WASHINGTON (AP) ā Russell Vought sounds like a general marshaling troops for combat when he talks about taming a āwoke and weaponizedā federal government.
He recently described political opposition as āenemy fire thatās coming over the target,ā while urging allies to be āfearless at the point of attackā and calling his policy proposals ābattle plans.ā
If former President Donald Trump wins a second term in November, Vought may get the opportunity to go on the offensive.
A chief architect of Project 2025 ā the controversial conservative blueprint to remake the federal government ā Vought is likely to be appointed to a high-ranking post in a second Trump administration. And heās been drafting a so-far secret ā180-Day Transition Playbookā to speed the planās implementation to avoid a repeat of the chaotic start that dogged Trumpās first term.
Among the small cadre of Trump advisers who has a mechanicās understanding of how Washington operates, Vought has advised influential conservative lawmakers on Capitol Hill, held a top post in the Trump White House and later established his own pro-Trump think tank. Now, heās being mentioned as a candidate to be Trumpās White House chief of staff, one of the most powerful positions in government.
āIf we donāt have courage, then we will step away from the battle,ā Vought said in June on . āBut our view is thatās where the country needs us, and weāre not going to save our country without a little confrontation.ā
Conservative blueprint to change the government
Led by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, Project 2025 is a detailed 920-page handbook for governing under the next Republican administration. A whirlwind of hard-right ambitions, its proposals range from ousting to reversing the Food and Drug Administrationās approval of medications used in abortions. Democrats for months have been using Project 2025 to hammer Trump and other Republicans, arguing to voters that it represents the former presidentās true ā and extreme ā agenda.
Trump in recent weeks has sought to distance himself from Project 2025. and has āno idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it.ā
His campaign said Tuesday That same day, Paul Dans, the projectās executive director and a former Trump administration personnel official, stepped down.
Trumpās attempts to reject the blueprint are complicated by the connections he has with many of its contributors. More than two dozen authors served in his administration, including Vought, who was director of the White Houseās Office of Management and Budget.
The Trump campaign did not respond to questions about which Project 2025 proposals the former president opposes or whether Vought would be offered a high-level government position in a new Trump term.
Vought did not respond to an interview request or to questions first emailed in February to his think tank, the , which played a key role in creating Project 2025.
Those who know Vought described him as fiercely dedicated to Trumpās cause, if not to the former president himself.
āA very determined warrior is how I would see Russ,ā said a former Trump administration official who worked with Vought in the White House and requested anonymity to speak candidly about him. āI donāt think he thinks about whether or not he likes Donald Trump as a person. I think he likes what Donald Trump represents in terms of the political forces heās able to harness.ā
Washington insider
Born in New York and raised in Ā鶹“«Ć½icut, Vought has described his family as blue collar. His parents were devout Christians. Voughtās father, a Marine Corps veteran, was a union electrician and his mother was a schoolteacher.
Voughtās father, nicknamed Turk, didnāt stand for idleness or waste. Mark Maliszewski, an electrician who knew him, recalled that after a job Turk Vought would scold his co-workers if they tossed out still usable material.
āHeād go over and kick the garbage can,ā Maliszewski said. āHeād say: āWhat is this? If those were quarters or dollars in that garbage can, youād be picking them up.āā
Russell Vought graduated in 1998 from Wheaton College, a Christian school in Illinois that counts the famed evangelist Billy Graham among its alumni. He moved to Washington to work for Republicans who championed fiscal austerity and small government.
āI worked with a lot of different staff people and as far as work ethic, tenacity, intellect, knowledge (and) commitment to principle, Russell was one of the more impressive people I worked with,ā said former GOP Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, who hired Vought in 2003.
After honing his credentials as a fiscal hawk, Vought was named policy director of the House Republican Conference, the partyās primary messaging platform chaired at the time by then-Rep. Mike Pence, who went on to serve as Indiana governor and Trumpās vice president.
