Politics
Senate confirms Project 2025 architect Russell Vought to lead powerful White House budget office
The Senate confirmed Russell Vought as White House budget director on Thursday night, putting an official who has planned the zealous expansion of President Donald Trump’s power into one of the most influential positions in the federal government.
Vought was confirmed on a party-line vote of 53-47. With the Senate chamber full, Democrats repeatedly tried to speak as they cast their “no” votes to give their reasons for voting against Vought, but they were gaveled down by Sen. Ashley Moody, a Florida Republican who was presiding over the chamber. She cited Senate rules that ban debate during votes.
The Thursday night vote came after Democrats had exhausted their only remaining tool to stonewall a nomination — holding the Senate floor throughout the previous night and day with a series of speeches where they warned Vought was Trump’s “most dangerous nominee.”
“Confirming the most radical nominee, who has the most extreme agenda, to the most important agency in Washington,” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer in a floor speech. “Triple-header of disaster for hardworking Americans.”
Vought’s return to the White House Office of Management and Budget, which he also helmed during Trump’s first term, puts him in a role that often goes under the public radar yet holds key power in implementing the president’s goals. The OMB acts as a nerve center for the White House, developing its budget, policy priorities and agency rule-making. Vought has already played an influential role in Trump’s effort to remake the federal government as one of the architects of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump’s second term.
The budget office is also already shaking up federal spending. It had issued a memo to freeze federal spending, sending schools, states and nonprofits into a panic before it was rescinded amid legal challenges.
In the Senate, Republicans have stayed in line to advance Vought’s nomination and argued that his mindset will be crucial to slashing federal spending and regulations.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune pushed for his confirmation this week, saying he “will have the chance to address two key economic issues — cutting burdensome government regulations and addressing excessive spending.”
Vought has often advanced a maximalist approach to conservative policy goals. After leaving the first Trump administration, he founded the Center for Renewing America, part of a constellation of Washington think tanks that have popped up to advance and develop Trump’s “Make America Great Again” agenda. From that position, Vought often counseled congressional Republicans to wage win-at-all-costs fights to cut federal programs and spending.
Writing in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, Vought described the White House budget director’s job “as the best, most comprehensive approximation of the President’s mind.”
The OMB, he declared, “is a President’s air-traffic control system” and should be “involved in all aspects of the White House policy process,” becoming “powerful enough to override implementing agencies’ bureaucracies.”
During Trump’s first term, Vought pushed to reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers as political appointees, which could then enable mass dismissals.
Vought has also been a proponent of the president using “impoundment” to expand the executive branch’s control over federal spending.
When Congress passes appropriations to fulfill its Constitutional duties, it determines funding for government programs. But the impoundment legal theory holds that the president can decide not to spend that money on anything he deems unnecessary because Article II of the Constitution gives the President the role of executing the laws that Congress passes.
During confirmation hearings, Vought stressed that he would follow the law but avoided answering Democrats’ questions on whether he would withhold congressionally allotted aid for Ukraine.
Democrats charged that Vought’s responses amounted to an acknowledgment that he believes the president is above the law.
In response to questions from Republican lawmakers, Vought did preview potential budget proposals that would target cuts to discretionary social programs.
“The President ran on the issue of fiscal accountability, dealing with our inflation situation,” he said.
Vought has also unabashedly advanced “Christian nationalism,” an idea rising in the GOP that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and the government should now be infused with Christianity.
In a 2021 opinion article, Vought wrote that Christian nationalism is “a commitment to an institutional separation between church and state, but not the separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society.”
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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
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Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Florida has reached an agreement with Homeland Security to expand Florida Highway Patrol troopers’ powers to act as immigrant enforcement officers in some capacities.
“We need to be willing partners with the federal administration,” DeSantis said Friday at a Tallahassee press conference. “We have to step up and do our part.”
DeSantis called it a “deputization of state enforcement entities.”
Under ICE’s direction and oversight, the nearly 2,000 state troopers will be allowed to arrest and detain undocumented immigrants caught entering the country as well as interrogate people suspected of being in the country illegally.
ICE can also partner with state and local law enforcement agencies to deport undocumented immigrants who are incarcerated and have committed crimes, DeSantis said.
In addition, troopers could serve and execute warrants for immigration violations.
When asked the timeline for expanding FHP’s authority, DeSantis said “there will be some ramp up time” to give troopers training.
“The goal is, we need to reestablish interior enforcement in this country. We have to fulfill the President’s mission to effectuate the largest deportation program in American history,” DeSantis said. “So we’re stepping up. I know some other states will as well. I know some other states will fight this and do everything they can to throw up roadblocks, but we’re strong partners.”
DeSantis said Florida is one of the first states to reach such an agreement with the federal government.
