Architect of Project 2025 interrogated by Democrats at confirmation hearing
In Washington, President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, was heavily critiqued by Senate Democrats given his background: Vought was one of the principal organizers of Project 2025.
Vought, who had previously served in the same position during the twilight of the previous Trump term, is credited as being one of the key authors of the controversial program officially titled “Mandate for Leadership” — a conservative playbook that has been published every presidential cycle since 1980 by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation.
Primary concerns raised by Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee included the politicization of the role Vought is seeking, which helps oversee and gauge the efficacy of Trump’s budget. They also expressed anxiety over how Vought’s right-wing social politics would impact his advising of Trump.
“As director of the powerful Office of Management and Budget, your job will not merely be to execute the president’s agenda — it also to advise the president on policy, as you’ve made clear. So I want to ask about women’s health policy. You were a lead author of the anti-abortion Project 2025,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) asked Vought during the hearing.
“You were also caught just a few months ago saying that when it comes to abortion, you ‘want to get to abolition’... You have said that you don’t believe in exceptions for rape, for incest, or the life of the mother,” Murray continued. “Is that your position?”
Unsurprisingly, Vought obfuscated. Throughout the hearing, Vought supplied a vast array of non-answers to avoid expressing his far-right perspective in public. He provided similar responses when pressed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on whether Trump would cut funding to Medicaid and Medicare to pay for further tax cuts.
“Why can I not get an answer — is there some new rule in this committee? — as to where these executive orders came from?” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) asked Vought and Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
“That’s perfectly, to me, legitimate congressional oversight. Over and over again, this witness has told us what questions he will answer, but the oath he took was to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in response to our questions.”
Once the unpopular policy positions of Project 2025 — which includes everything from deploying the military against protestors to firing thousands of government workers — were openly discussed during the presidential race, Trump attempted to distance himself from the program. As such, conservative thought leaders like Vought are following a similar strategy by being explicitly unforthcoming on their plans for the next four years.
This, however, has not stopped Trump from reproducing many of the proposals found in Project 2025 within hours of officially retaking the White House. According to the investigative newsroom The Lever, 16 of the 26 executive orders signed by Trump reflected at least some policy suggestions found in the document.
“Project 2025 was the conservative movement’s unapologetic blueprint for building an authoritarian presidency,” said James Goodwin, policy director at the Center for Progressive Reform, told The Lever. “And these day-one actions are the Trump administration’s first concrete steps toward realizing that vision.”