Government and Politics
February 7, 2025
Last night ( Feb 6th), every U.S. Senate Republican voted to install Russell Vought, the chief architect of Project 2025, to lead the Trump Administration’s powerful Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Trump, who claimed to “know nothing about Project 2025” on the campaign trail last year, is bringing Vought back to fill the same role he held at the end of his first term.
Recognizing the threat of the radical extremists returning to hold such a sensitive position, Georgia U.S. Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock strongly opposed Vought’s nomination in a 45-minute speech from the floor of the U.S. Senate.
“Just last week, without even being confirmed, Vought orchestrated the effort to freeze federal spending, as if this money is his money rather than our money, the people’s money, throwing programs from infrastructure upgrades, to Medicaid, to free school lunches, to support for homeless veterans into chaos,” Warnock said. “How dare you take funds that are needed by the veterans of Georgia and all across this state. Those who fight for us should not have to fight with us to get what they deserve.”
A closer look at Vought’s record shows he more than warrants Senator Warnock’s harsh assessment.
TRUMP SLASHING FEDERAL FUNDING IS VOUGHT “BRAINCHILD”
Washington Post: The White House memo announcing a federal spending freeze, rescinded Wednesday afternoon amid chaos and backlash, was the brainchild of Russell Vought, President Donald Trump’s pick to direct the Office of Management and Budget. Stephen Miller, deputy White House chief of staff, explained on CNN that Vought felt that the freeze was needed. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at her first briefing that Vought asked her to convey that ‘the line to his office is open’ if agency heads ‘feel that programs are necessary.’”
Politico: “Monday’s memo from Trump’s Office of Management and Budget ordering a sweeping freeze of federal financial assistance is the boldest, and clearest example of the administration not only leaning on the people who wrote Project 2025 but employing its strategies.
“The memo, which throws into jeopardy billions of federal assistance for programs like providing school meals and supporting homeless veterans, hews closely to the strategy Trump’s pick for OMB director Russell Vought sketched out for bringing the federal bureaucracy to heel in Project 2025’s second chapter. …
“While Vought has yet to be confirmed by the Senate, multiple people close to the administration told POLITICO that both he and Trump policy chief Stephen Miller have played key roles in the funding freeze.”
VOUGHT’S GOALS: GUT SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE, MEDICAID, REPEAL ACA, CUTTING BENEFITS
Washington Post: “Vought has sold many Republicans on the untested premise that the GOP can push to obliterate almost all other major forms of federal spending, especially programs that benefit lower-income Americans …
“Vought’s budget proposal calls for cutting $9 trillion over the next decade from thousands of domestic programs — slashing funding for government agencies, student loans, and anti-poverty programs such as housing, health care and food assistance …
“The plan includes $2 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, the health program for the poor; more than $600 billion in cuts to the Affordable Care Act; more than $400 billion in cuts to food stamps; hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to educational subsidies; and a halving of the State Department and the Labor Department, among other federal agencies.
Russ Vought: “Proposed reforms would also end coverage of disabilities unrelated to military duties and training. …
“The Budget would reduce these disability payments by 30 percent”
Washington Post: “Each of [Trump’s] White House budget proposals included cuts to Social Security and Medicare programs.”
VOUGHT SEEKS “ABOLITION” OF ABORTION ACCESS (including in cases of rape, incest, saving a woman’s life).
Vought: “Well, I don’t actually believe in those exceptions.
“I want to get to abolition, … I want to get as far as we possibly can.”
New York Times: “Russell T. Vought, a former senior Trump administration official who ran the Office of Management and Budget, is celebrated by the anti-abortion movement for successfully blocking funds for Planned Parenthood during the Trump administration. He now runs a think tank with close ties to the former president that has backed arguments in a Supreme Court case attempting to undo the 2000 approval of mifepristone, a widely used abortion medication.”
Center For Renewing America: “Primer: Thwarting the FDA’s Destructive Abortion-By-Mail Agenda”
“In the wake of Dobbs and the District Court’s stay on mifepristone, state legislators have the opportunity to continue solidifying sanctuaries for life. State lawmakers should ban the dispensation of mifepristone (and any other chemical abortifacients) altogether–especially in states that have 6-week or full bans.
“The FDA’s rogue actions must be held to account through focused legislative action. Indeed, the 2021 decision to dispense the abortion drug through the mail is not only a deliberate violation of longstanding statutes, but also a direct threat to sovereign state laws that prohibit the barbaric practice of abortion.”