Friday, October 3, 2025

Today in Politics, Bulletin 221. 10/3/25 WHAT A MINUTE! WHAT? ROBERT MORRIS SEXUALLY ABUSED 12 YEAR OLD GIRL? ONLY 6 MONTHS IN COUNTY JAIL?

Today in Politics, Bulletin 221. 10/3/25

Ron Filipkowski

Oct 3

∙

… Trump’s former spiritual advisor and donor Robert Morris just pled guilty to sexually abusing a 12 year old girl. NBC: “The Texas megachurch pastor who built Gateway Church into one of the largest congregations in the country, pleaded guilty Thurs in Osage County District Court to charges that he sexually abused a girl in the 1980s.”

… Morris pled guilty to 5 felony counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child. Under a negotiated plea agreement, he was given a 10-year sentence, but he will serve only 6 months in the county jail. He must also register as a sex offender and pay $250,000 in restitution."

… “The plea represents a remarkable fall for Morris, who founded Gateway in 2000 in Southlake, TX, and grew it into a megachurch with tens of thousands of weekly attendees. His sermons were broadcast to audiences around the world, his books became bestsellers in evangelical circles, and he served as a faith adviser to President Trump.”

… Trump went on another batshit crazy, late-night social media barrage last night. This was one of them.

… And JD Vance just got done lecturing us all week about inflammatory rhetoric.

… Russ Vought continues to freeze federal funding on infrastructure projects underway in blue states: “$2.1 billion in Chicago infrastructure projects-specifically the Red Line Extension and the Red and Purple Modernization Project -have been put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing via race-based contracting. More info to come soon from USDOT.”

… SPINELESS MAGA Mike Johnson on Trump’s deranged social media posts and Vought’s impoundment of funds appropriated by Congress to projects in blue states: “He has that opportunity now to say, ‘This is a program that would serve the American people if it was not funded, because govt would be more efficient and effective.’ So they’re gonna make those decisions. Are they taking great pleasure in that? No. Is he trolling the Democrats? Yes. Because that’s what Trump does and people are having fun with this. Russ takes no pleasure in this - the president takes no pleasure in this.”

… Fox reporter to Johnson: “How can you say ‘they take no pleasure in this,’ and then the next minute say, ‘Oh, they’re just having fun and trolling?’”

… BLEACH BLOND BRAIN DEAD Karoline Leavitt’s press conference today: Q - “You just said this is an unenviable choice, and layoffs are an unfortunate consequence. But the president posted a video likening Vought to the grim reaper. So which is it? Leavitt: Look, the president likes to have a little fun every now and then.”

… Speaking of trolling and having a little fun, Gavin Newsom just posted this.

… Reporter: “Do you commit to doing something to address the ACA subsidies so that insurance premiums don’t spike for Americans? Johnson: Republicans commit to continuing the work we’ve already been doing.”

… That means no.

… Vance on CBS: “We inherited this really bad healthcare system from the last days of the Biden admin. We want to fix it. We just don’t want to shut down the govt while we’re fixing it. Why can’t we open up the govt and fix the healthcare problem?”

… Trump and Republicans have been promising to “fix” the health care system since 2016. Trump repeatedly said in his first term his health care plan was coming in two weeks. It never happened. It hasn’t happened this term. Now Dems are supposed to just vote for this and trust the Trump admin suddenly has a secret plan.

… BLEACH BLOND BRAIN DEAD Karoline Leavitt: “When an illegal alien goes to the emergency room, who’s paying for it? The American taxpayer.”

… Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich: “This is due to a law signed by Ronald Reagan and has nothing to do with this shutdown fight. But consider this... Emergency Medicaid spending in 2023 cost $3.4 billion - just 0.4% of total Medicaid spending. Now what about the $20 billion taxpayers are giving to Argentina?”

… Q: “Has the president abandoned his campaign pledge to mandate insurance coverage for IVF? Leavitt: No. Q: Is there any update on that? Leavitt: I’ll check.”

… Rep. Marge Greene (R-GA) says that Republicans can end the shutdown anytime they want without Democratic votes: “On the govt shutdown, here’s what you’re not being told. If Republican Senators wanted to pass the CR and reopen the govt they could, by using the nuclear option to override the 60 vote rule and pass the CR with a simple majority vote. We have 53 R Senators.”

… “The Senate just recently used the nuclear option to push through a large package of the President’s nominees. They know how to do it. And as far as worrying that using the nuclear option would damage partisan relations, let’s be real, that ship has sailed a long time ago. There are no partisan relations.”

… Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) on Fox: “There’s no one in America who believes that the Democrats are in charge. Trump brags about his big victories in the House and Senate. Everyone knows he’s controlling govt - in fact, too much. So the argument to blame Democrats - no one in America believes it.”

