Russell Vought returns as White House budget chief

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00:00In Washington, the U.S. Senate confirmed Russell Vought as director of the White House Office

00:03of Management and Budget.

00:05The OMB is at the center of a contentious effort to freeze federal funding for aid programs.

00:11Here to tell us more is Ketivan Gorgastani, a foreign editor and our former White House

00:15correspondent.

00:16Hello to you, Ketivan.

00:18First of all, tell us a bit more about Russell Vought and what his role will be.

00:22Well, the first thing to say is that his confirmation was pretty controversial, and the Democrats

00:28really tried to block it as long as they could, going all 30 hours of debate.

00:33And Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, had this to say.

00:37He said, putting the most radical nominee with the most extreme agenda to the most important

00:43agency in Washington is a triple-header disaster for the American people.

00:49So it sort of gives you an idea of how the Democrats at least see him.

00:54You have to remember that the Office of Management and Budget often goes under the radar.

01:00You don't usually talk about it, but it does hold the key.

01:03Traditionally nonpartisan, right?

01:04It's traditionally nonpartisan, and it also holds the key to basically everything the

01:07White House does, developing the budget, the policy priorities, the rulemaking to implement

01:14those policies.

01:16And Vought has already served in that job in the first Trump administration.

01:22And since then, he's called the OMB the president's air traffic control system, arguing that it

01:28should be powerful enough to override agencies' bureaucracies.

01:33So you see how he sees that as sort of the arm of the president, the weapon of the president.

01:40And he's also defended the theory of impoundment.

01:45The tradition is that Congress holds the purse strings, meaning that they decide where to

01:50allocate taxpayers' money, and the president is not supposed to override that.

01:55The impoundment theory goes specifically on that, saying that basically the president

01:59can decide to override the decision of Congress.

02:03He's also openly pushed for Christian nationalism, arguing that yes, separation of church and

02:10state, but no separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society.

02:16So you see a lot of these sort of theories and ideas put out in Project 2025, of which

02:22he has been reportedly one of the main architects writing that project.

02:28Project 2025.

02:30Difficult to sum up, but I'm going to ask you to do it anyway.

02:33Help us and our viewers understand why this project is so controversial.

02:37Look, this project, first of all, is longer than 900 pages, so not a lot of people have

02:42actually read the whole thing.

02:44It came out in 2023, but gained sort of popularity, if you will, during the election campaign

02:51in 2024.

02:52It's 900 pages of hardline conservative policy, but it was meant openly to serve as a blueprint

03:01for whoever became the next Republican president, in this case, Donald Trump.

03:06And it was written by a lot of members of the Heritage Foundation, which is one of the

03:12main conservative groups, with the help of other people like Russell Vogt and others

03:17who are now part of the Trump administration.

03:21During 2024, it was seen as so radical that Donald Trump and his campaign team tried to

03:27distance themselves from Project 2025, Donald Trump saying that he hadn't read it, that

03:32he had nothing to do with it, and that no one that he was working with had anything

03:36to do with it.

03:37Now, if you look at Project 2025, obviously a lot of the stuff is longstanding conservative

03:45policy, but there are also things that are a little bit less conventional that were outlined

03:52in that document, like, for example, reclassifying federal employees in order to make it easier

03:59to fire them and then replace them by loyalists to Donald Trump.

04:04So it is really something that was meant to be a base for the next Republican president.

04:14That's what it was meant to be when those people wrote it.

04:17So Trump had tried to distance himself three weeks into his administration.

04:21Are we seeing Project 2025 manifest itself in any ways?

04:25Look, of the more than 50 executive orders and other moves that Donald Trump has done,

04:31as I said, they're things that are traditional conservative policies.

04:36But there are dozens of elements that seem pretty much inspired by Project 2025, especially

04:45when it comes to culture wars and to the weakening of the federal government.

04:51So the ban on transgender people serving in the military, the end of diversity, equity

04:58and inclusion programs, the DEI programs that Donald Trump has gone after, recognizing

05:03only two sexes, but also that federal hiring freeze and federal aid freeze that you were

05:11talking about, those are things that were a part of Project 2025.

05:16Other things, like suspending the U.S. refugee assistance programs or suspending USAID, those

05:24were also things that were written out in Project 2025.

05:29Donald Trump and his White House team now are still trying to distance themselves from

05:35Project 2025.

05:37There are some things, some radical things that they have not touched upon yet, at least.

05:42But there are things on which they have gone even further than Project 2025.

05:46For example, this idea of mass deportation.

05:49That is going beyond what Project 2025 was calling for.

05:53The end of birthright citizenship, that was also not in Project 2025.

05:57And I was talking about USAID, Project 2025 wanted to sort of streamline it, reduce it.

06:05Donald Trump is going into folding it into the State Department, sort of doing away completely

06:10with it.

06:11And, as I said, a lot of people, not just a Russell vote, but, for example, the Border

06:16Corps czar, Tom Homan, there are a lot of people that contributed to Project 2025 that

06:23are today in very important positions in the Trump administration.

06:27And I guess we'll see, going into the long term, how much of Project 2025 will transpire

06:33in the policies of Donald Trump.

06:34All right.

06:35Ketivan, thank you very much.

06:36Ketivan Gorgastani, France 24's foreign editor.

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