The Trump administration’s directive for federal agencies to prepare for significant downsizing is being driven by a key conservative figure who has long envisioned such a shift.
During President Donald Trump’s first term, Russell Vought operated largely behind the scenes before ultimately becoming the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), a highly influential yet often overlooked entity.
Now, in Trump’s second term, Vought has returned to that role after serving as the principal architect of Project 2025—a conservative governing roadmap that Trump disavowed during his 2024 campaign.
The memo Vought co-signed on Wednesday is the most explicit demonstration of his authority yet, reinforcing his stance that the federal bureaucracy poses an existential threat to the nation and must be significantly reduced. An OMB spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Here is the background on Wednesday’s memo and Vought’s previous work:
To Vought, the federal bureaucracy represents a constitutional crisis
In his Wednesday memo, Vought characterized the federal government as “costly, inefficient, and deeply in debt,” asserting that it “is not producing results for the American public. Instead, tax dollars are being siphoned off to fund unproductive and unnecessary programs.”
This rhetoric mirrors language he used in Project 2025, as well as in a 104-page budget plan released by his think tank, the Center for Renewing America, in 2022.
“The overall situation is constitutionally dire, unsustainably expensive, and in urgent need of repair. Nothing less than the survival of self-governance in America is at stake,” he wrote in Project 2025.
That sentiment aligns with remarks Vought made before Trump renominated him to lead OMB in November.
During a post-election interview with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, Vought was even more direct: “The left has innovated over 100 years to create this administrative state … that is totally unaccountable to the president.”
Vought signaled he would take full advantage of a second opportunity at OMB
In Project 2025, Vought described OMB as “a President’s air-traffic control system” and stated that “the Director must view his job as the best, most comprehensive approximation of the President’s mind.”
According to Vought, OMB should be “involved in all aspects of the White House policy process,” becoming “powerful enough to override implementing agencies’ bureaucracies.”
Donald Trump
Speaking with Carlson, he elaborated that “OMB is the nerve center of the federal budget” and has “the ability to turn off the spending that is going on at the agencies” while overseeing “all of government execution.”
Presidents, he asserted, “use OMB to tame the bureaucracy, the administrative state.” During his conversation with Carlson, Vought labeled this approach “radical constitutionalism.”
In Project 2025, he argued that the OMB director “should present a fiscal goal to the President early in the budget development process,” though he did not specify a timeline.
Vought has endorsed DOGE and countered Trump’s critics
Following the election, when asked about the president’s proposal to grant sweeping authority over the federal government to billionaire Trump aide Elon Musk and, at the time, former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, Vought expressed support.
“I think they’re bringing an exhilarating rush … of creativity, outside-the-box thinking, comfortability with risk and leverage,” he told Carlson.
Ramaswamy departed DOGE by Inauguration Day.
As for concerns regarding the constitutional separation of powers—particularly those who argue that Trump’s White House is seeking to take control of spending decisions that traditionally rest with Congress—Vought dismissed such worries.
“Separation of powers is meant to have strong, opinionated conviction and leadership that go as fast as they can and hard as they can in their direction,” he said.
The memo provides more detail than Vought’s previous writings
Vought’s latest memo mandates that agencies submit an initial overhaul plan by mid-March, marking the beginning of what is referred to as “Phase I.” This deadline was introduced by Trump.
The “Phase II” plans, due by April 14, must include a “future-state organizational chart” along with documentation detailing “all reductions, including (full-time) positions, term and temporary positions, reemployed annuitants, real estate footprint, and contracts.”
Vought intertwines religious themes with his agenda
While the latest OMB memo does not reference religious texts or themes, Vought is an outspoken conservative Christian who incorporates his faith into his governing philosophy.
The Center for Renewing America’s 2022 budget proposal opens with a passage from the Old Testament, specifically the eighth chapter of the first book of Samuel, to critique the size and scope of the federal government:
“He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants.
He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to the officers and to his servants … He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day, you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves.”
