Dem
47
GOP
53
Former Director of the OMB Russell Vought was confirmed on a straight party-line vote to a new term by the Senate on Friday and got to work immediately. His goal is to burn the government down to the ground and just leave rubble in its place. He is not at all shy about saying this. In fact, he even wrote it all down in detail—he was the main author of the Project 2025 book. He was also one of the architects of Schedule F, which de facto repeals the Pendleton Civil Service Act and magically turns protected civil servants into political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president. Many of Donald Trump's XOs have Vought's fingerprints all over them.
The OMB has wide-ranging authority over federal agencies, which gives Vought considerable power to carry out Trump's agenda. Vought has said he wants to inflict "trauma" on the federal workforce because he believes "elitists" within it have long stifled conservatives. One person close to Vought described him as a "bull in a china shop."
He is a strong believer in impoundments and thinks the president has a line-item veto, despite a law and court decisions stating unambiguously that he does not. Vought understands the budget extremely well. He is known to spend his free time studying budget documents. People close to him say he is an in-the-weeds kind of guy. They expect him to carefully pick some opportunities to engage in impoundment that will have the greatest chance of success in the resulting Supreme Court case.
Vought wears another hat besides heading OMB. Donald Trump has also appointed him to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This agency's mission is to make sure banks don't use underhanded gimmicks (or illegal actions) to trick consumers into paying for services they didn't request and don't want. The poster child for this is Wells Fargo's practice from 2002 to 2016 of secretly opening customer accounts that the customers didn't request and then charging the customers for those accounts. This resulted in a fine of $3 billion to resolve the matter. The CFPB also tries to warn Americans about pig butchering scams.
Vought doesn't like the idea of holding companies responsible for what they do, so on Saturday, he ordered all CFPB staff members to halt all activities, including all supervision of the companies CFPB has authority over. In one e-mail, he effectively terminated the Bureau. He said it was to end the weaponization of the Bureau against "disfavored" industries (e.g., banks).
Dennis Kelleher, head of Better Markets, which advocates for consumer protection, accused Trump of throwing his own voters "to the financial wolves." He said: "This latest attempt to kill the consumer bureau is another slap in the face for all Americans who depend on basic financial products and services, but especially for those in the multi-racial working-class coalition of Americans that helped elect President Trump." It's true. Scamming working-class people with little financial knowledge is a whole lot easier than scamming affluent college-educated suburban voters who are much more financially sophisticated.
And then there is this. Two minutes before Trump announced the $TRUMP crypto coin, an unknown trader bought almost 6 million at 18¢ each. They were soon worth $75 each. Many of Trump's supporters bought them at prices ranging from $75 on Jan. 19 to $26 on Jan. 31. They are now worth $16.40 each:
In other words, many Trump supporters lost their shirts on this play within 2 weeks. The records show that over 800,000 people lost money on $TRUMP in the first 19 days and their total losses were over $2 billion. On the other hand, Trump and his partners made over $100 million in fees and Trump still has plenty of $TRUMP coins that he got for free. Maybe scamming your own supporters will become the new normal in politics. His supporters can't get enough of it. This is another kind of scam the CFPB could warn people about. But now it has gone dark.
Democrats know Vought from Trump v1.0 and despise him. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, said: "Russ Vought does not belong in public service. He really should be thrown out. He is a dangerous person to our government..."
Vought has been in D.C. for over two dozen years. He has earned a reputation as a fiscal conservative who believes in balanced budgets and one nation under God, with an emphasis on the "God" part. He is a proud Christian nationalist who sees his mission as crushing the "deep state." He would be happy importing the Iranian system to the U.S., just changing a word or two, say, replacing "Qur'an" with "Bible," but otherwise keeping the model of a religious theocracy. And like the good "till death do us part" Christian that he is, he got divorced last summer. (V)