DeSantis’ press conference comes as he and the Republican-controlled Legislature have not reached a deal yet on an immigration bill to support President Donald Trump’s agenda to crack down on illegal immigration.
DeSantis said Friday he believed the two sides are close to reaching a resolution.
Joining DeSantis was Dave Kerner, executive director of Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, who took a dig at lawmakers as he called the new agreement a “turning point.”
“This agreement is larger than the words on the paper because (the) Legislature and Congress can pass laws, but those words and mandates do not have effects without brave men and women who are willing to give life to these words,” he said. “This agreement represents the commitment and dedication of Florida’s nearly 2,000 state troopers to continue doing just that.”
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Donald Trump continues to fill roles in his new administration, and one of his latest picks is known within the South Florida law enforcement community and to those familiar with the President’s first administration.
Trump has selected Gadyaces “Gady” Serralta as the next Director of the U.S. Marshal Service, which serves as the enforcement and security arm of the federal judiciary.
He takes over for Mark Pittella, who has served as Deputy Director since August 2024. Ronald Davis was the agency’s previous Director, a position now listed as “vacant.”
“Gady is a lifelong public servant,” Trump said in a post to his Truth Social platform. “Gady will work with our GREAT Attorney General Pam Bondi to make sure that we restore Law and Order, and Make America Safe Again. Congratulations Gady!”
Serralta’s appointment is a big promotion over from current role as the U.S. Marshal for the Miami-headquartered Southern District of Florida, which covers Broward, Highlands, Glades, Martin, Miami-Dade, Monroe, Okeechobee, Palm Beach and St. Lucie counties.
Trump placed him there in 2018. Three years later, ex-President Joe Biden kept Serralta in the post after competing groups appointed by Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and then-U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio — a Republican whom Trump tapped in November for Secretary of State — both recommended that he stay on in the job.
The President said he’s “done an incredible job for the past six years.”
Serralta previously served as a major with the Miami-Dade Police Department, where he began his career in 1990, and as commander of the Palmetto Bay Policing Unit.
Trump’s post errantly referred to Serralta as “Police Chief for Palmetto Bay.”
He is the brother-in-law of former Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera. About 15 years ago, Serralta fell under the scrutiny of Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle’s Office over payments Lopez-Cantera’s prior state House campaign had made to a consulting company Serralta and his wife owned.
An investigation determined that while “it may not look good to campaign contributors of the general public that a company wholly owned by the candidate’s sister and brother-in-law made a profit on the campaign,” the couple had indeed done consulting work for Lopez-Cantera and were innocent of wrongdoing. However, the Miami-Dade Police Department reprimanded Serralta for not notifying it of his side job, according to Florida Bulldog reporting.
More recently, Fernandez Rundle’s Office partnered with Serralta’s office and other law enforcement agencies in a broad effort to locate missing children called “Operation We Will Find You.”
Serralta, a 55-year-old Republican living in South Miami, holds a master’s degree in leadership from Nova Southeastern University and a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice studies from Florida International University, whose Board of Trustees may soon select Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez — Lopez-Cantera’s successor — as its new President.
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The First Family may not need change of address forms soon after all.
In light of reportage that First Lady Casey DeSantis is being talked up as a “very real” possibility as the logical successor to her husband as Governor, there may not be fresh polling.
But surveys of Republicans from last year show she is the one name mentioned with momentum ahead of the race.
Per a June polling memo from Florida Atlantic University, she leads a field of candidates with 43% support, ahead of Byron Donalds at 19%, with Jimmy Patronis and Matt Gaetz further back still.
A poll conducted in April by FAU showed 38% of 372 Florida Republicans polled would choose the First Lady in a head-to-head race against Gaetz, who would receive 16% support in that scenario.
A University of North Florida Public Opinion Research Lab survey from November 2023 showed the First Lady with 22% support, a lead in a crowded field of potential candidates.
Both the First Lady and the Governor have addressed the speculation.
While she acknowledged the talk is “humbling,” she also maintains that the seeming enthusiasm for her running is due to her “rock star” husband and the job he’s done as the state’s Chief Executive.
Ron DeSantis also addressed a 2026 run, all but ruling it out on his wife’s behalf.
He said in May that if he “had to hypothesize her interest in getting into the political thicket as a candidate,” he would “characterize it as zero.”
Fresh reporting from Matt Dixon of NBC News says differently, with a “source familiar with her thinking” suggesting it’s a possibility.
“I would say this: I have heard donors have been urging her to run and that while it’s not something she has wanted to do, they are causing her to at least stop and listen,” Dixon cites his source.
Part of the reason this may be a more live idea, per another Dixon source, is to stop Wilton Simpson or Donalds from being Governor.
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