Latest news with #RussellVought
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump Official Backpedals as Wild ‘Trauma' Plot Exposed
President Donald Trump's budget chief got cornered for saying government workers deserve to be 'in trauma.' 'We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,' Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought had said in remarks obtained by ProPublica. '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.' 'We want to put them in trauma,' Vought added. CNN host Dana Bash took Vought to task for the remarks in an interview Sunday. 'Is that your goal as OMB director?' she asked. Vought attempted to backpedal, accusing Bash of having 'jerry-picked' his quotes. 'What I was referring to there was the bureaucracy,' he said. 'We do believe there is weaponized bureaucracy. We do believe that there are people who have been part of administrations that are fundamentally woke and weaponized against the American people.' Vought went on to further qualify his comments by insisting he believes there are 'great people' in his department as well as at the Federal Aviation Authority and the National Institutes of Health, who he says 'are doing hard work and important public service activities.' Having chastised Bash for not providing 'the full context' of his comments, Vought continued to rail against the "Deep State." 'We're not going to be pushed, receive push-back from the notion that we're going to dramatically change the deep woke and weaponized administrative state,' Vought said. His interview with CNN comes as Elon Musk steps back from his role as head of DOGE, which is estimated to have cut up to two million jobs from the federal workforce over the past several months. As OMB director, Vought has been critical in implementing that initiative's goals, and is even rumored to be tipped to replace Musk as its chief. He was also one of the authors of the Heritage Foundation's notorious Project 2025 report, which offered a blueprint for Trump's second term that included, among other things, slashing the federal government back to the bone.
The Guardian
19 hours ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Vought says Trump may not need Congress's approval to cut federal workforce
Russell Vought, the director of the office of management and budget (OMB), on Sunday cast doubt on the constitutional obligation of the White House to ask Congress to sign off on Donald Trump's massive cuts to the federal workforce spearheaded by Elon Musk. Vought indicated the White House preferred to rely on 'executive tools' for all but a 'necessary' fraction of the cuts instead of submitting the whole package of jobs and agency slashing that took place via the so-called 'department of government efficiency' (Doge), to the congressional branch for its official approval. The White House budget director, in an interview with CNN on Sunday, also defended the widespread future cost-cutting proposed by the US president's One Big Beautiful Bill act that was passed by the House last week, which covers budget proposals for the next fiscal year starting in October. But, as Dana Bash, CNN's State of the Union host, pointed out, Doge cut 'funding and programs that Congress already passed'. And while those cuts, cited by the departing Musk as being worth $175bn, are tiny compared with the trillion or more he forecast, Vought said OMB was only going to submit about $9.4bn to Congress this week for sign-off. That amount is understood to mostly cover the crushing of the USAID agency and cuts to public broadcasting, which have prompted outrage and lawsuits. Leaders of Congress from both parties have pressed for the Trump administration to send details of all the cuts for its approval. 'Will you?' Bash asked Vought. 'We might,' Vought said, adding that the rest of the Doge cuts may not need official congressional approval. As one of the architects of Project 2025, the rightwing initiative created to guide the second Trump administration, Vought is on a quest to dismantle the federal workforce and consolidate power for the US president, and to continue the Doge cuts. Vought said that one of the executive tools the administration has is the use of 'impoundment', which involves the White House withholding specific funds allocated by Congress. Since the 1970s, a law has limited the presidency from engaging in impoundment – typically requiring the executive branch to implement what Congress signed into law. Bash said: 'I know you don't believe that that is constitutional, so are you just doing this in order to get the supreme court to rule that unconstitutional?' Sign up to Headlines US Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion Vought said: 'We are not in love with the law.' But he also said, in response to criticism from some on Capitol Hill: 'We're not breaking the law.' Meanwhile, on the Big Beautiful bill, the Congressional budget office (CBO) and many experts say it could swell the US deficit by $3.8tn, and business tycoon Musk said it 'undermines the work the Doge team is doing'. Vought disagreed. 'I love Elon, [but] this bill doesn't increase the deficit or hurt the debt,' he said. Vought – and later on Sunday, the House speaker Mike Johnson on NBC – argued that critics' calculations don't fully account for extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts and slashing regulation. Vought also chipped in that Trump is 'the architect, the visionary, the originator of his own agenda', rather than the Heritage Foundation's blueprint for the administration, Project 2025, although he did not deny that the two have dovetailed.