… A strong majority of Americans in every poll shows that they blame Republicans for the shutdown:

… Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) on CNN: Q - “A WaPo poll shows more Americans are blaming Republicans for the shutdown. Does that give you pause? Marshall: I discount that poll altogether. There are so many other polls that say just the opposite. Q - Which ones? Marshall: I don’t have them at my fingertips right now.”

… New KFF poll: Percentage of Americans who want to extend the Obamacare tax credits: Democrats-92%. Independents-82%. Republicans-59%. 74% of people say they would blame Republicans or Trump if credits are not extended. Just 22% would blame Dems.

… Emma Wagner: “Since the enhanced PTCs were introduced, the number of people who receive health coverage through the ACA Marketplaces has more than doubled. In 6 states (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia and West Virginia), enrollment has more than tripled in 5 years.”

… Health care policy analyst Larry Leavitt: “This is a remarkable statistic: 18.7 million out of the 24.3 million Obamacare enrollees are in states won by Trump in 2024. 80% of all ACA premium tax credits go to people in states won by Trump in 2024.”

… Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio: “If the Republican candidate lets the premium tax credit expire, the Republican trails the Democrat on the general ballot by 15-points.”

… WaPo: “Three days into the govt shutdown, it’s increasingly unclear where the US economy is headed - not because of a direct hit from the federal closures but a lack of official data. The absence of the Labor Dept’s monthly jobs report, which was scheduled to be released Friday morning, is the first casualty in what is likely to be a string of delayed or missed economic data.”

… “The timing could hardly be worse. Policymakers have been watching closely for signs that a cooling job market, rising unemployment and worsening inflation could be weighing on the economy. The Sept jobs report was expected to provide a much-anticipated snapshot of the US labor market, after a summer of rapid cooling. The lack of data is a particular problem for the Federal Reserve, which will meet later this month to decide whether it should keep cutting interest rates.”

… “The central bank, responsible for keeping inflation stable without hurting the job market, relies heavily on govt data to guide its decisions. Without updated figures to gauge the state of the labor market or inflation, the Fed will be in an extraordinary difficult spot.”

… Erica Groshen, who was the head of BLS during the 2013 shutdown: “It’s a bad time to be missing data. We are flying blind right as the economy could be turning.”

… Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer on CNN: Q - “Construction jobs fell in Aug, private sector payrolls plunged in Sept. Why is it heading in the wrong direction? DeRemer: All indicators shows we have the strongest economy in the world. What we inherited from the Biden admin... Q - Jobs economy? Do we have the strongest jobs economy compared to last year when when there were hundreds of thousands of jobs added each month? DeRemer: Absolutely.”

… Politico: “The Trump admin is planning to roll out the first tranche of bailout payments for farmers in the coming weeks, likely using billions of dollars in funding from an internal USDA account. But it won’t be enough: USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation fund - which Trump previously tapped to provide $28 billion in farm aid during his first-term trade war with China - has just $4 billion left in the account. Some Republicans estimate they will eventually need to provide $35-$50 billion in aid to farmers hit by Trump’s tariffs.

… “Trump officials, including those at the Treasury Dept, are looking at how to tap tariff receipts or other funding to supplement the payments without triggering a messy fight in Congress. Trump has said he would use tariff revenue to provide cash bailouts to farmers, but Congress would likely need to vote to authorize such a move. GOP lawmakers could also move to refill the internal USDA fund in their govt funding fight later this fall, but that will be a battle with Democrats.”

… Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) on Newsmax: “Unfortunately, our farmers do need that assistance. They don’t like it. They consider it welfare. They want trade, not aid. So we really need to see some of these new markets opening up around the globe. We lost a lot of soybean contracts due to these elongated negotiations. But if there’s anybody that can make a deal, it’s President Trump.”

… DOG KILLER Kristi Noem was fuming today after a municipal city building in Illinois wouldn’t allow her in to use their restroom: “The city police wouldn’t even let us use the restroom. A municipal worker at the city building here at Broadview would not allow us to go in to use the restroom. So as much as these local leaders talk about cooperating, this is what we have to put up with every single day.”

… CNBC: “The top 10% of Americans added $5 trillion to their wealth in the second quarter as the stock market rally continued to benefit the biggest investors, according to new data from the Federal Reserve. The total wealth of the top 10% - or those with a net worth of more than $2 million - reached a record $113 trillion in Q2, up from $108 trillion in Q1.”

… “The top 0.1% saw their wealth grow by 10% over the past year. Since the pandemic, the top 0.1%, or those with a net worth of at least $46 million, have seen their total wealth nearly double to over $23 trillion.”

