By Jack Bernard, contributing columnist
“The Functional Government Initiative and the Center for Renewing America identify at least a trillion dollars’ worth of divisive, identity-based programs and policies among the federal thicket and make suggestions that could ensure they don’t come back.” – Center for Renewing America (March 10, 2025).
PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. | Longtime Trump supporter Russell Vought is also the founder of the Center for Renewing America, a radical right-wing think tank which wants to return the USA back to the bad old days of the 1950s, pre-civil rights. Vought is one of the more extreme and influential members of the new administration. He has a unique and disturbing history.
Vought, who has vowed to aggressively dismantle the “deep state”, is currently the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Vought was in the same position in 2020 in the first Trump administration. OMB’s the powerful federal agency which develops President Trump’s budget. OMB also reviews all other federal agencies to ensure full and absolute compliance with Trump’s Executive Orders and policy directives, no matter how questionable or draconian they may be.
Conservatives were all too aware that for much of Trump’s first term, his actions were erratic, based on his whims and not well planned. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, determined that the situation must be different in Trump’s second term. Therefore, it promoted the development of Project 2025.
Vought was one of the driving forces behind the development of Project 2025, designed to convert the federal government into a very different entity than it was in Trump’s first term. Trump claimed to have never read that 920-page document. That is no doubt true, but it is still being implemented every day by his actions and his slavishly devoted admirers like Vought. He also developed a “180-Day Transition Playbook” which is being used as the day-to-day plan for extreme change.
Vought is openly aggressive in his approach to radically changing government, publicly stating to Steve Bannon (an aggressive Trump supporter who was jailed after Trump’s first term): “We’re not going to save our country without a little confrontation.” He has also pushed for the second Trump administration to go after its perceived enemies with a vengeance.
Although Trump claims to be a populist, many of Vought’s views are definitely pro-corporation and anti-consumer. For example, his advocacy that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau be shuttered.
Consistent with his Christian Nationalist views, in 2016 he wrote that: Muslims “do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned.” One can assume that he feels the same about Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and others.
Vought has been a known commodity for quite a while, as have his radical views. Yet, he was confirmed 53-47 by the Senate, along party lines with no Democrat voting for him. As Senator Patty Murphy stated at the time: “Senate Republicans just confirmed Russ Vought to manage our nation’s budget. Vought is an extremist who has made clear he’ll ignore our nation’s laws, cut funding that helps people across the country and give Trump unprecedented and unconstitutional power. There will be consequences.”
She was 100 percent correct. The GOP must be held to account for confirming him. Remember that when you vote in 2026 and 2028.
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