Axios
a day ago
- Business
- Axios
Budget head Vought floats impoundment to sidestep Congress on DOGE cuts
The White House is weighing options like impoundment to formalize DOGE 's spending cuts without going through Congress, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought said Sunday. Why it maters: That would tee up a potential Supreme Court fight over the scope of the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which bars the president from cutting funding without congressional approval. Trump and allies have railed against the law, which was signed after former President Nixon impounded billions. Driving the news: Vought said on CNN's "State of the Union" that the administration "might" send all of DOGE's cuts to Congress for approval but is waiting to gauge how the $9.4 billion rescissions package the White House plans to send to lawmakers this week fares. "It's the first of many rescissions bills," he said. "Some we may not actually have to get ... Congress to pass the rescissions bills." Pressed by CNN's Dana Bash on why the White House would sidestep Congress, Vought continued, "We have executive tools; we have impoundment." Vought argued spending less than was appropriated by Congress was "totally appropriate" for 200 years but that reforms in the 1970s led to "massive waste, fraud and abuse." He argued that the Impoundment Control Act also allows for pocket rescissions, a practice of proposing rescissions near the end of the fiscal year to essentially run out the clock, which Vought has long championed. "It's a provision that has been rarely used, but it's there," he said. "And we intend to use all of these tools. We want Congress to pass it where it's necessary; we also have executive tools." Friction point: Asked if the administration's moves were intended tee up a Supreme Court battle over the 50-year-old law, Vought said, "We're certainly not taking impoundment off the table."
The Herald Scotland
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
NPR sues Trump, calls threat to pull federal funding unconstitutional
NPR defended its editorial standards in a May 27 statement and said Trump's order was unconstitutional. "NPR has a First Amendment right to be free from government attempts to control private speech as well as from retaliation aimed at punishing and chilling protected speech," the statement said. "By basing its directives on the substance of NPR's programming, the Executive Order seeks to force NPR to adapt its journalistic standards and editorial choices to the preferences of the government if it is to continue to receive federal funding." Three local public radio organizations - Aspen Public Radio, Colorado Public Radio and KSUT Public Radio - joined NPR as plaintiffs in the case. The listed defendants include Trump, Director of the Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and National Endowment for the Arts Chair Maria Rosario Jackson. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the nonprofit entity that distributes federal funding to NPR and PBS and local stations, also is listed as a defendant. Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., an attorney representing NPR, also said the executive order was unconstitutional and that it would have far-reaching impact if it's allowed to stand. "By seeking to halt federal funding to NPR, the Executive Order harms not only NPR and its Member stations, but also the tens of millions of Americans across the country who rely on them for news and cultural programming, and vital emergency information," Boutrous said in a statement to USA TODAY. USA TODAY has reached out to the White House for comment. USA TODAY'S coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
Finextra
7 days ago
- Business
- Finextra
CFPB to ditch open banking rule
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) has hit out at US regulators over plans to rescind open banking rules, calling the move a "handout to Wall Street banks". 1 In a legal filing, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) says it will petition a court to have the 1033 open banking rule rescinded. The CFPB only published the Personal Financial Data Rights final rule in October, giving Americans the right to instruct their banks to share their financial data with third party providers. However, the plan has long proved unpopular with many in the traditional financial industry and banks have taken advantage of the change in administration to raise concerns about potential liability for data breaches and the ability to charge for access to data. At the beginning of May, reports surfaced suggesting that Wall Street was likely to get its way, with the CFPB looking to amended or eliminated the rule. It is now moving ahead with elimination. Penny Lee, CEO, FTA, says: "Vacating the 1033 rule is a handout to Wall Street banks, who are trying to limit competition and debank Americans from digital financial services. Americans must have the right to control their financial lives, not the nation's biggest banks." For the CFPB, this is the latest example of a starkly different approach under Trump as it scales back its activities and reverses previous positions under acting Director Russell Vought. In March it ditched an interpretive rule declaring that pay-in-four BNPL lenders should be treated in the same way as credit cards. In recent weeks it has also dropped a host of lawsuits, including against JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo over fraud on the Zelle P2P payments network. Meanwhile, a rule that would give the watchdog oversight of tech giants such as Apple, Google and X, that offer digital payment apps and wallets has been killed off by the Senate and House of Representatives.
