Trump picks Project 2025 co-author to lead White House’s budget office
CNN
President-elect Donald Trump has selected Russell Vought as his pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget, he said in a Truth Social post.
President-elect Donald Trump has selected Russell Vought as his pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget, he said in a Truth Social post. Vought was one of the key authors of Project 2025 and was Trump’s former budget director during his first administration when Vought oversaw a widespread deregulation push. “He did an excellent job serving in this role in my First Term - We cut four Regulations for every new Regulation, and it was a Great Success!” Trump said in the post. During Trump’s first administration, Vought made a name for himself as a policy wonk committed to the MAGA movement. The president-elect has repeatedly praised Vought for doing an “incredible” and “fantastic” job at OMB. After Trump left office, Vought started the Center for Renewing America, a nonprofit that describes itself as the “tip of the America First spear.” CRA was one of many right-leaning groups that partnered on Project 2025, a more than 900-page blueprint for Trump’s second term that was led by the Heritage Foundation. Vought personally authored the project’s chapter on the executive office of the president, and his group contributed to several other chapters of the plan as well. Vought also served as the policy director of the Republican National Convention committee that rewrote the GOP’s official platform this year – a sign of how central he is to Republicans’ policy goals.