Trump selects Russ Vought, architect of Project 2025, to lead White House budget office
President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that he has selected Russell Vought to again lead the White House budget office, returning the hard-charging conservative to a critical position in the federal government.
Vought, who also led the White House Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s first administration, wrote a chapter of Project 2025 on transforming the executive office of the presidency and has embraced a strikingly aggressive set of legal theories for asserting presidential power. The budget office implements budget policy across the administration, overseeing spending and regulation. Trump repeatedly disavowed the Heritage Foundation project during his campaign, but that does not appear to have stopped the president-elect from returning one of its architects to the White House.
“Russ knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government, and he will help us return Self Governance to the People,” Trump said in a statement.
Vought is expected to work closely with the new “Department of Government Efficiency,” led by billionaire Elon Musk and 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, on cutting government spending and regulations. Musk and Ramaswamy wrote Wednesday in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that their group would “work in the new administration closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget.” Trump aides have eyed using a novel legal theory spearheaded by Vought to give Musk and Ramaswamy the authority to cancel federal spending without congressional approval — a move that could spark a constitutional showdown. In their Wall Street Journal op-ed, Musk and Ramaswamy said they thought the Supreme Court would side with Trump if that theory were tested.
Vought has pushed other novel legal theories asserting that Trump has the power to unilaterally rescind spending programs without consulting Congress. Since 2021, Vought has outlined in greater depth his vision of “radical constitutionalism,” crafting plans for Trump to deploy the military in response to civil unrest and assert more control over the Justice Department.
“We need to be radical in discarding or rethinking the legal paradigms that have confined our ability to return to the original Constitution,” Vought wrote in a 2022 essay. “The long, difficult road ahead of returning to our beloved Constitution starts with being honest with ourselves. It starts by recognizing that we are living in a post-Constitutional time.”
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