Trump’s Pick for OMB Set to Enact the Worst of Project 2025

Washington, D.C. – As communities desperately need aid, Trump is taking aim at FEMA – which is straight out of Russ Vought’s Project 2025 playbook. Similarly, Trump’s executive orders halting congressionally approved funding begins down the road of a central tenet of Vought’s vision of executive power to withhold spending that has been passed into law by Congress. During the first Trump administration, Vought tried to block congressionally approved military aid from allies and disaster aid for American citizens. As the Senate considers Vought’s nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Climate Power executive director Lori Lodes released the following statement: 

“Trump’s early executive orders make it clear that Vought plans to steamroll Congress as OMB director. As the architect of Project 2025, Russ Vought has made no secret of his desire to seize the power of the purse from Congress for the executive branch. On day one, Trump’s administration began carrying out Vought’s vision of undermining laws like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, refusing to fulfill their clear legal obligations. Vought plans threaten to raise energy costs and put more than 400,000 clean energy jobs across the country at risk. 

“Now, with Vought’s nomination to head OMB, Trump is once again threatening to withhold disaster aid for devastated communities to extract unrelated policy concessions. Vought should be blocked until he and the administration clearly reject his unconstitutional vision to relegate Congress to irrelevance. Republicans must ask themselves if they give Congress’s power away, whether they can ever expect to get it back.”