Russell Vought – from Project 2025 to Trump’s shutdown enforcer

Donald Trump warned the Democrats.

Soon he will decide what “democratic agencies” he will reduce and whether these abbreviations will be temporary or constant.

He said that the closure of the government, which began on Tuesday, provided him with an “unprecedented opportunity.”

“Today I have a meeting with Rousse Hoam, he is from the Project 2025,” he posted on his social website the truth on Thursday morning.

Vouught, the Director of the Department of Management and Budget of the White House, may not be a household name.

But Project 2025, a conservative management plan, collected primarily by Trump former officials, such as Vought, when the Republicans were outside the authorities, represented a noticeable role during last year's presidential campaign.

The 900-page political document contained proposals on the dramatic reduction in the size of the federal government, expanded the presidential powers, strict immigration law enforcement, a national ban on abortion and other elements of ultra-conservative social agenda.

This was often advertised by the presidential candidate from the Democratic Party Kamal Harris as Trump's “dangerous plan” for the future if he had to win.

At that time, trying to calm the unresolved voters, Trump tried to distance himself from the political document.

“I don't know anything about Project 2025,” Trump wrote in July 2024. “I do not agree with some of what they say, and some of what they say are absolutely funny and terrible.”

However, now Trump uses a conservative plan as a threat so that the Democrats agree with its budgetary requirements. And he holds Vought, which is the author of the chapter on the use of the executive branch, as a kind of budget angel of death, ready to take a braid for government programs, close and dear to the democrats.

If a specific metaphor was not clear, on Thursday evening Trump shared a generated AI-musical video on the truth of Social with Vought, depicted as a gloomy reaper created in the altered texts of Blue Oyster Cult's lyrics “Do not be afraid of the reaper”.

On the Capitol Hill, the republican leaders repeated the characterization of Trump VoubHt as a heavy White House.

“We do not control what he is going to do,” said John Tong, the leader of the majority of the Republicans in the Senate. “This is the risk of closing the government and the transfer of the Vought keys.”

Senator Mike Lee from Utah told Fox News that Vouught “was preparing by this moment after puberty.”

This can be something like a revaluation, but Vought, who cut his teeth as an employee of the congress for republican budget hawks and helped to manage the lobbying hand of the Heritage Fund, the Conservative Analytical Center, has rich experience, digging in the intricacies of the federal budget.

He spent a year as a deputy director of the White House budget office during the first term of Trump, rising to become its director in 2019. Unlike many who served with Trump during the first four years, Vouught remained power – and was quickly reinstalled as the head of the budget office when Trump returned this year.

“Many of those who have not returned are an old way of thinking,” said Richard Stern, the director of the economic policy of heritage, who, like Vought, began his career in conservative budget circles of Congress. “Russ was ahead of his time in the first time and right now.”

Although Vought is not one of those who are evading controversial statements – he once said that he was striving to become a “person who crushes a deep state” – he does not quite look part of the republican scarecrow.

Ologosen and introduced, with a gray beard, public statements by Vought usually have a measured frequency of undergraduate or professor. He lacks narrow -eyed glitches and enhanced rhetoric Stephen Miller, another long -standing adviser to Trump, who oversees the White House immigration policy.

Do not be mistaken, however, Vouught has become an influential player in this White House, turning the management and budget management – usually called it abbreviation OMB – into the main engine standing beyond Trump's desire to reduce state expenses and its labor.

Earlier in the same year, he closely collaborated with Elon Musk and his so -called government department or “Rain”, when they reduce the scorched land through the federal government, closing several agencies and reducing entire departments. And he continued his efforts after Musk left, and the rain to a large extent fell out of a public look.

“OMB is an unusually powerful position, but it almost never possessed it,” Stern said. “His people had a tendency to care and allowed bureaucracy to grow slowly. She is as influential as the person who owns this chair. ”

Now Trump threatened to reveal Vouught at a time when, from the legitimate suspended suspended suspended suspended suspended sub -created government, their reductions can be deeper and more durable than those that were established at the beginning of this year DOGE.

The former speaker of the House of Representatives of Newt Gingrich, a veteran of large battles of the 1990s, told NPR that Vought and his team were preparing for precisely such circumstances when they were in political wild in Biden.

“They all knew that the closure of the government was possible,” he said. “I think that they decided at the early stage that you will get only the scale of the changes that they want if you are very tough and very decisive, and you will get every chance, you will take this opportunity.”

The possibility of this closure provides for budget pieces, such as Vought, it is that without approved Congress, financing the government works in a legal gray area with smaller budget restrictions.

The White House can, theoretically, reduce financing and staffing deeper than at the beginning of the year, when expenses were regulated by the basic amounts of allocations. And although constant dismissal will still have to observe a 60-day notification, Vought can start this watch, ticking whenever he is Trump, so choose.

Vouught has already announced large infrastructure projects in New York and Chicago, referring to the need to review the potentially illegal racial practice of hiring – a review that, according to him, cannot pass during the closure. He also abolished almost $ 8 billion in the field of pure energy in 16 states, all of which Harris, the opponent of Trump, in last year’s presidential race supported.

Democrats and federal trade unions of workers promised to fight these abbreviations in court and claimed that Trump poses largely empty threats to try to put pressure on them in order to refuse to fight.

Many economists noted that the reduction of the White House was accompanied by other policy politicians who could undermine their attacks on the Democrats for the fact that they are a party of financial irresponsibility.

“Republicans grow expenses in other areas and reduce taxes at the same time,” said Brett House, a professor of economics at the School of Business of Colombian University. “The idea that they are devoted to financial caution is not confirmed by their actions.”

Some Republicans in the Congress expressed concern that the obvious glee, with the help of which Trump advertises the cuts ordered by Vought can withdraw public opinion against them if the shutdown continues.

Republicans warn of the terrible consequences of the closure of public services – part of the coordinated efforts to depict democrats as guilty. When celebrating new ways in which the administration, the reduction program, can disrupt these efforts.

“Russ will be less politically tangled than the president,” said South Dakota Senator Kevin Kramer, a member of the Doga Council, said News Semafor Web.

“We, as Republicans, have never had so much moral level in the state bill on financing in our lives … I just don’t understand why we will lose it, which, I think, is a risk of being aggressive with the executive power at the moment.”

Tom Tills, a senator from North Carolina, who decided not to run for a re-election next year, warns that the administration officials “should be very careful” in how they represent any new reductions.

According to public examinations aimed at examination aimed at DOGE, they were largely unpopular, which led to the resistance of the presidential approval rating. The recovery of this can now be dangerous.

However, according to Stern, the White House and Vought can consider long -term benefits, as well as short -term problems.

“For the rose for themselves, for everyone who is in the budget space, this country will go bankrupt,” he said. “Whatever political risks, trying to do the right thing, we must do this. If we do nothing, this country will explode. ”