… CNN: “FBI Director Kash Patel has fired a longtime bureau employee who displayed a Pride flag in his workspace during a past assignment. The employee was undergoing new agent training at the FBI’s academy when he received a letter from Patel ordering his immediate dismissal. In a previous non-agent role with the FBI, the employee, who received multiple awards for service during his career, had also been a field office diversity program coordinator and displayed a Pride flag at his workstation.”

… “In notifying the individual of their dismissal, Patel said the agent trainee was being summarily dismissed for past ‘poor judgment’ and ‘an inappropriate display of political signage.’”

… Meanwhile, Patel is now handing out these.

Photo - Ken Dilanian, MSNBC

Reminder no Bulletin tomorrow because I am off Saturdays. The next two weeks are peak fall foliage season here and we are going on a 4-hour train excursion tomorrow through the lakes region of southeast New Hampshire.

I will be back with my Weekend Bulletin on Sunday night. If you missed yesterday’s Bulletin, you can find it here.

… Trump continues to escalate his war on American cities. BLEACH BLOND BRAIN DEAD Karoline Leavitt made this announcement today: “President Trump will end the radical left’s reign of terror in Portland once and for all. The president has directed Secretary DRUNK Hegseth to provide all necessary troops to protect war-ravaged Portland.”

… Daily Beast: “Apple has capitulated to demands from the Trump admin and removed apps from its App Store that allowed users to track ICE officers. The company removed ICEBlock, a crowd-sourced app that allowed users to report sightings of ICE goons around the country, from its App Store.”

… CORRUPT AG Pam Bondi to Fox: “We reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store - and Apple did so. ICEBlock is designed to put ICE agents at risk just for doing their jobs, and violence against law enforcement is an intolerable red line that cannot be crossed.“

… Joshua Aaron, who created the app: “Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never the right move. ICEBlock is no different from crowd-sourcing speed traps, which every notable mapping application, including Apple’s own Maps app, implements as part of its core services.”

… WSJ: “Senators on both sides of the aisle pressed the Pentagon’s top lawyer in a closed-door meeting to provide a better legal explanation for striking alleged Latin American drug boats in the Caribbean. In a classified Senate Armed Services Committee briefing, the Pentagon general counsel, Earl Matthews, detailed the legal basis for the military’s attacks ordered by Trump.”

… “Matthews repeatedly referred to Trump’s designation of some Latin American drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, which he said granted the Defense Dept unilateral authority to use military force against them. Matthews refused to provide a written justification for the strikes, which legal experts say is necessary for transparency and accountability.”

… Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA): “I was there, I’m not satisfied.”

… Ranking member on the committee Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI): “They provided no credible legal justification, evidence or intelligence for the strikes. Every American should be alarmed that their president has decided he can wage secret wars against anyone he calls an enemy.”

… Senior national security prosecutor Michael Ben’Ary’s farewell letter to colleagues after LOONEY Laura Loomer got him fired: “I am disappointed to see what has happened to this office and the DOJ in just a few short months. The decisions to remove experienced career officials from US Attorneys Offices, the FBI, and other critical parts of DOJ undermines our country’s ability to counter terrorist organizations, malign nation-state actors, and countless others that seek to harm our nation and its citizens.”

… Trump: “An Agreement must be reached with Hamas by Sunday Evening at SIX (6) P.M., Washington, D.C. time. Every Country has signed on! If this LAST CHANCE agreement is not reached, all HELL, like no one has ever seen before, will break out against Hamas. THERE WILL BE PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST ONE WAY OR THE OTHER.”

… Actor Richard Gere on Trump: “We have a president who’s not only crazy, he’s a dark, dark presence. And it’s happened so quickly. In just over 6 months, he’s almost destroyed our country.”

… WaPo: “The newly formed media giant Paramount Skydance will acquire the Free Press, an online publication, and install its iconoclastic founder, Bari Weiss, as editor in chief of CBS News. Paramount Skydance is expected to announce Monday that it will pay $150 million in cash and stock for the Free Press and name Weiss to CBS News’ top editorial job.”

… “The appointment of Weiss, a staunch advocate of Israel and frequent critic of the mainstream media, to lead the company’s news operation follows its hiring last month of a conservative-leaning ombudsman to field complaints about the network’s editorial coverage.”

… “Weiss, whose background is in opinion journalism and commentary, has no experience working at a broadcast television network. Hired by the NYT opinions section in 2017 as part of a push to bring more conservative voices onto its pages after Trump’s election, she resigned in 2020, saying she had been ‘bullied’ by liberal colleagues for her views.”

… WKRN (TN): “A man wanted in Florida for multiple sex crimes against children was taken into custody Tues morning in Franklin. Andrew Paul Johnson was wanted for lewd and lascivious molestation of children under 12, lewd and lascivious molestation of children between 12-16, lewd and lascivious exhibition, and harmful material transmitted to minors.”

