Letter of Opposition to Russell Vought’s Nomination to be OMB Director

Uncategorized 02.3.25

View a PDF of the letter here.

February 3, 2025

Dear Senator:

The undersigned organizations urge you to oppose the nomination of Russell Vought for director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Mr. Vought was the OMB acting director then OMB director for the final two years of President Trump’s first term, from January 2019 to January 2021. During that time, he was a key architect of “Schedule F,” a plan to dismantle and undermine the nonpartisan, performance-based federal civil service. Moreover, his dangerous attitude toward constitutional principles and his public statements attacking civil servants demonstrate his unsuitability for such a leadership role in any administration.

Schedule F, which the new administration has promised to reimplement at the earliest opportunity, would authorize agencies to involuntarily transfer their employees into new positions stripped of due process protections, and make them fireable at will. This policy would allow any president, Republican or Democrat, to purge federal agencies of nonpartisan experts, leaving some agencies and departments gutted, while packing others with subservient ideologues. As OMB director during President Trump’s first term, Mr. Vought sought to strip protections from 88% of the agency’s workforce to serve as a model for other agencies to follow.[1]

Reclassifying significant numbers of federal employees into political positions ushers in a government system that prioritizes partisan and ideological goals over the constitution, rule of law, and serving in the public’s best interest. It also enables an administration to punish employees who refuse to pledge their loyalty to a political party, ideology, or certain beliefs, silencing any would-be whistleblowers who may otherwise have come forward to reveal waste and fraud. If he succeeds, the people most harmed will not only include federal employees, but people in communities across the country who rely on basic services, benefits, and protections, provided by federal employees to live safe and healthy lives.

Americans widely favor maintaining a nonpartisan performance-based civil service. Recent polling shows that:

  • 88% of Democrats and 87% of Republicans believe that a nonpartisan civil service is important for having a strong American democracy.
  • 95% of voters believe civil servants should be hired and promoted based on their merit rather than their political beliefs.
  • 90% of voters believe civil servants should serve the people more than any individual president.[2]

Beyond Vought’s plans to dismantle the performance-based civil service, Vought believes that “we are living in a post-Constitutional time.”[3] This translates into support for a series of policies that would make the president ever more powerful at the expense of Congress and the judiciary. Under his direction, OMB held up military aid to Ukraine prompting President Trump’s first impeachment, during which Vought himself denied a Congressional subpoena.[4] The Government Accountability Office concluded that OMB violated the Impoundment Control Act by withholding the assistance.[5] During his Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and Senate Budget Committee confirmation hearings, Vought again affirmed his opinion that the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional.[6] Recent attempts by OMB to institute a vast “federal spending freeze” underscore our belief that Vought will assist President Trump to undermine and subvert Congress’s power of the purse.[7]

Vought also supports the president invoking the Insurrection Act to detain and deport immigrants, as well as to target civil society protesters. The Insurrection Act allows the president to deploy military troops within the country in particular circumstances. Vought has stated that the president should be able to use the military to shut down demonstrations, holding up the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd in summer 2020 as a time when President Trump should have been able to deploy the armed forces. He has also worked in the past to create new, “legal” justifications for authorizing military force along the southern border by recasting migration as an invasion.[8]

In addition to the concerns noted above, Vought’s long history of hostility toward civil servants should disqualify him from leading OMB. He spoke in favor of using the Holman rule to target the jobs or salaries of individual civil servants.[9] Vought has stated in videos obtained by ProPublica and Documented that “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains” and “We want to put them in trauma.”[10]

We believe that Vought’s record demonstrates that he is unfit to serve as OMB director. If you have questions or want to speak further about these concerns, please contact Joe Spielberger ([email protected]). Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Project On Government Oversight
ACCESS REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE
Accountable.US
Advocates for Trans Equality
American Atheists
American Humanist Association
American Oversight
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC
Autistic Self Advocacy Network
Bayard Rustin Liberation Initiative
Bend the Arc: Jewish Action
Center for Media and Democracy
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)
Clean Water Action
Coalition for Sensible Safeguards
Coalition on Human Needs
Collective Power for Reproductive Justice
Communications Workers Of America
Council for Global Equality
Court Accountability
Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF)
Earthjustice
Equal Rights Advocates
Equality California
Fair Fight Action
Faith in Democracy
FFRF Action Fund
Free Speech For People
Friends of the Earth
Government Information Watch
Greenpeace USA
Human Rights Campaign
Indivisible
Japanese American Citizens League
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
National Action Network
National CAPACD- National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development
National Council of Jewish Women
National Employment Law Project
National LGBTQI+ Cancer Network
National Organization for Women
National Partnership for Women & Families
National Women’s Law Center
NBJC
NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice
Oasis Legal Services
People For the American Way
People Power United
People’s Parity Project
Positive Women’s Network-USA
Public Citizen
Sierra Club
Silver State Equality-Nevada
Southern Poverty Law Center
Stand Up America
State Democracy Defenders Action
T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights
Union of Concerned Scientists
Western States Center
The Workers Circle

[1] Erich Wagner, “OMB Reportedly Designates 88% of Its Employees for Schedule F,” Government Executive, November 23, 2020, https://www.govexec.com/management/2020/11/omb-reportedly-designates-88-its-employees-schedule-f/170275/.

[2] Partnership for Public Service, The State of Public Trust in Government 2024, (2024) https://ourpublicservice.org/publications/state-of-trust-in-government-2024/.

[3] Russell Vought, “Renewing American Purpose,” The American Mind, September 29, 2022, https://americanmind.org/salvo/renewing-american-purpose/.

[4] Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey and Dan Lamothe, “Trump alumni warn he could deploy troops against Americans,” Washington Post, October 24, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/10/24/trump-military-president-election/.

[5] Government Accountability Office, Decision: Of ice of Management and Budget—Withholding of Ukraine Security Assistance, B-33564 (2020), 1, https://www.gao.gov/assets/b-331564.pdf.

[6] Nomination of Russell Vought: Hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Af airs, 119th Cong. (January 15, 2025), https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/hearings/nomination-of-russell-vought/; The Nomination of the Honorable Russell T. Vought, of Virginia, to be Director of the Of ice of Management and Budget: Hearing before the Senate Committee on the Budget, 119th Cong. (January 22, 2025), https://www.budget.senate.gov/hearings/the-nomination-of-the-honorable-russell-t-vought-of-virginia-to-be-director -of-the-office-of-management-and-budget

[7] Jeff Stein and Tony Romm, “Trump White House rescinds order freezing federal spending, reversing course,” Washington Post, January 29, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/29/white-house-budget-office-spending-freeze/.

[8] Molly Redden, Andy Kroll, Nick Surgery, “’Put Them in Trauma’: Inside a Key MAGA Leader’s Plans for a New Trump Agenda,” ProPublica and Documented, October 28, 2024, https://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-vought-center-renewing-america-maga.

[9] Media Matters Staff, “Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and former Trump official Russ Vought discuss using new House rules to target and remove the anonymity of individual bureaucrats,” Media Matters for America, January 12, 2023, https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/rep-matt-gaetz-r-fl-and-former-trump-official-russ-vought-discuss-usin g-new-house.

[10] Redden, Kroll, and Surgey, “’Put Them in Trauma’: Inside a Key MAGA Leader’s Plans for a New Trump Agenda,” [see note 6].