Here Comes Russell Vought
And now comes Russell Vought.
Vought was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday night as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), one of the most powerful positions in government, a government Vought apparently hates.
Vought is known as a key architect of Project 2025, a right-wing plan for wholesale deconstruction of our government. He has been described as “Trump’s Thomas Cromwell: the behind-the-scenes fixer who enables his master’s goals.” (Note — Cromwell was ultimately beheaded by his “master,” Henry VIII.)
This brings us to President Donald Trump and his plan to seize the power of the purse from Congress.
The power of the purse is perhaps the most important power provided to Congress by the Constitution. It empowers Congress to determine how federal revenues are raised and spent.
One of Trump’s apparent goals is to turn Congress from a co-equal branch of government — as the Founders created it — into a supplicant arm of his Administration. So far most congressional Republicans are playing along, cowering before Trump and supporting his moves like lemmings.
Trump and Vought want to emasculate Congress’s power of the purse and turn Congress into a third-world, rubber-stamp legislature. To accomplish this, they intend to challenge the constitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.
The Impoundment Control Act establishes procedures to prevent the President and other government officials from unilaterally substituting their own funding decisions for those of Congress.
It was enacted in response to President Nixon’s “impounding” funds — that is, refusing to spend money after Congress had appropriated the funds for expenditure.
In 1975, the Supreme Court in Train v. City of New York unanimously upheld the Act, finding that a President does not have the power to impound appropriated funding.
Nevertheless, Trump and Vought will look to the current Supreme Court to overturn Train and declare the Impoundment Act unconstitutional.
Last month at his confirmation hearing, Vought testified, “The President ran on the notion that the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional. I agree with that.”
Last week, Trump’s OMB began the effort to strip Congress of its power of the purse when it issued an order to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance.”
This quickly led to lawsuits and federal district courts in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C. swiftly issued a temporary restraining order against OMB, countermanding its order to “pause all activities.”
On Tuesday, however, Politico reported that the Administration is still freezing many climate and infrastructure grants despite the two restraining orders.
The stakes in upholding the Impoundment Control Act are enormous.
(So are the stakes in whether Trump is going to comply with court decisions, including those from the Supreme Court.)
If Trump can refuse to spend funds that Congress has appropriated, he will have the power to pressure and blackmail every Member of Congress.
Trump can threaten to withhold funds needed by a Member’s constituents unless that Member does what Trump wants. Trump would hold the Sword of Damocles over Members of Congress.
On Wednesday night into Thursday, Senate Democrats conducted an all-night filibuster to protest Vought’s expected confirmation today. “Russell Vought was born to make corruption safe again,” Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) said during the overnight talkathon.
Columnist Thomas Edsall recently wrote: In times past, Vought “would have been seen, and dismissed, as an over-the-top extremist well outside the boundaries of mainstream politics. Today, he is a lauded Trump loyalist on the verge of his second tour of duty with the President, in one of the most powerful posts in the federal government.”
President Trump is on a path to try to eliminate any accountability for his actions, as unhinged as they may be. Trump has said that Article II of the Constitution gives him “the right to do whatever I want as President.” It doesn’t.
Trump’s hatchet man Elon Musk, Russell Vought, and others in the Administration are right there with Trump, ready to tear down the Constitution, ignore the rule of law, and rip apart the government.
Trump and his minions are throwing up daily distractions to throw opponents off.
It’s overwhelming at times, but it’s crucial to work through the noise and overcome the urgent dangers our democracy faces with the likes of Musk and Vought in positions of power doing the bidding of their “king,” Donald Trump.
The battle is unfolding and clear: democracy or autocracy.
This was adapted from a piece that appeared in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a weekly Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s and recent newsletters here. And, subscribe for free here to receive your copy each week via email.