… Johnson was a J6 defendant who was pardoned by Trump. This keeps happening with these guys.

… BLEACH BLOND BRAIN DEAD Leavitt was asked about mass shootings today: Q - “We’ve seen this spate of gun violence in this country- mass shootings, Michigan church attacked, children being shot in pews in Minnesota. Has any of this made the president rethink gun safety prevention? Leavitt: The president is always going to protect the 2nd amendment constitutional rights of Americans.”

… J6 organizer, Arizona election audit financier, and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne on Lindell TV: “We’re going to be charged with treason and hanged. That’s their plan if Democrats get back in. They plan on hitting us January 21, 2028 - hundreds of people. They’re going full Bolshevik.”

… US Treasurer Brandon Beach announced today that the US will be issuing a new one dollar coin to commemorate the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence: “These first drafts honoring America’s 250th Birthday and POTUS are real. Looking forward to sharing more soon, once the obstructionist shutdown of the US govt is over.” This is the first draft of the coin.

GOD HELP US!

… Politico: “Corey Lewandowski, a longtime ally of Trump, is considering a run for NH governor - as the WH weighs primarying GOP Gov. Kelly Ayotte over her resistance to redistricting. Lewandowski was one of Trump’s 2016 campaign managers, worked on his 2024 campaign and is currently serving as DHS senior adviser.”

… Lewandowski: “Governor is the only job in Politics I would ever consider giving up what I am currently doing for.”

… One longtime NH Republican consultant: “He’s obviously a smart guy, so he throws his name in there just to get headlines. But in the end, he’s not going to do it because he knows he can’t win.”

… If he does run, I expect people in NH will be seeing a lot of Kristi Noem in their state. Only for official DHS business though, I’m sure.

… The New Republic on recent comments by Pope Leo: “Speaking to reporters in Italian, Leo called Hegseth’s rhetoric ‘worrying, because it shows each time an increase in tensions.’ Citing Hegseth’s change in job title from ‘secretary of defense’ to ‘secretary of war,’ the pope said, ‘Let’s hope it is only a way of speaking.’”

… Miami Herald: “Prosecutors in Tallahassee are convening a grand jury relating to the Hope Florida scandal. In recent weeks, the State Attorney’s Office for the 2nd Judicial Circuit has issued subpoenas for witnesses to appear before a grand jury the week of Oct. 13. State Attorney Jack Campbell declined to comment. In May, Campbell’s office confirmed that a criminal investigation was underway relating to information given about the Hope Florida Foundation, the charity spearheaded by first lady Casey DeSantis.”

… “The investigation began after revelations that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ admin directed $10 million from a legal settlement with the Medicaid contractor Centene to the foundation for the governor’s political purposes. Nearly all of the money ended up in a political committee controlled by DeSantis’ chief of staff, James Uthmeier, which was dedicated to defeating last year’s recreational marijuana amendment.”

… The Times (UK): “Middle age has a dreadful reputation. Knees creak, waistlines thicken, careers stall. Children demand more than you can give, parents need more than you can manage. The mirror is unkind, the inbox unforgiving. Little wonder it is often seen as the bleakest stretch of life’s journey. Yet a study offers consolation: however frazzled and arthritic you may feel in your late fifties, this is when your mind is at its finest.”

… “The paper, published in the journal Intelligence, draws on decades of psychological research to produce what the authors have called the cognitive-personality functioning index (CPFI), a single measure that tracks how intelligence, judgment and other key mental and personality traits evolve over the average lifespan. The results indicate a pattern: that the overall functioning of the human brain reaches its zenith between 55 and 60.”

… “The reason is that different abilities follow different trajectories. Fluid intelligence, which includes reasoning, memory span and processing speed, tends to peak in the early twenties. It then ebbs steadily. But the data suggests that so-called crystallized intelligence - the accumulation of knowledge and experience - continues to build for decades. Personality traits also mature: conscientiousness (the diligence to see things through) and emotional stability (the ability to keep calm under stress), increase across adulthood before leveling off in later life.”

… “Other skills bloom late. Moral reasoning - the ability to weigh competing principles - deepens with experience, producing sounder judgments about fairness and duty. Financial literacy peaks in the late 60s, perhaps reflecting a lifetime of dealing with bills.”

… I would just like to point out that I am 56 years old.

… I was thinking today that it really is amazing how often you can repeat something Trump said verbatim without identifying Trump as the person who said it and Trump supporters will say it’s the dumbest thing they’ve ever heard.

🚨 DEMS Launch INVESTIGATION into Trump $17 TRILLION THEFT?!!!

