Meet Russell Vought: The “Christian Nationalist” Quietly Controlling Trump’s Budget and Consumer Protection

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Meet Russell Vought: The “Christian Nationalist” Quietly Controlling Trump’s Budget and Consumer Protection | July 9, 2025 Podcast & Article Analysis

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Meet Russell Vought: The “Christian Nationalist” Quietly Controlling Trump’s Budget and Consumer Protection | July 9, 2025 Podcast & Article Analysis

Vought's Blueprint: Dismantling Government via Christian Nationalism

Earl Cotten

and

Katherine Mayfield

Jul 10, 2025

Transcript

The Mechanics of Unmaking: Russell Vought and the Quiet Apocalypse

By Earl Cotten for The Earl Angle

The air conditioning hums too loudly in the OMB Director’s suite, a persistent, low-grade mechanical complaint against the Washington heat. Outside, the city shimmers, a mirage built on bedrock compromises now being methodically dynamited. Inside, Russell Vought works. He works with the focused, unsentimental efficiency of a man dismantling an engine he believes is fundamentally flawed, its very design an affront to a purer principle. He controls the money. He controls, now, the agency meant to shield the citizen from the predations enabled by that money. This is not an accident. It is the design.

One recalls the Connecticut boy, the electrician’s son, the Marine’s grandson. Wheaton College, Billy Graham’s alma mater, where the air is thick with certitude, not compromise. George Washington University Law, a grounding in the mechanisms of power. The path is familiar: Gramm, Pence, Heritage Action. The conservative apparatus, well-oiled, predictable. Yet Vought was never merely predictable. He was the technician who understood the machine’s vulnerabilities, the true believer who saw not a system to navigate, but an idol to smash. His loyalty during the first term, particularly over the Ukraine matter, was not sycophancy; it was a cold calculation, a demonstration of unwavering allegiance to the principle of unitary executive power, embodied, however chaotically, in Trump. He was the man who would hold the line, not out of love for the man, but out of conviction in the man’s necessary, disruptive role.

The Blueprint and the Denial They called it Project 2025. A sprawling, 920-page testament to meticulous ambition, authored in the antiseptic think-tanks of the Heritage Foundation and Vought’s own Center for Renewing America. Its chapters laid bare the guts of the administrative state and prescribed the tools for its evisceration. The President disclaimed knowledge, a familiar, almost ritualistic incantation. It was always a fiction, thin as the paper the report was printed on. Vought himself authored the chapter on reshaping the Executive Office of the President. He was Project 2025, in flesh and bone and chillingly specific intent.

The disconnect between the public denial and the private execution is not hypocrisy; it is strategy. The denial provides plausible distance, a fog through which the heavy machinery of deconstruction can advance. Paul Dans, the project’s original steward, spoke of the current reality exceeding his "wildest dreams." This is not hyperbole. It is a testament to the velocity Vought has imposed. The tools are bureaucratic, mundane on their face: budget reviews, personnel classifications, regulatory freezes. In Vought’s hands, they are scalpels wielded with the force of wrecking balls.

Consider the table, stripped of its clinical formatting, rendered instead as the cold inventory it represents:

Reclassify 50,000 civil servants: Achieved. Schedule F, reinstated by Executive Order 14171, hangs like Damocles' sword over the professional bureaucracy. Expertise is now contingent on loyalty. The career civil servant, once the ballast of the state, is redefined as a political actor, expendable. All Federal Agencies now operate under this shadow.
Abolish DOE, dismantle DHS: In motion. USAID, its humanitarian mission deemed suspect, lies gutted. The CFPB, the target now under Vought’s direct control, is systematically defunded, its work halted. The Department of Homeland Security awaits its own radical reconfiguration. The Education Department is next in the queue.
End "woke" DEI/CRT trainings: Enforced. An OMB memo, a revival of past efforts, bans such training as "anti-American." A purge of perspective, disguised as fiscal prudence and patriotic unity. It permeates every agency.
Curb independent agencies: Asserted. Vought sits, simultaneously, atop OMB and the supposedly independent CFPB. The FTC and SEC feel the tightening grip. Independence is redefined as subservience to the White House vision.
Environment: The EPA faces defunding, its climate rules rolled back. Progress is measured in dismantled regulations, silenced scientists.

The Double Helix: OMB and CFPB The consolidation is breathtaking in its audacity. OMB Director. Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. One office controls the flow of nearly all federal dollars. The other was conceived, in the wake of 2008, as a shield for the ordinary citizen against the vast, often predatory, machinery of finance. Vought now holds both levers. This is not convenience; it is the deliberate fusion of fiscal control and the neutralization of a specific, populist check on power.

