Project 2025 Mastermind Gets Sweet White House Budget Office Job

Trump Just Hired the Architect of the Thing He Knew Nothing About

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Today the Senate voted on party lines to confirm Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget, the largest federal office. Russell Vought should already be familiar to everyone here. He’s the mastermind behind Project 2025.

Doesn't this miserable asshole look like he can’t wait to fire every woman, non-white man, and queer person from the federal government?

Of course, Trump didn't know what Project 2025 was this summer, aggressively denying any connection to it. During his debate with Kamala Harris in September, he claimed he claimed he hasn’t read it. He knows nothing about it. He definitely was not actively putting Project 2025’s plans in motion over golf rounds at Mara Lago.

The very stable genius doth protest too much.

What Is the Office of Management and Budget?

The OMB is intensely powerful. It functions essentially as an enormous HR department for the federal government, deciding where and how Congressional appropriations are distributed, handling the hiring and firing of a large number of employees, and defunding or drastically scaling back entire agencies. We’ve already seen what can go wrong when the power of the OMB falls into the wrong hands. Last week, acting OMB Director Matthew Veath froze a large swath of federal funding, creating confusion and chaos across the country.

As the OG supervillain of Project 2025, Russell Vought will have almost unlimited control over nearly every aspect of our lives — from whether Head Start continues to exist in our communities to whether we continue to study and acknowledge climate change to whether farmers get subsidies that will keep their operations in motion. It’s disturbing how quickly Trump has already detonated foreign relations, endangered millions of lives across the globe, dismantled constitutional protections. And that’s BEFORE Vought could officially begin his apocalyptic work.

Or as Senate Democrats put it, by voting to confirm Vought, Republicans are “putting an official who planned the zealous expansion of President Donald Trump's power into one of the most influential positions in the federal government.”

A Futile Filibuster

Democrats led a valiant 30-hour overnight effort to oppose Vought’s nomination. Why did it only last 30 hours? I heard Chuck Schumer’s doctor wants him to limit his Red Bull intake.

During the 30-hour talkathon, Senators called Vought “Trump’s most dangerous nominee.”

"Confirming the most radical nominee, who has the most extreme agenda, to the most important agency in Washington," said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer in a floor speech. "This will be a triple-header of disaster for hardworking Americans."

As head of OBM, Vought will be able to enforce some of the most harmful elements of Project 2025’s radically dangerous agenda items:

• Tax hike for working-class Americans

• Elimination of worker protections

• Removing federal grants to punish schools that continue DEI initiatives

• Funding surveillance on private citizens

• Prosecuting Trump’s political enemies

• Gutting entire offices charged with protecting civil rights

• And MORE!

Vought called the budget office “the best approximation of the president’s mind.”

Yikes. Who would want to navigate that wasteland of wickedness, the den of depravity that is Trump’s mind? What is there to approximate? The matter between Trump’s ears contains hair plugs, machinations for cruelty, a list of pussies he can grab, his tee time, and fake tanner. It’s a 24/7 Diddy Party in there.

But Vought doesn’t actually have to approximate Trump’s brain. He’s less flashy than Trump or Elon Musk, but he’s no less dangerous. Vought interprets his job as overseer of the purge of federal offices that Musk has messily and maliciously initiated. In other words, Musk and Trump are the marionettes, but Project 2025 and Vought are pulling the strings.

Spy Games

The worst part of all of this is that we knew. WE KNEW. People either weren’t listening or didn’t care or didn’t believe that Trump was so closely tied to the dystopian 920-page document that’s policies will harm nearly every American in some way.

But in private, Vought gloated that Trump’s disavowals were “graduate-level politics” and that the pieces were already in play for an inevitable Trump win.

In an undercover operation by a British journalism outfit, two journalists posed as conservative high-dollar donors to coordinate a private, secretly recorded meeting with Vought before the election.

According to CNN, which published part of the video of the meeting Vought said his group, the Center for Renewing America, was secretly drafting hundreds of executive orders, regulations, and memos that would lay the groundwork for rapid action on Trump’s plans if he wins. He said he was creating “shadow” agencies.

About Trump, Vought said, “He’s very supportive of what we do.”

Is This the End of Separation of Church and State

But perhaps the most troubling thing about Vought is his planned expansion of Christian Nationalism throughout U.S. government. Does that defy the First Amendment’s promise to “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”? Yes. Is Vought aware of that? Also yes. Does he plan to do it anyway? Also yes.

About Christian Nationalism, Vought wrote that it is "a commitment to an institutional separation between church and state, but not the separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society."

(Vought also likes to call Christian Nationalism “Christian nation-ism” as if changing a few letters will lull us all into submission. Maybe I’ve been using the word mastermind too generously.)

This is the same kind of distinction without a difference we’ve become accustomed to from the Trump and his cronies. Those weren’t lies, Kellyanne Conway insisted. Those were “alternative facts.”

In fact, last week a federal judge accused the Trump administration of another instance of distinction without a difference. U.S. District Judge John McConnell blocked President Donald Trump’s effort to freeze a large portion of federal spending, citing the White House’s contradictory signals about the policy. Judge McConnell said the confusion about the matter kept the American people in peril, despite the Trump administration’s attempts to walk it back.

So WTF do we do?

Unfortunately, I’m fresh outta pep talks (go here if you need one). Do you have one? Drop it in the comments. Not to go absolutely doomsday over here, but this is about as bad as any of us imagined it could be. Tomorrow I might be able to summon more hope, but today I felt like it was more important to tell you what is going on than to give you some rainbows and sparkles bullshit. I’ll post positive vibes only tomorrow. Tonight I’m drinking whiskey with a shot of whiskey and a whiskey chaser.

Sidenote: I’m not a major media conglomerate, I’m a mom with a full time job. I don’t have an editor, I have tired eyes, and I’m usually posting these after I’ve girl bossed too hard at my job all day, picked up my kids from school, made dinner, done dishes, and then sat down to type this for two hours. If you’re going to come at me for misspelling something, you have to fold my laundry. If you’re going to come at me for misusing a word, you have to pick up my kids from school and take them to their music lessons. For every criticism you have over something petty, you’d better be ready to take something off my plate. Your hobbies are boring as fuck, you clearly need better things to do, DAVID.

Onward, Democracy Defenders!