MeidasTouch

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 Oct 2, 2025  The MeidasTouch Podcast

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Democrats launching an investigation into Donald Trump potentially stealing $17 trillion which he claims he brought in but it is missing from the Treasury Department and no one in Congress knows where it goes.

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Russell Vought's neighbors hate him, too

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October 3, 2025

Are you familiar with Russell Vought?

You may recall that we've been reporting on this bespectacled fellow for the past year, warning that Vought is the key to delivering Donald Trump's most authoritarian plans. But the government shutdown has made Vought, now the director of the Office of Management and Budget, a central player in today's hellscape news cycle, particularly as mass layoffs over the shutdown seem imminent. As fellow Republican Sen. Mike Lee admitted the other day, Vought has been dreaming about this day "since puberty."

Charming, right? But what do Vought's neighbors have to say about this man? What do they think about living next to the so-called mastermind behind Project 2025? My heroic colleague Isabela Dias went to Vought's Virginia suburb to find out—and it's not pretty.

Russ Vought Is Trump’s Shutdown Hero. His Neighbors Think His Work Is “Abhorrent.”

The people living near Trump's "grim reaper" of government cuts have put up signs letting him know they stand with federal workers.

BY ISABELA DIAS

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There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Every dollar you chip in will help us produce the journalism that is needed at this crucial moment.

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For furloughed workers, Trump's partisan shutdown jabs are just the latest slight

BY ANNA ROGERS

Taking stock of the Roberts court at 20—and the shadowy forces that built it

BY PEMA LEVY

It may be hard to stop Trump from privatizing our public lands

BY CHRISTINE PETERSON

The “war-ravaged” Portland only exists in Trump’s head.

BY KEVIN FOSTER

The bureaucrat who could make Trump's authoritarian dreams real (From 2024)

Russ Vought has a plan to take presidential power to new heights.

BY ISABELA DIAS

Our November+December issue investigates the Christian nationalist movement that aspires to take over government at all levels, from school boards and state legislatures to Congress and the Supreme Court. Read the series of stories here.

In the waning days of the Trump presidency, Russell Vought, the outgoing director of the Office of Management and Budget, had a request.

After years in Washington, DC, soaking in the minutiae of policy, Vought had come to both know and loathe the bureaucracy. A rare voice in an administration committed to “draining the swamp” who had actual Beltway experience, he found in the Trump era he could put his expertise to use.

On November 20, 2020, Vought wrote to the head of the Office of Personnel Management for approval to reclassify dozens of career civil servant jobs within his agency. A few weeks before the 2020 election, President Donald Trump signed an executive order creating a new category of at-will employees—so-called Schedule F positions—which would be exempt from the rules designed to protect civil servants from partisan hatchetmen.

Despite Trump’s loss, Vought pushed to recategorize scores of OMB roles. To an outsider, this might have seemed like a technical adjustment. But in practice, reassignment would have stripped 415 employees—68 percent of the agency’s personnel—of work protections, effectively making it easier for political appointees to fire them. Vought called it “another step to make Washington accountable to the American people.”

In the end, Vought couldn’t get it done by inauguration. But this combination of lofty public rhetoric and ruthless behind-the-scenes gamesmanship has become his trademark. By the tail end of Trump’s turbulent four years in the White House, the OMB director had turned into one of the president’s most trusted and obsequious officials—an acolyte with a knack for making the half-formed schemes from his boss achievable.

As Trump runs for a second term, Vought’s years of faithful service haven’t gone unnoticed; his name has been widely floated for chief of staff, and he is a key policy adviser. One of the masterminds behind Project 2025—the Heritage Foundation’s presidential transition blueprint to overhaul the executive branch and usher in an ultraconservative agenda—Vought, an avowed Christian nationalist, is the man best positioned to realize Trump’s visions.

A wonk with a neatly trimmed beard and tortoiseshell glasses, Vought, 48, looks like a generic bureaucrat. He has referred to himself as the “boring budget guy” and to his coterie of paper pushers as a group of “propeller heads.” He can be self-effacing, claiming that if he can get the job done, anyone can. But this modesty belies his strategic ability to bend the mechanics of government to the president’s will.

“What makes Vought especially dangerous is he combines ideological extremism with a familiarity and comfort with Washington’s political processes,” says Katherine Stewart, author of the forthcoming book Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy. “He knows how to undermine agencies, how to create new bureaucratic forces, how to block funding, and how to engage with other practical features of our political system.”

For the 920-page Mandate for Leadership policy playbook from Project 2025, Vought wrote a chapter that exults in the “enormous power” of the president and previews how a conservative administration would radically subjugate the federal government. He has also crafted a 180-day battle plan to arm an incoming president with hundreds of ready-to-go executive orders, regulations, and secretarial memos. Although the details remain secret, he has hinted at pre-plotted ways to enact Trump’s mass deportations, reclaim federal agencies’ independence, and deploy the US military domestically to police migrants (and, conceivably, quash protests).

