President-elect Donald Trump selected GW Law alum and Project 2025 author Russell Vought as the incoming director to the Office of Management and Budget for the second time late last month.
In a post on Truth Social — the social media platform founded by the president-elect — Trump said Vought, who earned his juris doctor from GW Law in 2004, did “an excellent job” in the position during his first term overseeing the office. The office assists the president in evaluating the performance of federal agencies and overseeing preparation for the president’s budget proposal, which Congress must approve.
Vought authored a chapter in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a conservative blueprint of policies the incoming president should enact to change the federal government, regarding the changes the next administration should make to the offices in the executive branch including fewer regulations in the OMB and presidential appointees driving policy instead of career staffers.
The more than 900-page outline consists of 30 chapters each with policy recommendations on how to improve the efficiency of executive offices and agencies. Some of the recommendations include potentially dismantling the Department of Education and privatizing the Transportation Security Administration.
The conservative handbook builds on the Heritage Foundation’s “Mandate for Leadership” — a routinely released guide of policy recommendations that started in the late, former president Ronald Reagan’s first term in 1981.
“Russ knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government, and he will help us return Self Governance to the People,” Trump said in the post. “We will restore fiscal sanity to our Nation, and unleash the American People to new levels of Prosperity and Ingenuity.”
Throughout the campaign trial, Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance distanced themselves from the controversial handbook as Democrats warned it would be the policy under a second Trump administration. Seven of 29 Trump staff picks have ties to the project as of Wednesday.
Vought served as deputy director at the OMB in 2018 before becoming acting director the following year and then director in 2020 during Trump’s first term. He was previously the vice president of the Heritage Foundation’s sister organization, Heritage Action for America, which advocates for conservative policies. Following the 2020 election, he founded the Center for Renewing America, a nonprofit organization aimed at promoting conservatism.
Vought previously worked as a policy director for the U.S. House Republican Conference, was the executive director of the Republican Study Committee and a legislative assistant for former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX) and former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE).