At OMB, the actions are systemic, chillingly efficient:

A hiring freeze, deep and pervasive, slowly asphyxiating agency capacity.
The revival of "impoundment" – the refusal to spend money appropriated by Congress. A direct challenge to legislative authority, cloaked in the language of fiscal restraint.
The imposition of targets dictated by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – arbitrary metrics of "waste" demanding deep, often crippling, cuts.

At the CFPB, the dismantling is visceral, almost violent:

Headquarters shuttered. An email, stark and absolute, ordering staff to cease "performing any work tasks." The machinery of consumer protection simply... stopped.
Funding severed. The agency’s $711 million balance at the Federal Reserve deemed "excessive." The lifeblood cut off.
Enforcement abandoned. Lawsuits against predatory lenders like SoLo Funds – accused of masking 400%+ APRs behind "tips" – dropped. The wolves are loosed.
The digital evisceration: DOGE personnel seizing IT systems, deleting social media accounts, accessing – likely – vast troves of sensitive consumer complaint data. Kathleen Engel, a voice of reason in the wilderness of consumer law, calls it a "wild west situation." It is worse. It is the deliberate creation of a void.

The Engine of Conviction: Christian Nationism To understand Vought, one must understand the fuel. He does not shy from the label; he embraces it: Christian nationalism. His definition, articulated in 2021, is precise and revealing: "a commitment to institutional separation between church and state, but not the separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society." This is the core. It is not about erecting crosses on public lawns; it is about infusing the ethos, the purpose, the personnel of the state with a specific, conservative Christian worldview. The institution remains secular; its soul is claimed.

This is not an abstract theology. It governs.

Personnel: The White House Faith Office is no longer a ceremonial backwater. It is staffed by figures like William Wolfe, for whom mass deportations become framed as "biblical" imperatives, invoked even within the sanctity of an Oval Office prayer session. Faith becomes a litmus test, a filter for power.
Agency Actions: The ban on DEI/CRT training is framed as combating "anti-American" thought, but its roots lie in a worldview that perceives challenges to traditional hierarchies (racial, gender, religious) as challenges to a divinely ordained order. "Religious liberty" becomes a trump card, wielded to override consumer protections, scientific consensus, and public health mandates.
Rhetoric: Vought speaks of putting federal workers "in trauma," facing "enemy fire." The dismantling of the bureaucracy is framed not merely as policy, but as spiritual warfare. The "administrative state" is the modern Babylon.

Historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez observes the synthesis: "It’s also anti-woke, anti-immigration... intertwined with deregulationism, free market capitalism." It is a totalizing vision, a framework that explains and justifies the sweeping nature of the assault. The free market serves the godly nation; the godly nation demands a purified market, unencumbered by regulations deemed "secular" interference. Immigration threatens cultural cohesion defined by this faith. The enemy is both internal (the "woke" bureaucrat) and external (the immigrant, the internationalist). Vought is its most effective secular apostle.

The Billionaire's Shock Troops: The Musk-Vought Axis It seems incongruous: the mercurial, meme-obsessed billionaire and the disciplined, ideologically rigid budget director. Simon Rabinovitch of The Economist saw the dynamic clearly: “You can view DOGE as Russ Vought’s shock troops. Musk is hyperactive... but Vought’s the general.” Musk provides the velocity, the technological bravado, the disdain for process that Vought, the meticulous mechanic, can harness but might lack organically. DOGE is the bypass, the injection of chaos into a system Vought seeks to control.

The execution is ruthlessly effective:

System Takeovers: DOGE teams descend, digital Visigoths. They seize agency IT systems (CFPB, USAID), delete accounts, install loyalists. The nervous system of the agency is severed, replaced.
Data-Driven Cuts: Musk’s acolytes deploy algorithms to identify "waste." The output is raw, often devoid of context or understanding of mission. Vought’s OMB sanctifies these numbers, translating technological vandalism into legitimized policy. The cuts are deep, arbitrary, devastating.
Neutralizing Targets: USAID is hollowed out. The CFPB is functionally shuttered. The EPA is in the crosshairs. DOGE provides the speed, the plausible deniability ("private sector efficiency!"), the sheer disruptive force to overwhelm bureaucratic inertia or resistance. Vought admits to loving DOGE’s “exhilarating rush... comfort with risk.” It is the perfect, amoral instrument for his moral crusade.

The Velocity of Unraveling The pace is disorienting. Trackers indicate 101 of Project 2025’s 313 policy goals are already implemented; 64 more are actively in progress. This is not governance as deliberation; it is governance as blitzkrieg. The targets extend beyond domestic agencies. Vought’s faction – dubbed “Reaganite Pro-Business, Anti-Regulation Apostles,” a label that captures only half the picture – pushes a vision with global ramifications:

Economic Nationalism: Tariffs as blunt instruments, climate accords discarded as heresies against American sovereignty (and the fossil fuel interests entwined with the Christian right).
Alignment with Autocrats: Tucker Carlson, a Vought ally, broadcasts paeans to Putin from Moscow. Steve Bannon weaves global networks of far-right movements. The "Christian nation" finds common cause with illiberal strongmen who promise order and defend "traditional values."
Militarized Christianity: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, his personal devotion etched in Crusader ink, purges "woke" elements from the military, seeking to embed "Judeo-Christian values" into its core. The warrior ethos merges with the missionary zeal.

