The Trump administration is staffed with buffoons, extremists and extremist buffoons, from macho clown Pete Hegseth attempting to turn the military into a Visigoth horde, to the Prince of Darkness, Stephen Miller, overseeing the lawless crackdown on immigration. Until lately, though, one of the most consequential actors in the Trump White House has flown under the radar, Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought.
Vought is one of the authors of Project 2025, the ultra-conservative manifesto that laid out a program to dismantle the federal government and restore traditional morality. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump claimed to know nothing about Project 2025. Now, the president is openly embracing the scheme and making it the blueprint for his aggressive attack on government agencies and programs.
Vought is the prime executor of the plan. A man who Utah Sen. Mike Lee characterized as longing to deconstruct government “since puberty,” Vought is seizing the opportunity of the government shutdown to further slash federal jobs. He is a man on a mission and that mission is to take the United States back 100 years or more to a time when the federal government was much smaller.
In that pre-New Deal era, destitute older citizens, farmers facing drought, African Americans denied their voting rights, exploited workers and victims of natural disasters were all left to deal with their problems and tragedies with no aid from their government. Polluters were free to pollute. Financiers were free to manipulate stocks. The economy was an unmanaged game of craps that was prone to financial panics.
Most Americans would never want to return to that era, but, thanks to Russ Vought, we are on a journey back in time whether we like it or not.
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