Vought led the Office of Management and Budget, key to Trump’s agenda, during the president-elect’s first term.
President-elect Donald Trump has revealed that a key figure in his first administration will return to his post.
Russell Vought, who led the Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s first term, will hold the same position in the new administration.
“Russ has spent many years working in public policy in Washington, D.C., and is an aggressive cost cutter and deregulator who will help us implement our America First agenda across all agencies,” Trump wrote in a Nov. 22 statement, which was released minutes after he announced that Scott Bessent would lead the Department of the Treasury.
Vought took to X to thank Trump for getting him on aboard again.
“There is unfinished business on behalf of the American people, and it’s an honor of a lifetime to get the call again,” he
wrote.
Vought developed the Schedule F plan at the end of the first Trump administration, a key move as Trump sought to make it easier to fire or replace federal workers in executive branch agencies at the time.
The OMB is part of the Executive Office of the President.
“Russ knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government, and he will help us return Self Governance to the People,” Trump wrote in his statement on the pick.
Vought, 48, studied at Wheaton College, a Christian school, and George Washington University, where he earned his law degree.
He previously served as policy director for the House Republican Conference and in multiple roles for the Republican Study Committee. In addition, Vought was on the staff of Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) and worked for Heritage Action for America, the political arm of conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation.
In 2017, he became deputy director of the OMB under Trump.
In a testimony before the Senate in 2017, Vought said his year of experience “prepared [him] well for managing the men and women of the OMB, who are career experts in their fields and have years of institutional knowledge for this administration to draw on.” Vought also acknowledged the challenges confronting the federal government in its current form, noting the scale of the national debt—roughly $20 trillion—at that time. It has since ballooned to $36 trillion. Vought succeeded Trump’s first OMB director, Mick Mulvaney, in 2019.
After leaving the White House, Vought launched the Center for Renewing America, a think tank that has employed numerous Trump administration veterans—from Environmental Protection Agency liaison Micah Meadowcroft to Jeff Clark, who was assistant attorney general for the civil division of the Department of Justice during the first Trump administration.
According to its mission statement, the organization aims “to renew a consensus of America as a nation under God with unique interests worthy of defending that flow from its people, institutions, and history, where individuals’ enjoyment of freedom is predicated on just laws and healthy communities.” Vought also authored the chapter on the Executive Office of the President for Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership.” In it, he said that a conservative president must ensure that the agencies in the executive branch carry out the president’s plans rather than attempting to thwart them, outlining specific tactics and strategies to reinforce that Constitutional authority.
“Success in meeting that challenge will require a rare combination of boldness and self-denial: boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will and self-denial to use the bureaucratic machine to send power away from Washington and back to America’s families, faith communities, local governments, and states,” Vought wrote. 