Vought left Capitol Hill for a lobbying organization attached to the Heritage Foundation. When Trump was elected, Vought became OMBās deputy director.
His confirmation hearing was contentious. Liberal Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders accused him of using Islamophobic language when he wrote in 2016 that
Vought told senators his remarks were taken out of context and said he respected the right of every person to express their religious beliefs.
The Senate confirmed him to be OMBās No. 2 by a single vote. He became acting director in early 2019 after . Vought was confirmed as OMB director a year and half later as the COVID-19 pandemic was sweeping the globe.
OMB is a typically sedate office that builds the presidentās budget and reviews regulations. But with Vought at the helm, OMB was at the center of showdowns between Trump and Congress over federal spending and the legal bounds of presidential power.
After lawmakers refused to give Trump more money for his southern U.S. border wall, the budget office siphoned billions of dollars from the Pentagon and Treasury Department budgets to pay for it.
Under Vought, OMB also withheld military aid to Ukraine and his son. Vought refused to comply with a congressional demand to depose him during the subsequent Democrat-led House investigation that led to Trumpās first impeachment. The inquiry, Vought said, was a sham.
Following Trump's exit from the White House, Vought formed The Center for Renewing America. The organizationās mission is to be and āto renew a consensus that America is a nation under God.ā
, which is a fusion of American and Christian values, symbols and identity. Christian nationalism, he wrote three years ago, āis a commitment to an institutional separation between church and state, but not the separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society.ā
The only way to return America to the country the Founding Fathers envisioned is āradical constitutionalism,ā Vought said on Bannonās podcast. That means ensuring control of the executive branch rests solely with the president, not a vast federal bureaucracy.
Anticipating the fights to achieve this, Trumpās backers need to be āfearless, faithful and frugal in everything we do,ā he said.
A declaration of less independence
Voughtās center was part of a coalition of conservative organizations, organized by the Heritage Foundation, that launched Project 2025 and crafted a detailed plan for governing in the next Republican administration.
The projectās public-facing document, examined nearly every corner of the federal government and urged reforms large and small to bridle a ābehemothā bureaucracy.
Project 2025 calls for the U.S. Education Department to be shuttered, and the Homeland Security Department dismantled, with its various parts absorbed by other federal offices. Diversity, inclusion and equity programs would be gutted. Promotions in the U.S. military to general or admiral would go under a microscope to ensure candidates havenāt prioritized issues like climate change or critical race theory.
as political appointees, which could enable mass dismissals.
, a New York University history professor and author of "Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,ā criticized Project 2025 as āa recipe for mass chaos, abuses of power, and dysfunction in government.ā
The overarching theme of Project 2025 is to strip down the āadministrative state.ā This, according to the blueprint, is the mass of unelected government officials who pursue policy agendas at odds with the presidentās plans.
In his public comments and in a Project 2025 chapter he wrote, Vought has said that no executive branch department or agency, including the Justice Department, should operate outside the presidentās authority.
āThe whole notion of independent agencies is anathema from the standpoint of the Constitution,ā Vought said during a recent appearance on .
Critics warn this may leave the Justice Department and other investigative agencies vulnerable to a president who might pressure them to punish or probe a political foe. Trump, who has faced four separate prosecutions, .
Diminishing the Justice Departmentās independence would be a āradically bad idea,ā said Paul Coggins, past president of the National Association of Former U.S. Attorneys.
āNo president deserves to sic the Justice Department on his political enemies, or, frankly, to pull the Justice Department off his political friends,ā he said.
It is not clear what job Vought might get in a second Trump administration. He could return as OMB director, the job he held at the end of Trump's presidency, or an even higher-ranking post.
āRuss would make a really, really good (White House) chief of staff,ā Mulvaney said.
Whatever the position, Vought is expected to be one of Trumpās top field commanders in his campaign to dominate Washington. ___
Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.
Richard Lardner, The Associated Press