Critics perceive a dangerous fusion: white Christian nationalism providing the ideological fervor; oligarchic interests (Musk, Thiel) providing the means and benefiting from the deregulation; anti-democratic tactics ensuring the consolidation is unchallengeable. It is, as one report termed Trump’s inner circle, a "band of warring brothers," united less by personal affection than by a shared vision of power centralized and opposition crushed.

Why It Matters: The Unmaking of Accountability Vought’s endgame is starkly visible: a presidency liberated from the constraints of Congress, the courts, and the permanent bureaucracy. The Unitary Executive Theory, long debated in legal academia, is his operating manual. He argues the Constitution grants the President plenary control over all executive functions. Congress’s power of the purse? Challenged through impoundment. Independent agencies? Brought to heel. The Courts? Stacked with appointees who share this maximalist view. A favorable Supreme Court ruling cementing this interpretation would be, in Vought’s eyes, "seismic... vindication."

The urgency is palpable. The 2026 midterms loom, a potential check. Vought races against the electoral calendar, knowing that structures dismantled are harder to rebuild than policies reversed. The impact is tangible:

You: The shield against predatory lending? Gone. Billions in recovered consumer funds? A relic. Your complaint vanishes into a void.
The Civil Servant: Job security evaporates. Expertise is suspect. Loyalty is paramount.
The Planet: Climate science is silenced, regulations rolled back. The future is mortgaged.
The Idea: The slow, messy, frustrating, yet essential mechanisms of democratic accountability – oversight, institutional independence, the professional bureaucracy – are being systematically disabled.

Katherine Stewart, chronicler of the religious right’s political ambitions, states it without adornment: “We will see the further dismantling of government institutions... an abandonment of democratic principles.” It is not a prediction; it is an observation of the current project.

Frequently Unasked, Yet Essential, Questions The fog requires piercing. Certain questions persist, demanding answers stripped of euphemism:

What exactly is Christian nationalism? Is it just being religious? No. Vought’s definition is key: maintaining institutional separation while demanding Christian influence permeate government and society. It elevates a specific interpretation of Christianity as the defining characteristic of national identity and legitimacy, inherently exclusionary to those outside its bounds. It is political theology in action.
Did Trump really not know about Project 2025? The disclaimers ring hollow. He appointed over 28 Project authors to his administration, with Vought, its intellectual architect and chief executor, holding unprecedented power. The campaign welcomed its "demise" rhetorically while its core agenda was accelerated practically. The denial was always part of the plan.
How does Musk’s DOGE get away with taking over agencies? Through calculated ambiguity and raw power. DOGE lacks statutory legitimacy; Musk operates as an “unpaid special government employee” under vague, expansive authority granted by Trump and enforced by Vought. Norms and laws are bypassed because the enforcers of those norms are being removed or cowed, and the perpetrators control the mechanisms of oversight. It is privatization as coup.
What happens to consumer complaints without CFPB? They vanish into a bureaucratic black hole. States may try to fill the void, but lack the resources, jurisdiction, and federal leverage. Companies like SoLo Funds operate with impunity. The playing field tilts decisively towards power.
Is Schedule F legal? Its legality is contested in lower courts. But the calculation is clear: with a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court, shaped by this administration's appointments, Vought anticipates victory. A favorable ruling would institutionalize the transformation, enabling any future president to purge tens of thousands of experts on day one, replacing competence with fealty.

The Mechanics of Silence The heat presses down on Washington. The monuments stand, white and silent, as the machinery within the buildings they represent is recalibrated, part by part, rule by rule, firing by firing. Russell Vought works. He is not a rabble-rouser; he is a mechanic. He thinks he understands torque, leverage, the precise point of failure in a complex system. He thinks he believes the system is sinful, corrupt, built on foundations that reject the sovereignty he serves – both temporal and divine.

The silence from the shuttered CFPB headquarters is profound. It is the silence of complaints unprocessed, of predators unmonitored, of a shield rusting in disuse. It is the silence before the storm, or perhaps the silence after the explosion. Vought does not seek applause; he seeks results. He believes he is saving the nation by unmaking its government. The Connecticut boy, the electrician’s son, wields the wrench. The sparks fly. The machine grinds, stutters, and begins, piece by piece, to fall silent. We watch, and we note the temperature, and we record the precise mechanics of the unmaking. The future accumulates in the quiet, one revoked regulation, one purged civil servant, one deleted consumer complaint at a time. It has the eerie feel of destiny, meticulously engineered.