In response to Senate Republicans confirming Trump’s nominee Russ Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, Idaho Democratic Party Chair Lauren Necochea released the following statement:

“Project 2025 is the centerpiece of Donald Trump’s dangerous second term agenda — so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he appointed its ‘chief architect’ Russ Vought as his Office of Management and Budget director. What is deeply disappointing and dangerous is that Senators Mike Crapo and Jim Risch rubber-stamped another unfit nominee as Trump consolidates power and wealth for himself and his billionaire backers. When Trump ignores Congress, defies court orders, and dismantles our system of checks and balances, Crapo and Risch will be to blame for enabling him. Here’s what to expect from Vought: (more) unconstitutional federal funding freezes, cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and attacks on Idahoans’ health care. Trump and Vought want to play political games with Idahoans’ lives. We can’t let them.”

Last night, Senate Republicans confirmed Project 2025’s “chief architect” Russ Vought’s nomination to be the Office of Management and Budget director. 

Max Cohen, Punchbowl News: “Senate votes 53-47 to confirm Russ Vought to be OMB director.”

REMINDER: Trump’s disastrous federal aid freeze order was the “brainchild” of Vought, jeopardizing critical programs for thousands of Idahoans. After causing panic and chaos, Trump’s White House OMB was forced to rescind the freeze.

Washington Post: The White House memo announcing a federal spending freeze, rescinded Wednesday afternoon amid chaos and backlash, was the brainchild of Russell Vought, President Donald Trump’s pick to direct the Office of Management and Budget. Stephen Miller, deputy White House chief of staff, explained on CNN that Vought felt that the freeze was needed. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at her first briefing that Vought asked her to convey that ‘the line to his office is open’ if agency heads ‘feel that programs are necessary.’”

Politico: “Monday’s memo from Trump’s Office of Management and Budget ordering a sweeping freeze of federal financial assistance is the boldest, and clearest example of the administration not only leaning on the people who wrote Project 2025 but employing its strategies.

“The memo, which throws into jeopardy billions of federal assistance for programs like providing school meals and supporting homeless veterans, hews closely to the strategy Trump’s pick for OMB director Russell Vought sketched out for bringing the federal bureaucracy to heel in Project 2025’s second chapter. …

“While Vought has yet to be confirmed by the Senate, multiple people close to the administration told POLITICO that both he and Trump policy chief Stephen Miller have played key roles in the funding freeze.”

Vought’s extreme and out-of-touch record includes his career-long plans to gut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, repeal the Affordable Care Act, and strip away other earned benefits.

Washington Post: “Vought has sold many Republicans on the untested premise that the GOP can push to obliterate almost all other major forms of federal spending, especially programs that benefit lower-income Americans …

“Vought’s budget proposal calls for cutting $9 trillion over the next decade from thousands of domestic programs — slashing funding for government agencies, student loans, and anti-poverty programs such as housing, health care and food assistance …

“The plan includes $2 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, the health program for the poor; more than $600 billion in cuts to the Affordable Care Act; more than $400 billion in cuts to food stamps; hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to educational subsidies; and a halving of the State Department and the Labor Department, among other federal agencies.

Russ Vought: “Proposed reforms would also end coverage of disabilities unrelated to military duties and training. …

“The Budget would reduce these disability payments by 30 percent”

Washington Post: “Each of [Trump’s] White House budget proposals included cuts to Social Security and Medicare programs.”

Vought also has a long extreme anti-choice record, including calls for a total “abolition” of abortion access – even in cases of rape, incest, or to save a woman’s life – and his fight to ban medication abortion through his organization Center for Renewing America.

Vought: “Well, I don’t actually believe in those exceptions.

“I want to get to abolition, … I want to get as far as we possibly can.”

New York Times: “Russell T. Vought, a former senior Trump administration official who ran the Office of Management and Budget, is celebrated by the anti-abortion movement for successfully blocking funds for Planned Parenthood during the Trump administration. He now runs a think tank with close ties to the former president that has backed arguments in a Supreme Court case attempting to undo the 2000 approval of mifepristone, a widely used abortion medication.”

Center For Renewing America: “Primer: Thwarting the FDA’s Destructive Abortion-By-Mail Agenda”

“In the wake of Dobbs and the District Court’s stay on mifepristone, state legislators have the opportunity to continue solidifying sanctuaries for life. State lawmakers should ban the dispensation of mifepristone (and any other chemical abortifacients) altogether–especially in states that have 6-week or full bans.

“The FDA’s rogue actions must be held to account through focused legislative action. Indeed, the 2021 decision to dispense the abortion drug through the mail is not only a deliberate violation of longstanding statutes, but also a direct threat to sovereign state laws that prohibit the barbaric practice of abortion.”