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On the second day of the federal government shutdown, President Donald Trump shared an AI-generated video set to the Blue Oyster Cult classic “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.” The video, which quickly went viral, featured Russell Vought, the president’s chief budget adviser. More than that, Vought was the architect of President Trump’s far-reaching plan to fire public servants, freeze government programs and dismantle entire government agencies, and is a big reason why the second Trump administration was able to achieve its goals more effectively than the first. In a video shared by President Trump, Vought appeared as the scythe-wielding Grim Reaper of Washington, D.C.
Mr. Vought’s title is Director of the Office of Management and Budget. The OMB director’s job is one of the most powerful in Washington, and Mr. Vought has used that position to wage a quiet war to reshape the entire U.S. government. In Mr. Vought’s hands, OMB has functioned as a chokehold for funding that Congress approves and that agencies depend on to run. Although he tends to operate behind the scenes as much as possible, his influence in Trump’s second administration has been so pronounced that people have described him as akin to a shadow president.
Here are some important things to know about Vought. Read the full ProPublica investigation here. (Mr. Vought declined to be interviewed for this article. His OMB spokesperson did not comment for this record in response to a detailed list of questions.)
1. Mr. Vought went from the mailroom to the chief opponent of his own party.
Born in Trumbull, Conn., to an electrician father and a mother who worked in public education for decades before helping start a Christian school, Vought’s first job in Washington, D.C. politics was in the mailroom of Republican Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas. He is a fierce budget hawk known for criticizing members of his party for breaking what he sees as core conservative principles.
Mr. Vought rose through the ranks within the Republican Party, eventually advising then-Rep. Mike Pence has grown disillusioned with members of his own party who voted to approve a bill full of pork barrel spending and corporate donations, even as he claims he values balanced budgets and spending cuts.
In 2010, he left Congress and helped launch Heritage Action for America, the Heritage Foundation’s think tank. The group had a strong mandate from Congressional Republicans to act more conservatively.
“I think he thought the Republican leadership was more of a hindrance to conservative causes than the Democratic Party,” said Vought’s former Capitol Hill colleague.
2. OMB’s vast power further increases Vought’s influence.
The Office of Management and Budget is part of the White House, but Vought is a member of the Trump administration’s cabinet, along with the secretary of defense and attorney general. OMB directors have little prestige for these jobs, but they play an important role. Every penny appropriated by Congress first goes through OMB. It also reviews all important regulations proposed by federal agencies, scrutinizes executive orders before they are signed by the president, and issues workplace policies to more than 2 million federal employees.
“Everything in the executive branch goes through OMB,” said Sam Bagenstos, a former OMB official in the Biden administration.
3. Mr. Vought’s early work at OMB helped lead to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment.
This is not Vought’s first time serving as OMB director. He served in the same position during the first Trump administration.
In 2019, after President Trump pressured the Ukrainian government to investigate then-candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, the administration asked Vought, then the acting secretary, to freeze $214 million in security aid to Ukraine approved by Congress. he fulfilled his duty.
The confinement was later deemed illegal by the Government Accountability Office, triggering a congressional investigation and ultimately leading to Trump’s first impeachment. Throughout the process, Mr. Vaught refused to cooperate with investigators, calling the investigation a “sham investigation designed to reexamine the last election.”
After the attempt to freeze the Ukrainian funds ultimately failed, Mr. Vought and Mr. Vought’s close ally, attorney Mark Paoletta, spent the years of Trump’s presidency making the legal argument that such seizures were not only legal, but that there was a long history of presidential use of power. (Legal experts dispute Vought’s interpretation of that history.)
4. Vought played an amazing role in spreading the word “woke and weaponized.”
In 2021, Vought launched the Center for Renewing America, a think tank dedicated to keeping the MAGA movement alive and preparing for a second term in office as President Trump. Vought accepted a mission from President Trump to devise a way for conservatives to counter Black Lives Matter, according to unreported recordings obtained by ProPublica. He popularized the concept of a “woke and weaponized” government. It’s a term co-opted by Republican politicians and activists to apply a derogatory label to policies, people, and even government agencies that don’t align with MAGA policies.
