Washington D.C. – Russell Vought, a former top official in the Trump administration, has emerged as a key architect of strategies aimed at significantly expanding presidential powers should Donald Trump return to the White House. Vought, who previously served as Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), leads the Center for Renewing America (CRA) and is a prominent figure in Project 2025, a comprehensive initiative to prepare for a conservative presidential transition.
The proposals championed by Vought and his allies focus on reasserting presidential control over the federal bureaucracy, which they view as often resistant to the directives of an elected president. Their vision advocates for a robust interpretation of the unitary executive theory, asserting that the president has ultimate authority over the executive branch and its agencies.
A central tenet of this approach involves empowering a future president to more easily dismiss federal employees deemed disloyal or obstructive. This includes the potential reintroduction and expansion of “Schedule F,” an executive order issued by President Trump shortly before the 2020 election. Schedule F would reclassify tens of thousands of federal jobs from protected civil service positions to “policy-making” roles, making their occupants at-will employees who could be fired without cause.
“We are preparing to take back the administrative state and make it accountable to the American people and their elected representatives,” Vought has stated, emphasizing the need for the president to have direct control to implement his agenda without internal resistance.
Beyond personnel, the plans reportedly include strategies for increased use of executive orders, enhanced presidential control over regulatory bodies, and potentially deploying the Insurrection Act more readily to quell domestic unrest without the consent of state governments. Advocates argue these measures are necessary to overcome what they describe as the “deep state” – a perceived entrenched bureaucracy that thwarts a president’s policy objectives.
Project 2025, a collaborative effort spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, serves as the organizational framework for these detailed proposals. It aims to develop a detailed policy agenda, a vetted roster of personnel, and a comprehensive 180-day transition plan designed to enable a new conservative administration to hit the ground running with significant changes. The initiative’s goal is to ensure that a future president has the tools and personnel to enact their vision without delay.
The concepts being advanced by Vought and others have drawn both strong support from conservative circles, who see them as necessary reforms to an overgrown and unresponsive government, and considerable criticism from those concerned about their potential impact on democratic norms, the balance of power, and the independence of the civil service.
Source: Read the original article here.
