Donald Trump is being criticized after nominating a key architect of Project 2025 to his cabinet.
On Friday evening, Trump announced he was nominating Russ Vought as director of the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Vought also served as director of the OMB in Trump's first term.
"Russ has spent many years working in Public Policy in Washington, D.C., and is an aggressive cost cutter 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 Weaponized Government, and he will help us return Self Governance to the People. We will restore fiscal sanity to our Nation, and unleash the American People to new levels of Prosperity and Ingenuity," the president-elect wrote in a statement.
As well as serving as director of the OMB, Voss also previously served as vice president of Heritage Action for America for seven years. That is a sister organization to the Heritage Foundation, where Project 2025, the conservative agenda that Trump distanced himself from during the campaign, was incubated.
Since leaving office, Vought has been deeply involved in Project 2025, authoring its section on the OMB. While many of the suggestions he laid out are highly technical, they are for the most part aimed at expanding the president's authorities and lessening the power of career civil servants. "The great challenge confronting a conservative President is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power—including power currently held by the executive branch—to the American people," he wrote.
Vaught also helped craft several executive orders that could be implemented on day one of Trump's term. One of them would re-categorize thousands of civil servants to enable Trump to fire them, Reuters reported, citing two people involved with the project.
Elsewhere, Project 2025 calls for a broad expansion in presidential power by boosting the number of political appointees and increasing the president's authority over the Justice Department. The project also proposes enforcing laws that make it illegal to mail abortion pills over state lines, criminalizing pornography and eliminating the Department of Education.
The project's authors, Vought included, have also advocated for the reclassification of parts of the federal workforce that would give Trump the authority to fire tens of thousands of government employees.
Amid his links to Project 2025, Vought's nomination as OMB Director has generated significant backlash. New Mexico Rep. Melanie Stansbury wrote in a post on X Friday that the nomination is a sign of what's to come in a second Trump term.
"This week Donald Trump quietly named Russ Vought to be head of OMB—one of the chief architects of Project 2025," she wrote. "Yes ... THE Project 2025, which Donald Trump pretended to know nothing about. He lied. It's crystal clear, this is the blueprint for the coming administration."
YouTuber and MSNBC contributor Brian Tyler added: "Trump just named to architect of Project 2025, Russ Vought, to his Cabinet. But hey, thank God mainstream media didn't just take Trump's tepid denials at face value and slap them in their headlines before the election!"
Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney, also warned that Project 2025 could now become reality if Vought is confirmed by the Senate. "Vought claimed that Trump had "blessed" Project 2025 and that it was ready to be put into action," she wrote in a blog post on Substack. "If confirmed, Vought will be in a position to make that reality."
She added: "The bottom line is that all of the pieces of Project 2025 that we've discussed for the last year are in play."
But some Republicans were pleased to see Vought appointed to the Cabinet. "Another excellent choice by President Trump to nominate Russ Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Russ knows exactly where we need to target in the executive branch to reduce waste, fraud, and useless bureaucracy. I look forward to working with him to drain the swamp!" MAGA ally congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote in a post on X.
Vought is not the only Project 2025 architect that has been nominated for Trump's Cabinet. Other nominees with Project 2025 ties include Brendan Carr, who wrote the project's chapter on the Federal Communications Commission. Carr is now set to lead that agency. Tom Homan, Trump's "border czar," and John Ratcliffe, his incoming CIA director, as well as Pete Hoekstra, Trump's choice for ambassador to Canada, were also involved in Project 2025.
Meanwhile, Stephen Miller, one of Trump's incoming deputy chiefs of staff, founded a conservative legal and advocacy group known as America First Legal, which contributed to the project.
Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told Reuters Trump never had anything to do with Project 2025, and that all his cabinet nominees and appointments were "whole-heartedly committed to President Trump's agenda, not the agenda of outside groups."
Newsweek has contacted Trump's transition team for comment via email.
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