“[Trump] has never had an army of people that could serve in government, believe fully in what he believes in, and can execute it with enemy fire that’s coming over the target,” Vought said in June on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, where he is a frequent guest. “We will give this next term [the potential for] something that the country has never seen before.”

Every president makes a mark on the civil service with the political appointees they select to lead government agencies. But Vought nurtures a far more expansive—and alarming—ambition: to institute a new governing paradigm predicated on unrestrained presidential authority. With Vought as the architect, Trump could take his “dictator” on “day one” aspirations beyond words, prosecuting political opponents while avoiding accountability for his own crimes.

In a second term, Trump—and Vought—would complete unfinished business, like the OMB shake-up. Trump left office before the agency could implement Schedule F, and the Biden administration rescinded the executive order. Former staff and experts warned it would have undermined institutional knowledge in favor of blind allegiance. Stuart Shapiro, who worked at OMB from 1998 to 2003 and is the author of Trump and the Bureaucrats: The Fate of Neutral Competence, still describes this first attempt to upend the agency as “a significantly traumatic event.”

Vought and the rest of the Project 2025 administration-in-waiting plan to revive Schedule F—and take it beyond the budget office. Potentially, 50,000 federal workers could be affected, their expert roles open to partisan MAGA loyalists ideologically vetted to ensure little resistance to Trump’s project for an imperial presidency. “It’s going to be groundbreaking,” Vought told Heritage President Kevin Roberts on a podcast last year.

For Vought, politics is downstream from religion. He sees a strong presidency as a way to bring forth a Christian nation. Vought opposes abortion and has referred to transgender identity as a “contagion.” He has suggested migration policy should be rooted in Judeo-Christian principles, with immigrants tested on their readiness to “assimilate.” If Trump wins, Vought wants to infuse the next conservative administration with the values of Christian nationalism—the conviction that the United States is bound to the teachings of Christ, from which all else follows.

Since leaving government, Vought has worked from the outside toward this goal. He founded the Center for Renewing America, part of the “nerve center” of MAGA groups laying the groundwork for Trump’s return. With the stated mission to “renew a consensus of America as a nation under God,” CRA is a player in a coalition advising Project 2025.

As much as Trump has tried to distance himself from the initiative in recent months, Vought’s prominent role in it—and his clear ties to the campaign—tell a different story. In May, the Republican National Committee picked Vought to be the policy director of their official 2024 platform. In a secretly recorded interview, Vought—thinking he was talking to prospective donors—told the British nonprofit Centre for Climate Reporting that Trump’s public disapproval of Project 2025 amounted to “graduate-level politics.” He also left no room for doubt as to his motivation for helping Trump get back to the White House: “I want to be the person that crushes the deep state.”

“Vought is maybe the most centrally connected hub in the wheel of what a second Trump administration would look like,” says Donald Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan who has been closely following Vought’s moves. In return for their service, Moynihan says, Vought and others in Trump’s orbit see him as “a destabilizing force that would allow them to fundamentally change much of America as a society—starting with American government.”

Russell Vought stands with hands outstretched in front of camera and lights on the White House lawn. — Russell Vought, then acting director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), speaks during a television interview at the White House in 2019.Alex Edelman/Zuma

The youngest of seven children, Vought grew up in Trumbull, Connecticut. His father was an electrician and his mother a schoolteacher whom he credits with leading him “to the Lord” at the age of four. Vought attended Christian summer camps and later studied at Wheaton College, a private Christian school in Illinois. “Ever since college,” Vought said on the Founders Ministries’ podcast in January 2023, “I’ve been pouring into political theory, policy.”

In his senior year, Vought discovered German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was imprisoned by the Nazis for his opposition to Hitler and died in a concentration camp shortly before the end of the war. Vought pored over Bonhoeffer’s letters and papers, borrowing from his thoughts on personal responsibility as an act of freedom in response to God’s call. Vought began to view politics as a necessary instrument of Christian morality. God did not want his followers to just melt into “armchair criticism” of the world, Vought said he learned from reading Bonhoeffer; instead, one should be “sitting and engaging and making mistakes [while] being willing to accomplish all that you can because that moment has been given to you by God.”

After graduating in 1998, Vought went to work on Capitol Hill. As a fiscal hawk staffer for GOP Sens. Dan Coats of Indiana and Phil Gramm from Texas, he immersed himself in legislative procedure and federal budget policy. Vought describes working for Gramm—an unbending free-market advocate known for his antagonistic style—as a “seminal experience.” Gramm, like Vought, took joy in combining technocratic arcana with conservative fundamentalism.

