U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought arrives for a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on January 15, 2025 in Washington, DC. If confirmed as director, Vought is poised to play a pivotal role in implementing a plan to reduce both the size of the federal government and federal spending.
With a party-line vote, the Republican-controlled Senate has confirmed Russell Vought, a chief architect of the extremist policy blueprint Project 2025, to lead the Office of Management and Budget, giving him sweeping authority over federal spending. The Thursday evening 53-47 vote cemented Vought as a key figure in President Donald Trump’s plan to dismantle federal agencies and roll back civil rights protections, particularly for LGBTQ+ Americans.
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Vought, 48, previously served as OMB director during Trump’s first term, overseeing deep cuts to Medicaid, education funding, and foreign aid while helping freeze military assistance to Ukraine in an incident that led to Trump’s first impeachment. After leaving office, Vought played a central role in crafting Project 2025, a sweeping Heritage Foundation roadmap designed to expand presidential power, purge career civil servants, and eliminate funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs—many benefiting LGBTQ+ communities.
His confirmation comes as Trump is already enacting Project 2025’s vision. In his first weeks back in office, Trump has moved to reinstate a ban on transgender service members in the military, signed an executive order revoking federal recognition of transgender and nonbinary people, and barred federal funds from supporting gender-affirming health care. These policies align directly with Project 2025, which calls for erasing LGBTQ+ protections across government agencies.
The New York Times reports that Vought has long advocated for an aggressive overhaul of the federal workforce, stating that he wants civil servants to be “traumatically affected” and to wake up every morning dreading their jobs if they do not align with the administration’s policies.
