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President-elect Donald Trump named one of the key architects of Project 2025 to lead the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
"I am very pleased to nominate Russell Thurlow Vought, from the Great State of Virginia, as the Director of the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB)," Trump said in a statement Friday. "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! Russ graduated with a B.A. from Wheaton College, and received his J.D. from the Washington University School of Law."
Trump went on to tout Vought's record as an "aggressive cost cutter 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 Weaponized Government, and he will help us return Self Governance to the People. We will restore fiscal sanity to our Nation, and unleash the American People to new levels of Prosperity and Ingenuity. I look forward to working with you again, Russ."
If he's confirmed, it will be be Vought's second time heading the White House's budget office if selected. He served as deputy director and acting director of the OMB before being confirmed as director in July 2020, during Trump's first administration.
Trump's decision to tap Vought for OMB director will likely renew concerns among his critics about how significant a role Project 2025 will play in his administration.
Vought was heavily involved in crafting Project 2025, a presidential transition project from the conservative Heritage Foundation. Project 2025 became a media headache for Trump after its blueprint for a second Trump presidency was widely circulated during the campaign.
Among other things, the project calls for dramatically expanding the powers of the presidency and withdrawing the abortion pill mifepristone from the market.
During the 2024 campaign, Trump publicly denounced the plan and distanced his team from it, calling some of its proposals "ridiculous" and "abysmal."
But Trump has also praised the Heritage Foundation, saying in April 2022 that it was "a great group."
"And they're going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America, and that's coming," Trump said.
CNN published an analysis over the summer that found that at least 140 Trump employees were involved in crafting Project 2025.
Vought wouldn't be the only person who worked on Project 2025 with a potential role in Trump's next administration. The president-elect's pick to head up the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, was also an author of the plan.
As Newsweek reported on Monday, Carr wrote a chapter about the FCC for Project 2025.
In the chapter, Carr proposes stripping large tech companies of some of their free-speech protections, taking a hardline stance against Chinese tech companies, and advocating for peeling back federal regulations that make it more difficult for the private sector to develop network infrastructure.
Update, 11/22/24 at 7:36 p.m. ET: This article was updated with Trump's announcement that Vought is officially nominated.
About the writer
Sonam Sheth is an Evening Politics Editor at Newsweek who is based in New York. She joined Newsweek in 2024 ... Read more