While serving as policy director for Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling, Vought assisted in forging a federal budget overhaul bill lauded by conservatives as the “gold standard” for such a proposal. It called for slashing entitlement programs—including veteran and retirement benefits—by $1.8 trillion. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted at the time the cuts would have represented the most severe in modern US history. Vought, Hensarling said, showed “unwavering devotion to the conservative principles.”

In 2004, Vought got a JD from George Washington University as a prelude to a steady rise through leadership positions. He worked in the House Republican Study Committee, the bulwark of right-wing strategy in Congress, then chaired by Indiana Rep. Mike Pence. For the caucus, Vought helped craft Operation Offset, a deficit-reduction plan proposal for Hurricane Katrina relief that would have cut billions of dollars in assistance programs for low-income families, including Medicaid. He defined the job as being the “aide-de-camp in [Congress members’] legislative skirmishes.”

Still, by 2010, Vought had grown frustrated. There was an unwillingness, he believed, among Republican establishment figures to really embrace ideological fights. He transitioned from apparatchik to rebel, joining Heritage Action for America, the foundation’s lobbying arm.

Operating from what the group called a “frat house” in Washington, Vought kept tabs and scorecards on Republicans in Congress based on their conservatism. He helped build a program to train conservative activists and campaigned to repeal the Affordable Care Act. When Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee supported the arms reduction treaty with Russia, Vought angrily led a public charge against him as a RINO. Vought ranted about the cost of food stamp programs and opposed a Republican-sponsored highway bill, saying, “Long-term success of transformational conservative reforms is won and lost in trenches such as these.”

This time outside the government allowed him to speak honestly. Vought, it became clear, saw compromise as a sign of betrayal, fiscal clashes as power struggles, and conflict as opportunity for change. “We need elected officials free of calcified political assumptions of what is possible that reveal only their own level of accommodation with the liberal welfare state,” he wrote on the right-wing website RedState. “And we need officials with the courage to actually shape public opinion with urgency in favor of the policies that are necessary to bring the nation back from the brink.”

Vought quickly earned a reputation as a political brawler. A former Heritage colleague described him to the Washington Post as “ideological in the extreme.” (Vought and CRA did not respond to questions from Mother Jones.)

For some, his unflinching religious zeal might have proved disqualifying. But it was an asset to his former boss, Pence, an evangelical Christian who was now headed to the White House as Trump’s vice president. In the spring of 2017, with Pence’s endorsement, Trump tapped Vought to be deputy director of OMB, the epicenter of policy influence in the executive branch.

At Vought’s Senate confirmation hearing, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) grilled him over a 2016 blog post in which he defended his alma mater’s decision to put a professor on administrative leave for stating that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. “Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology,” Vought had written, they “stand condemned” for rejecting Jesus Christ. Vought—confirmed with a tiebreaking vote from Pence—later called that confrontation with the Vermont senator a “warning shot to Christians across the country.” After almost a year as the confirmed second-in-command at OMB, Vought became acting director in 2019 just after Trump chose then-Director Mick Mulvaney to be his chief of staff.

Inside the Trump administration, Vought came across as fiercely dedicated to the America First cause, even if it meant a colossal increase in the federal debt. Trump was prone to outbursts, but to Vought that aggression equaled power. Vought made it his mission to weaponize OMB on behalf of the president, who had long perceived the civil service bureaucracy as an obstacle to his haphazard rule. “We view ourselves as the president’s Swiss Army Knife,” he once said. “How do you come up with options that work and then talk through the pros and cons?” Vought interpreted his job as being inside Trump’s head—a “keeper of ‘commander’s intent.’”

“They’re going to push forward the boundaries of executive authority as far as it can go.”

This was a somewhat radical departure from the norm of OMB. Part of the Executive Office of the President, the agency’s 500 or so career civil servants pride themselves on acting as impartial advisers on policy, budget development and execution, and federal regulations. The work requires a tough balancing act between carrying out the administration’s vision and mitigating the risk of bad decisions. Under Vought, the agency’s culture of serving the presidency—not one particular president—was put to the test. “Vought was seen as valuing political support far more than the competence,” Shapiro writes in his book. OMB employees Shapiro interviewed describe leadership willing to push the boundaries of legality and ignore precedent with “budget gimmicks.”

“A lot of what [Trump] wanted to do and how…was contrary to all the traditions, past practices, and sometimes the law,” Sally Katzen, who served at OMB during the Clinton administration, says. “Trump’s political appointees didn’t want to hear [that] from [civil servants]. It’s like in so many different agencies when Trump was president: The people who knew anything were shut out of the process.” Katzen says Trump’s people “didn’t like hearing ‘no, you can’t; no, you shouldn’t.’”

