Who is Russell Vought, Project 2025 co-author and Trump’s pick for OMB director?

President-elect Donald Trumpwho repeatedly rejected Project 2025 during his campaign, has announced that he will nominate one of the plan’s co-authors, Russell Vought, to his cabinet.

Trump said Friday that he has chosen Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, a role that would put Vought in charge of overseeing the White House budget and enacting Trump’s policies across the executive branch. In one declaration Announcing his pick, Trump called Vought “an aggressive cost-cutting 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 the government at gunpoint, and he will help us return self-government to the people,” Trump added.

Vought was previously vice president of the Heritage Foundation’s sister organization, Heritage Action for America. He was also a former OMB director in Trump’s first term.

Vought is one of the architects behind Project 2025, a policy plan the conservative Heritage Foundation put together for Trump’s second term. Vought wrote a chapter in Project 2025 in which he argued that the president must rein in a “stretched federal bureaucracy” and outlined, in part, how the OMB could help consolidate Trump’s executive power.

On the campaign trail, Trump tried to distance himself from Project 2025, claiming he knew “nothing” about it and had “no idea who’s behind it.” But he has since nominated several key people behind Project 2025 to his administration, Vought among them.

Vought has publicly advocated greater presidential control over government agencies. “We need to solve the vigilante and armed bureaucracy and get the president to take control of the executive branch,” he said in a interview with Tucker Carlson airing on X this week. “There may be different strategies with each of them on how to dismantle them, but as an administration, the whole idea of ​​an independent agency should be thrown out.”

His upcoming nomination as OMB director was hailed by the Heritage Foundation. The group’s president, Kevin Roberts, praised Vought as the “perfect choice to take the reins at OMB in President Trump’s second term” in a declaration on Friday.

“Russ will be a driver of the transformative change our federal government so desperately needs,” Roberts said. “His leadership will be a breath of fresh air in The Swamp – we’re ready to see him take charge again.”

Vought must be confirmed by the Senate to take on the role.