Dear John,

After denying any association with Project 2025, President-elect Donald Trump has selected one of its chief architects to serve in a key White House position — Russell Vought. 

Vought is an outspoken opponent of climate action. And if approved to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), he’ll have a lot of leeway to oust climate experts, withhold taxpayer funds and turn off spending to federal agencies — including the EPA.

Learn more about Vought and his drastic plans to unwind the historic climate progress made over the past four years and reshape the United States.

As OMB Director, Vought would sit at the nerve center of our federal government with the power to regulate agencies’ staff, budget and agenda. And he has a specific target on the EPA.

In a 2023 speech Vought said:
 

“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. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma.”

- Russell Vought Center for Renewing America speech, 2023 (recording obtained by Propublica)

In fact, Vought wants to remove any consideration of climate in government — as if that might erase the climate impacts people are already facing, such as excessive flooding, the high cost of home insurance, unhealthy air and killer heat waves.

Take 5 minutes to read through our latest Vital Signs article to get the full picture of Vought and his “trauma”-inducing agenda.

Thank you for your commitment and support,

Wes Rogerson
Senior Manager, Grassroots Organizing & Activism