1. Russell Thurlow Vought is an American government official and conservative political analyst who has been the director of the Office of Management and Budget since February 2025.
23 Facts About Russell Vought
1. 2.
Russell Vought held the same position from July 2020 to January 2021.
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Russell Vought has played a significant role in Project 2025, an initiative led by the Heritage Foundation that aims to advance conservative policies and reshape the federal government.
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Russell Vought earned a BA from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, in 1998 and a JD from the George Washington University Law School in 2004.
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Russell Vought served as vice president of Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation.
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Russell Vought was the executive director and budget director of the Republican Study Committee, the policy director for the Republican Conference of the United States House of Representatives, and a legislative assistant for US Senator Phil Gramm.
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On January 2,2019, when OMB director Mick Mulvaney became acting White House chief of staff, Russell Vought became the acting OMB director, though Mulvaney continued to hold the director position.
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In May 2020, Russell Vought broke the OMB's long-standing practice of publishing updated economic forecasts, citing disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
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Russell Vought defended his actions, stating that OMB had provided funding for the transition and that there had been more than 45 meetings with Biden officials but that "OMB staff are working on this administration's policies and will do so until this administration's final day in office".
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In January 2021, Russell Vought started an organization called the Center for Renewing America, which is focused on combating critical race theory.
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On June 22,2022, Russell Vought confirmed that federal agents conducted a search of the home of his organization's director of litigation, Jeffrey Clark, a former US Department of Justice official who participated in efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election.
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In October 2024, ProPublica reported on speeches Russell Vought had made at Center for Renewing America events.
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Russell Vought played a major role in the creation of Project 2025, a collection of conservative and right-wing policy proposals from The Heritage Foundation to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power.
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The video shows Russell Vought describing his secretive efforts to prepare executive orders for a potential second Trump administration, as well as his "expansive views on presidential power, his plans to restrict pornography and immigration, and his complaints that the GOP was too focused on 'religious liberty'".
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Russell Vought was named policy director of the Republican National Committee platform committee in May 2024.
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Russell Vought appeared before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on January 15,2025.
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Russell Vought graduated from the evangelical Christian Wheaton College and describes himself as a Christian nationalist.
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Russell Vought seeks to infuse the government and society with elements of Christianity, saying he has "a commitment to an institutional separation between church and state, but not the separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society," according to The Washington Post.
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Russell Vought has called the Democratic Party "increasingly evil" for supporting secularism.
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Since 2022, Russell Vought has advocated for what he calls "radical constitutionalism" to reverse what he calls a current "post-Constitutional time"; he asserts this has been the result of a century of corruption of laws and institutions by the political left.
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Russell Vought characterizes the federal bureaucracy as "woke and weaponized" and advocates replacing it with "radical constitutionalists".
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Russell Vought proposes to "gut the FBI" and end the tradition of political independence of the US Justice Department.
23.
Mary did not appear in any photographs of Russell Vought's second hearing nor confirmation as budget director.