Russell Vought has a weak little for warrior language. He evokes his “battle plans”, encourages his allies to be “intrepid when they attack” and intends to defeat “the fire of the enemy”, in other words political opposition. His bane, they are the career civil servants that he wants to “traumatize”,, He said in a speech in 2023. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them not want to go to work because they are more and more seen as a dirty spray.” This 48 -year -old bearded man has just been appointed director of the Management and Budget Office (OMB), a department little known to the general public but extremely powerful since it represents the “nerve center” of the federal administration. It is through him that everything transits from budgetary guidelines to the supervision of regulations.
With his scales and bald skull frames, Russell Vought is more like a university researcher than a virulent trumpist activist. But do not trust appearances. Those who attended him describe him as an extremist ideologist doubled by a nationalist Christian, fiercely devoted to the Maga (Make America Great Again). “The Thomas Cromwell of Trump” which in the shadows “helps to make the goals of his master”, according to the formula of Donald Moynihan, professor at the University of Michigan. Judging by his statements, it would be rather attila. “He continues an ideological mission: dismantling the federal state”, sums up Ej Fagan, professor of political science at the University of Illinois (Chicago). “At the OMB, it occupies a very influential position and can make more sustainable changes than the musk chaos machine.”
Like many conservatives, it has been up to decades against the expansion of the federal government and its regulations. For him, the American administration has become so vast and independent that it shades the president. We live, he says, in a “post-constitutional” regime and his objective is clear: we must “bend or break” this “WOKE and instrumentalized bureaucracy” to submit it to the will of the executive. “Russell Vought will be one of the most important actors in the government. It is he who best articulated the doctrine aimed at aggressively strengthen presidential prerogatives,” said Philip Wallach, researcher at the American Enterprise Institute, A republican reflection circle.
He is one of the architects of the 2025 project
After studying in an evangelical university, this youngest of a family of seven children worked for republican elected officials and various conservative organizations in the congress before joining a lobby group linked to The Heritage Foundation, the Think Tank Trumpist. In 2017, Donald Trump chooses this specialist in budgetary issues as a vice-director of the OMB (of which he will then become n ° 1). Under its leadership, the Department, which is not usually inclined to make waves, between several times in conflict with the congress on the limits of presidential power. After leaving the White House, he is one of the architects of the 2025 project, a set of proposals very right prepared by The Heritage Foundation and intended to serve as a roadmap for Donald Trump once elected.
He also founded the Center for Renewing America, a small circle of reflection whose mission is to “reaffirm the consensus according to which America is a nation under the authority of God”. Because the director of the OMB considers politics as a battle between good, the Christian right, and evil, embodied by the Democratic Party “increasingly evil”. We are, he said in a speech a few years ago, “in the last stages of a total takeover of the country by the Marxists”. The movement of nationalist Christians with which he identifies “wants to have the power above the laws and politicians that apply to all Americans” and aims “a theocracy”, explains Katherine Stewart, author of Money, Lies, and God: Inside The Movement to destroy American Democracy. “In the administration, Vought will certainly give priority to certain allegedly Christian values.”
“Here is what the beginning of a dictatorship looks like”
After four years spent refining his ideas, here he is ready to set up his demolition business. He knows the cogs of bureaucracy well and in Donald Trump’s ear, always fond of iconoclastic theories. He can also count on the support of Elon Musk who has already started to cut massively in the various ministries. This divorced father of two daughters, one of which has cystic fibrosis, has three priorities. He intends to make a massive purge among civil servants. During the first mandate, it is to him that we owe the reform that had eliminated the protections which their status benefited in order to dismiss them more easily. This time, the White House did not even try to change the law. She started to dismiss prosecutors, general inspectors, FBI agents … and too bad if it’s illegal.
Russell Vought then seeks to put an end to the independence of federal agencies such as Securities and Exchange Commission (the Autorité des Marchés Financiers) and the Federal Communications Commission, responsible for regulating television channels and Internet suppliers, all two led by officials appointed by the two parties. According to the theory of the boss of the OMB, the Constitution gives the President exclusive control of the executive, therefore of these agencies. Elon Musk began by eviscerating USAID, the American agency for international development. “Here’s what the start of a dictatorship looks like,” said Ilhan Omar, an elected democrat known for her support for Palestine.
“The judges do not have pistols”
Even more ambitious, he militates so that the Head of State can act as he sees fit in budgetary matters. According to the Constitution, the Congress holds “the stock market cords”. The president cannot thus refuse to spend funds approved by elected officials for specific programs. A principle reaffirmed by a 1974 law that Russell Vought considers unconstitutional. During his confirmation, he refused to commit to respecting her. During the first term of Trump in 2016, his office froze military aid to Ukraine and when the congress refused to grant funds to build the wall on the border, he drew into the pentagon budget for the finance. A few days ago, the OMB announced the temporary frost of part of the public subsidies. A decision clearly developed by the new director who caused monster chaos and confusion. Two days later, the White House rear back.
The Democrats, to show their opposition, did everything to delay its confirmation by extending the debate overnight in the Senate. A symbolic action, because the minority party did not have enough votes to block it. The only counter-offensive will therefore go through the courts. More than twenty legal actions have been launched against the administration and Elon Musk by civil servants, unions, NGOs, etc. The judges have already temporarily blocked the freezing of subsidies, the decree on the abolition of the land law And a few others. This is only the beginning of a long legal battle. By simultaneously launching a multitude of unconstitutional measures, Donald Trump hopes to win some. “The most disturbing, it would be that the Ministry of Justice refuses to respect the verdict of the courts. The judges do not have pistols (to enforce their decisions),” said Professor Fagan. Russell Vought, who is invested in a divine mission, is ready for his crusade. “God has placed us on earth for such a moment,” he said a few months ago.
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