“When you’re watching TV and you hear the words ‘woke and weaponized’ coming out of a politician’s mouth, you know this is coming from the strategy we’re putting forth,” Vought proudly said in a recording obtained by ProPublica.
When Vought’s think tank released its 2022 federal budget blueprint, calling for $9 trillion in cuts over 10 years, the word “woke” appeared 77 times on page 103.
5. Vought’s vision for Project 2025 began during President Trump’s first term.
In 2017, while an OMB advisor, Vought played a leading role in implementing Trump’s executive order that called for a top-to-bottom reorganization of the federal government. Mr. Vought originally wanted to abolish the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and combine the Departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development, along with the food stamp program, into a new Department of Human Services, according to a former senior OMB official. “They wanted to call it that because they thought it sounded bad,” said a former OMB analyst. “There were few, if any, arguments that kept Mr. Russ from choosing the most extreme option available, the most conservative, most budget-cutting option.”
Cabinet members in the Trump administration at the time resisted deep cuts, and few plans ever came to fruition. But Vought’s proposal now reads like a guide for the second Trump administration, which is gutting both USAID and the CFPB and hollowing out the Department of Education.
“I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was writing the first draft of Project 2025,” said a former OMB official.
6. Vought’s role shows that Project 2025 has indeed shaped the government.
Vought was a central figure in Project 2025, a coalition of conservative groups that is creating a roadmap and recruiting future appointees for the incoming Republican administration. He led the transition portion of Project 2025, which included the creation of approximately 350 executive orders, regulations, and other plans to give the president more complete powers. “I don’t want President Trump to waste his time in the Oval Office arguing about whether something is legal or workable or moral,” Vought said in a private speech in 2024.
During the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly claimed he had nothing to do with Project 2025. Trump campaign aides criticized the effort, and news reports suggested Project 2025 leaders could be blacklisted from working in Trump’s White House.
But Mr. Vought deftly avoided controversy, and Mr. Trump lured him back to OMB. Meanwhile, the administration is moving quickly to achieve many of Project 2025’s policy goals. Early in this month’s government shutdown, President Trump referred to the budget director as “Russ Vought of Project 2025 fame” when he announced he would soon meet with Vought to decide which “Democratic agencies” to cut temporarily or permanently.
7. Elon Musk and DOGE often acted on Vought’s instructions, insiders say.
Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO and the world’s richest man, may have made headlines after his Department of Government Efficiency took a chainsaw to budgets and staffing. But court records, interviews, and other testimony from people close to Vought indicate that the DOGE effort was guided more by the OMB director than previously known.
“I can’t imagine that the DOGE team would have known to target all these small parts of the government without Mr. Russ’ direction,” a former OMB bureau chief told ProPublica.
shadow president
In May, officials with Citizens for Reclaiming America, a group founded by Mr. Vought, acknowledged that Mr. Vought had led the charge in reducing DOGE. “DOGE is affiliated with OMB,” the official said, according to a video of his remarks. “To be honest, a lot of what Elon started identifying…was at the direction of Russ.”
Administration officials who have worked with Mr. Vought and Mr. Musk told ProPublica that DOGE has shown Mr. Vought that it can ignore legal challenges and take drastic action. “He’s benefiting from Elon’s ability to calm everyone down,” the source said. “Elon scared people. He challenged the status quo.”
8. Mr. Vought tried to use OMB to pressure Democrats to reach a deal with Republicans to end the government shutdown.
Vought State froze $26 billion in federal funding for infrastructure and clean energy projects in blue states in the days after the federal government shut down on Oct. 1. The government also followed through on Vought’s previous threat to lay off large numbers of civil servants unless a government shutdown is averted.
“We work for the president of the United States,” a senior agency official who regularly does business with OMB told ProPublica. But now, he added, “I feel like we’re working under Ras Vought. He’s centralized decision-making power to the point where he’s the commander-in-chief.”
Kirsten Berg contributed to the research.
