Evan Vucci/AP Photo
Then-President Donald Trump listens as acting director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought speaks during an event at the White House, October 9, 2019, in Washington.
The Revolving Door Project, a Prospect partner, scrutinizes the executive branch and presidential power. Follow them at therevolvingdoorproject.org.
Christian nationalism is a dangerous, far-right ideology that advocates abolishing the separation of church and state, and on behalf of a truly warped religious vision. Indeed, Christians opposed to Christian nationalism have denounced it as a “cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation,” a theocratic and fascist movement with no trace of the radical generosity shown by Jesus in the Bible. Borrowing from the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which claims that welcoming nonwhite immigrants into Western countries is a plot to supplant the cultural and political influence of white people, Christian nationalism has influenced acts of racist violence, such as the deadly shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in 2015.
So it’s alarming that this is the ideological worldview espoused by Russell Vought, a career conservative activist and former Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director under President Trump, who is reportedly under consideration to be White House chief of staff in a potential second Trump administration. Currently, Vought leads a Trump-aligned think tank, the Center for Renewing America, producing endless reams of viciously cruel proposals.
For decades, Vought has been something of a reverse Robin Hood. Some examples include: leading a pressure campaign while at the Heritage Foundation urging Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act; heading up the Republican Study Committee (RSC), during a time when the ultraconservative caucus wrote a “highly unbalanced” budget (which is to say, it was full of tax cuts for the rich and austerity for the poor) to offset relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina; heading policy for the House Republican Conference; and of course working under the Trump OMB. Vought seems to have a particular animus toward programs helping the very worst-off. He drafted a cruel budget where he proposed eliminating the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which provides federal assistance to cover utility costs for low-income families, cutting nutrition assistance for low-income families, and throwing 90,000 children off of the Head Start program, which helps children from low-income families with their cognitive, emotional, and social development.
After all, who can forget the part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, “Blessed are those who snatch bread out of the mouths of widows and orphans?”
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Vought’s contempt for his fellow Americans is not limited to the poor and children—civil servants also draw his ire. He has long advocated for the Schedule F policy initiative, which would allow for the dismissal of up to 50,000 federal civil servants (to be replaced by Trump lickspittles and toadies) in a bid to purge the so-called “deep state.” President Biden rescinded Trump’s Schedule F executive order before any employees were affected, but Vought is one of the chief architects of Project 2025’s plan to resurrect Schedule F—and this time it would be done right away, rather than at the end of the administration. Nonpartisan federal employees, including those with specialized expertise, would be replaced with witless Trump acolytes by the tens of thousands.
Needing an outlet for his Christian nationalism after leaving the White House, Vought locked arms with other Trump devotees and founded an organization under the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) umbrella called the Center for Renewing America (CRA). CRA hosts a clown car of former Trump officials such as the recently indicted Jeffrey Clark, Ken Cuccinelli, and Kash Patel. CRA was founded on the premise of renewing “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.” The think tank’s “Christian” bona fides truly shine through with charitable policy proposals such as utilizing state war powers to target undocumented immigrants, opposing DEI or any other “woke” social measures, fighting the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, and enthusiastically supporting voter suppression.
CRA, as part of CPI, lays the groundwork for potential policymaking and lobbying efforts in a hypothetical second Trump administration. Vought affirmed his Christian nationalist beliefs in a CRA document revealing that he and his influential think tank plan to infuse Christian nationalism into the very fabric of the federal government. In the same document, CRA proposed invoking the Insurrection Act to quell protests and prohibiting use of congressional funds for specific projects.
Vought’s efforts to provide the infrastructure for a second Trump administration do not end with CRA. As noted above, he is also involved with Project 2025, for which he wrote a section of the Mandate for Leadership memo. In it, he interprets the Constitution as giving the president full control over the executive branch—no more independent agencies overseen by Congress, but just the office of the president. The former OMB director goes so far as to say that civil servants and Congress effectively get in the way of a conservative executive branch.
Vought has chastised “the Left’s legal theorists” for adopting “an approach to interpreting the Constitution based on it being a ‘living’ document, meaning that its provisions should be understood to be malleable, keeping up with a modernizing nation.” But if the left has a flexible view of the Constitution, Vought wants to burn it to ashes. There can be no other conclusion when someone supports Trump, a man who attempted to overthrow the very concept of government by “we the people” and install himself as dictator. As Politico’s Heidi Przybyla put it, Christian nationalists are “bound” by the belief that inalienable rights—for them, not for others—come from God, not the law.
When the office of the White House chief of staff was established in 1953 under the Eisenhower administration, it was meant to help guide the president through the policymaking process and coordinate with the federal government. Russell Vought would turn the position into a sort of grand vizier for King Trump. Such a man, who spits on the Constitution, hates civil servants, Congress, and democracy itself, has no business anywhere near power.
