President Donald Trump's budget director came into office with a "radical" agenda to give the executive branch more power — but Elon Musk's efforts to cut government spending clashed with his vision, according to a report.
Vought, a former congressional staffer and policy wonk who co-authored the Project 2025 blueprint, was frustrated by the haphazard chaos injected into his efforts to shrink bureaucracy by the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, according to sources who spoke to the New York Times.
“We’re going to let DOGE break things, and we’ll pick up the pieces later,” Vought told his staff at one point, according to three sources.
Musk, the tech tycoon who spent more than $250 million to help get Trump re-elected, infuriated Vought by sending out a mass email requiring federal workers to justify their jobs by listing five accomplishments from each week, because he believed the message skirted the legal process for personnel matters and created needless liability.
“DOGE would have been far more effective from day one had they bothered to ask Russ and team how to achieve their goals,” said Joe Grogan, a friend of Vought’s who led the White House Domestic Policy Council in the first Trump administration.
Vought was also annoyed when DOGE moved to shut down the Education Department's data office because the administration needed that information on academic performance to roll back race-based college admissions and cut programs for poor and disabled students, sources told the Times.
"In the months since Mr. Musk fell out with the president, Mr. Vought has at last begun to put his plans into action — remaking the presidency, block by block, by restoring powers weakened after the Nixon administration," the newspaper reported. "His efforts are helping Mr. Trump exert authority more aggressively than any modern president, and are threatening an erosion of the longstanding checks and balances in America’s constitutional system."
Vought is setting up a U.S. Supreme Court battle that could give the president a new legal precedent to block spending for any congressionally authorized policies or programs he dislikes, which many legal experts believe would threaten the foundations of democracy.
“One of the main sources of power that Congress has over the executive branch is the budget,” said Eloise Pasachoff, a law professor at Georgetown University. “If the executive branch isn’t controlled by the power of the purse, then there is very little that will control the President. It’s a fundamental challenge to liberty for every single person in America.”
Vought is laying the groundwork for the Trump-shaped court to overturn the post-Watergate Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which he believes is unconstitutional, by intentionally provoking a clash with the Government Accountability Office.
“Russ absolutely believes he is on sound legal footing and that he will be vindicated at the Supreme Court,” Grogan said.
The GAO's legal counsel strongly disagreed, saying "the president does not have the unilateral power to change the laws," but a longtime veteran of the Office of Management and Budget said Vought had reason to feel confident the court would overturn the law.
“What he’s doing is radical, but it’s well thought out,” said Fairweather, who spent 42 years in the budget office and wrote a book about its operations. “He’s had all these years to plan. He’s looked clearly at the authorities and boundaries that are there, and is pushing past them on the assumption that at least some of it will hold up in the courts.”