a devout Trump loyalist. He numbered among the quartet of only four out of the 44 of Trump’s first-term Cabinet members who said they were for him in 2023.

Vought’s resume boasts seven years as vice president of Heritage Action for America, an affiliate of the Heritage Foundation, said to be “armed with the research and policies of The Heritage Foundation,” where the infamous Project 2025 was born.

Project 2025, readers will remember, is a 922-page screed of anti-government vituperation, outlining a dramatic expansion of presidential power and a plan to fire as many as 50,000 government workers and replace them with Trump loyalists. As Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts defined the mission, Project 2025 aims to “create a unified conservative vision, motivated to devolve power from the unelected administrative state, and returning it to the people.” Utter rubbish!

The extreme Project 2025 manifesto is so off the wall that Trump distanced himself from it during a campaign debate, claiming he hadn’t read it. Trump notoriously doesn’t read anything longer than a page, so his statement was probably true.

Because that denial was equivocal, Trump underscored his disavowal with a message on Truth Social: “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

But the denial was, to put it kindly, disingenuous. In 2022, Trump took a private flight with Roberts to speak at a Heritage conference, where he delivered the keynote address. He proclaimed that Heritage’s forthcoming policy proposals — i.e., Project 2025 — are “going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”

Vought is also president of the Center for Renewing America. Jeff Clark, of Justice Department fame, who tried to peddle the election denial lie, is a fellow there. The Project 2025 website lists the center as one of the 100 groups that are part of its advisory board. Vought is author of the Project 2025 chapter on OMB. His extremist credentials are complete.

True, we have seen a growing centralization of control by past presidents over the administrative agencies. Conservatives have bashed this trend when Democrats occupy the White House, while conveniently advocating it when it served their own ideological agenda.

Project 2025, however, places a terrifying consolidation of unchecked power into the hands of Trump, who has been unabashed in proclaiming that he wants to be a dictator for a day.

At the center of the power grab is OMB. Project 2025 anoints OMB for a key role in achieving its dystopian dream of an authoritarian presidency. Vought ominously wrote, “The great challenge confronting a conservative President is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power — including power currently held by the executive branch — to the American people.”

One must wonder which “powers” he thinks should be returned and to which “American people.” Once Vought helps Trump arrogate to himself such “vast powers,” he will not readily relinquish them, and given Trump’s irrational temperament, he is likely to abuse them.

If the Senate confirms Vought as OMB director, the widely shared values that have sustained us as a self-governing nation would be seriously undermined.

Scrutinize the record carefully, senators. Vought seeks policy change not to devolve power to the people; he only seeks to arrogate power to Donald Trump.

James D. Zirin, author and legal analyst, is a former federal prosecutor in New York’s Southern District. He is also the host of the public television talk show and podcast Conversations with Jim Zirin.