President-elect Donald Trump on Friday named Russell Vought, a co-author of Project 2025 who served as platform policy director for the Republican National Committee, as his choice to lead the Office of Management and Budget.
In a statement announcing his choice, Trump referred to Vought, who previously served in that role during his first term, as “an aggressive cost-cutting and deregulator who will help us implement our America First Agenda across all agencies.”
“Russ knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end the armed government, and he will help us return self-government to the people,” Trump said. “We will restore financial sanity to our nation and bring the American people to a new level of prosperity and ingenuity.”
Vought responded to Trump’s nomination in a message to X on Friday evening, saying: “Thank you @realDonaldTrump! There is unfinished business on behalf of the American people, and it is the honor of a lifetime to be called again.”
In the chapter Vought wrote for the Conservative 2025 Blueprint Project, he argued that the OMB director “should submit a budget target to the President early in the budget development process to address the federal government’s fiscal irresponsibility.”
“While some may mistakenly view it as merely a paper-pushing exercise, the President’s budget is in fact a powerful mechanism for setting and enforcing public policy across federal agencies,” he wrote.
Russell Vought, then director of the Office of Management and Budget, during a hearing in Washington in 2020.
During an interview with Tucker Carlson posted this week on
“We must fix the woke and weaponized bureaucracy and ensure the president takes control of the executive branch,” Vought said. “There may be different strategies for each of them, on how you dismantle them, but as a government the whole idea of an independent body needs to be thrown out.”
Although Trump and many of his allies have distanced themselves from Project 2025 — an initiative that includes policy proposals led by the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups for a Republican administration — many people involved in the agenda have tapped during the campaign for positions in the new Trump administration. Those mentioned include Tom Homan as border czar, Brendan Carr as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and John Ratcliffe as CIA director.
If confirmed by the Senate, Vought will oversee the budget and implementation of Trump’s policies across executive departments and agencies.
Stephen Miller, Trump’s expected new deputy chief of staff, called Vought a “transformative choice” for the budget office.
“Russ Vought has been the guy for the last four years who developed the plan to take down the deep state,” Miller said during a Fox News interview that aired Friday evening. “That’s Russ, and he’ll be at OMB to execute that plan. This is really incredible stuff.”
Vought previously served as director of the Office of Management during Trump’s first term. He took on the role after serving as deputy director and acting director of that office before his appointment to the Senate in July 2020.
Trump also announced a series of other important cabinet choices on Friday evening.
He named former NFL player and Texas state Rep. Scott Turner as his nominee for secretary of housing and urban development, and Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, R-Ore., as secretary of labor. Trump also nominated surgeon Marty Makary as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and said he would select former Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., as his nominee to serve as director of the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, in addition to a whole range of other choices.
Trump also said Sebastian Gorka, a former aide, would serve as deputy assistant and senior director for counterterrorism. Gorka previously served as national security assistant for Trump in 2017, a role he held for less than a year. He was criticized after donning the medal of the allegedly Nazi-affiliated Hungarian group Vitezi Rend at Trump’s 2017 inauguration ball.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