Vought has made this frustration public. He criticized recalcitrant political appointees as “unwilling to think creatively” and harbored special contempt for career civil servants who worried about violating the law. “The nature of the bureaucracy is that if it isn’t status quo, it must be impossible,” Vought said in 2019. “However, most of the time, when we actually dig into the ways to do what the president wants, we find a way to accomplish it.” He views his legacy at OMB as reining in the broken bureaucracy and “pioneering the type of government that is necessary for an America-first, populist administration.”

Such willingness led Trump to ask Vought for help at key junctures. When rolling out an anti–critical race theory executive order barring anti-racism trainings for federal workers, Trump went to Vought, who dismissed internal resistance as activism to be beaten down. Vought was also behind Trump’s national emergency declaration to unlock billions of dollars in funds from the Pentagon to build the border wall without congressional approval; the office did so despite objection from White House counsels, whom Vought called his number-one adversary in the administration. (An appeals court later ruled the move illegal.)

“He very much knows how to use the executive office to push their policies,” says former Trump White House aide Olivia Troye, who describes Vought as one of Trump’s main enablers. “I think he’s also learned a lot of lessons from the first time around of how to go about doing things.”

These edge-of-the-envelope workarounds (or, as Vought put it, “innovative ways”) put OMB at the center of Trump’s first impeachment over the freezing of congressionally appropriated security assistance to Ukraine as part of a reelection bid to pressure President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into investigating the Biden family. Vought helped provide a legal rationale for the hold, ignoring concerns from national security and Department of Defense officials and, ultimately, in violation of the 1974 Impoundment Control Act (ICA) limiting the president’s authority to withhold funds appropriated by Congress. When subpoenaed to testify in the House impeachment inquiry, Vought declined and called it a “sham process.”

Now, Vought and his colleagues at CRA have been making a case for a future Trump administration to exert even more control over the federal budget. They claim the ICA, which Vought has characterized as “an albatross around a president’s neck,” is unconstitutional and should be overturned. In a second term, Trump has vowed to challenge the 50-year-old law and “squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy.” By overriding spending decisions enacted by Congress, Trump would be more empowered to terminate agency programs he disagrees with.

“We are in an era where presidents already are too powerful,” Daniel Schuman, executive director of the American Governance Institute, wrote of Trump’s plan to seize control of impoundment power. “They’re going to push forward the boundaries of executive authority as far as it can go,” he tells me, adding, “They want a president to be like a king.”

An illustration of two t-squares lying across blueprints of the White House. — Deena So’Oteh

Vought launched CRA in 2021, with Trump’s blessings and fundraising support, as a government-in-exile. The venture included other former Trump officials like ex–Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli and Jeffrey Clark, the Department of Justice attorney involved in the plot to subvert the 2020 election. (At a CRA event this year, Bannon praised Cuccinelli and others in the organization as “madmen.”) A sister entity of the deep-pocketed Conservative Partnership Institute, CRA boasted of raising $4.75 million from undisclosed donors last year.

Vought sees himself and CRA as the tip of the spear in a counterrevolution against the left. Everything from the FBI to the Department of Education has been gripped by a “post-constitutional order” imposed by “a corrupt Marxist vanguard.” In this view, wokeism has ruined America, and it’s incumbent on them to correct course. That means going even more on the offensive on cultural battles—pushing anti-CRT model legislation for school districts in several states and urging Republican governors to circumvent federal immigration law by declaring an “invasion” at the southern border.

It also requires wielding budgetary austerity to defund and bring to heel agencies conservatives believe have gone rogue. “I love to cut spending wherever it is,” Vought told the New Yorker, “and I like to cut spending the most in the bureaucracy.” What excited him most, he said, was “cutting the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education.”

As the budget guru for House Republicans, Vought recently played a pivotal role in the debt ceiling showdown, displaying his acumen for budget-cutting power plays. Throughout the crisis, Vought pushed the insurgent Freedom Caucus to stand their ground and extract concessions for the conservative cause. Career disrupters like Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) had in Vought a key ally. He “understands strategy and leverage as well as anyone in Washington, DC,” Gaetz said with delight. The battle culminated in the ousting of Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

At CRA, Vought has merged the culture battle of the new right with the old right’s love of small government. It was Vought who planted the original idea for what would become the House subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government led by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. And it was Vought’s organization that put forward a 2023 budget model outlining $9 trillion in spending cuts that reads like a list of grievances, from supposed “neo-racism and gender theory” programs to “climate extremism” policies. “America cannot be saved unless the current grip of woke and weaponized government is broken,” Vought wrote in his budget’s introduction. “That is the central and immediate threat facing the country.”

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Friday, October 3, 2025