Russell Vought facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Russ Vought
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Official portrait, 2018
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| Director of the Office of Management and Budget Nominee |
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| Assuming office TBD |
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| President | Donald Trump |
| Deputy | Dan Bishop (nominee) |
| Succeeding | Shalanda Young |
| In office January 2, 2019 – January 20, 2021 Acting: January 2, 2019 – July 22, 2020 |
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| President | Donald Trump |
| Deputy | Derek Kan |
| Preceded by | Mick Mulvaney |
| Succeeded by | Shalanda Young |
| Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget | |
| In office March 14, 2018 – July 22, 2020 |
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| President | Donald Trump |
| Preceded by | Brian Deese |
| Succeeded by | Derek Kan |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Russell Thurlow Vought
March 26, 1976 |
| Political party | Republican |
| Children | 2 |
| Education | Wheaton College (BA) George Washington University (JD) |
Russell Thurlow Vought (IPA: /voʊt/, pronunciation respelling: voht born March 26, 1976) is an American government official who was the director of the Office of Management and Budget from July 2020 to January 2021. He was previously deputy director of the OMB for part of 2018, and acting director from 2019 to 2020.
In 2021, Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, whose mission is to "renew a consensus of America as a nation under God". He is heavily involved with Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation-led plan that seeks to reshape the federal government. Vought was named policy director of the Republican National Committee platform committee in May 2024.
In November 2024, President-elect Donald Trump announced that he would renominate Vought as director of the OMB for his second term as president.
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Early life and career
Vought was born to Thurlow Bunyea Vought, a US marine veteran and Margaret Flowers Vought, an elementary school teacher. He earned his Bachelor of Arts from Wheaton College and his Juris Doctor from the George Washington University Law School.
Vought worked for Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of The Heritage Foundation. He was the executive director and budget director of the Republican Study Committee, the policy director for the Republican Conference of the United States House of Representatives, and a legislative assistant for U.S. Senator Phil Gramm.
First Trump administration
Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
Deputy OMB Director
In April 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Vought to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He was confirmed by the Senate on February 28, 2018, in a 50–49 vote. Vice President Mike Pence cast the tie-breaking vote.
During the confirmation hearings for Vought's nomination to the OMB, Senator Bernie Sanders questioned Vought about a statement that "Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned." The Atlantic magazine and various Christian organizations denounced Sanders's questioning as a violation of the No Religious Test Clause.
In 2019, Vought was one of nine government officials who defied a subpoena to testify before Congress in relation to the Trump–Ukraine scandal and the administration's decision to freeze military aid to Ukraine. The decision to freeze aid to Ukraine had led Democrats to launch the first impeachment of Donald Trump.
OMB director
On January 2, 2019, when OMB Director Mick Mulvaney became acting White House chief of staff, Vought became the acting OMB director, though Mulvaney continued to hold the director position. On March 18, 2020, Trump announced his intent to nominate him to be OMB Director. Vought was confirmed by the Senate on July 20, 2020, by a vote of 51–45; and was sworn in two days later.
In May 2020, Vought broke the OMB's long-standing practice of publishing updated economic forecasts, citing disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
On September 4, 2020, Vought, at Trump's direction, published an OMB memo instructing federal agencies to stop all training on "critical race theory" or "white privilege", along with "any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil." The memo further directed that agencies begin to identify legal avenues to cancel contracts or otherwise divert the "millions of taxpayer dollars" being spent on such training, which it said "engenders division and resentment within the federal workforce".
2020 election
After Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, he and his transition team accused Vought of hindering the presidential transition by refusing to allow incoming Biden officials to meet with OMB staff. Typically, career OMB staff would provide an incoming administration with cost estimates and details on existing programs.
Vought defended his actions, stating that OMB had provided funding for the transition and that there had been more than 45 meetings with Biden officials but that "OMB staff are working on this Administration's policies and will do so until this Administration's final day in office."
Post-administration
Center for Renewing America
In January 2021, Vought started an organization called the Center for Renewing America, which is focused on "combating critical race theory", and an affiliated issue advocacy group called American Restoration Action. The mission of the groups is to "renew a consensus of America as a nation under God". According to Axios, the groups "will provide the ideological ammunition to sustain Trump's political movement after his departure from the White House."
In April 2021, The Washington Post fact-checker rated Vought's statement that only 5 to 7 percent of the Biden administration's $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan would go to "actual roads and bridges and ports and things that you and I would say is real infrastructure" as "Three Pinocchios" out of four.
On June 8, 2021, Citizens for Renewing America (CRA), the advocacy arm of Center for American Restoration, released a guide to "combatting critical race theory." Vought told Fox News the 33-page handbook is "a crash course in CRT, a 'one-stop shopping' for parents trying to hold their school board members accountable."
On June 22, 2022, Vought confirmed that federal agents conducted a search of the home of his organization's director of litigation, Jeffrey Clark, a former U.S. Department of Justice official who participated in efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election.
In February 2023, CRA published a paper arguing for a "dormant NATO, wherein Europe is the primary security provider of the European front."
CRA is a member of the advisory board of Project 2025, a collection of conservative and right-wing policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power should the Republican nominee win the 2024 presidential election.
Project 2025
Vought plays a major role in Project 2025, a collection of conservative and right-wing policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power should the Republican Party candidate win the 2024 presidential election. It proposes reclassifying tens of thousands of merit-based federal civil service workers as political appointees in order to replace them with loyalists more willing to enable the next Republican president's policies. It seeks to infuse the government and society with Christian values.
In October 2024, ProPublica reported that Vought's proposals include plans to reshape government by using military force against protesters if deemed necessary, defunding agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reduce federal influence, and casting civil servants as obstructive to conservative agendas. His CRA aims to enact an aggressive policy approach, cutting bureaucracy and focusing on Trump-aligned, conservative governance.
Other
Vought was named policy director of the Republican National Committee platform committee in May 2024.
Second Trump administration
In November 2024, president-elect Trump announced that he would renominate Vought as director of the OMB for his second term as president. Vought appeared before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on January 15, 2025. During the hearing, Vought did not commit to spend all the money assigned by the Congress to the federal government.
Political and religious positions
Vought graduated from the evangelical Christian Wheaton College and describes himself as a Christian nationalist. He seeks to infuse the government and society with elements of Christianity, saying he has "a commitment to an institutional separation between church and state, but not the separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society," according to The Washington Post. In a secretly recorded meeting in 2024, Vought said that elected leaders should discuss whether to prioritize Christian immigrants over those of other religions. ..... He has called the Democratic Party "increasingly evil" because of supporting secularism.
Vought advocates for what he calls "radical constitutionalism" to reverse a current "post-Constitutional time" which he asserts has been the result of decades of corruption of laws and institutions by the political left. He characterizes the federal bureaucracy as "woke and weaponized" and advocates replacing it with "radical constitutionalists". Vought supports expanding presidential authority, proposing the use of the military for domestic law enforcement and revisiting the president's ability to withhold congressionally-appropriated funds, a practice Congress banned in 1974. Vought proposes to "gut the FBI" and end the tradition of political independence of the U.S. Justice Department.
