Russell Vought

Elon Musk and Russell Vought meet each other for the first time at Mar-a-Lago. They reportedly got along very well, with “both on the same wavelength in terms of taking the most extreme action possible.”

Russell Vought is confirmed by Congress as the Director of the powerful Office of Management and Budget.

Russell Vought starts as Director at OMB.

OMB director Russell Vought is named the new acting head of the CFPB. The CFPB Chief Legal Counsel is also replaced by Mark Paoletta, a close associate of Russell Vought.

Russell Vought starts as Acting Director at CFPB.

In an email sent to all staff, Russell Vought orders the CFPB’s headquarters to be indefinitely closed. He also orders: “Please do not perform any work tasks. If there are any urgent matters, please alert me through Mark Paoletta, Chief Legal Officer, to get approval in writing before performing any work task. Otherwise, employees should stand down from performing any work task.”

In a meeting on foreign aid at OMB, Russell Vought stuns staffers by asking them to cut foreign aid to the greatest extent possible. When told that the cuts will lead to more people dying, he reportedly nonchalantly replied “you could say that about any of these cuts.” He also inquires about dismantling the USIP completely. When told it was independent and funded by Congress, he replied, “we’ll see what we can do.”

The CFPB RIF team, including Adam Martinez meets with Jordan Wick, Jeremy Lewin, and OPM officials on a video call. Jeremy Lewin and Jordan Wick talk off screen with Acting Director Russell Vought, and Wick tells the group that they want formal RIF notices to go out no later than February 14. The team receives a template from OPM for firing 1200 employees “at night on the 13th.”

An employee requests to repair the CFPB homepage that was purposefully deleted by DOGE. That action is refused by order of Russell Vought. Other work is allowed for digital teams.

Jordan Wick emails Russell Vought asking for approval to cut an additional $8.4 million of contracts at the CFPB

The Trump administration nominates Laken Rapier and Russell Vought to be on the board of the USADF.

The Trump Administration nominates Kenneth Jackson and Russell Vought to be on the board of the IAF.

The CFPB, still under the acting leadership of Russell Vought, withdraws a rule proposed in December that would limit the ability of data brokers to sell sensitive information by placing them under the oversight of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

Testifying to Congress, Russell Vought says the White House is in “the midst of … establishing the leadership on an ongoing basis.” But he also says more DOGE staff will be embedded directly in agencies to report to leadership there. Amy Gleason is not mentioned.

The plaintiffs in Rhode Island v. Trump et al file an amended complaint asking the court to rule that the IMLS closure was unconstitutional and violated the Administrative Procedures Act. As part of this filing, they issued summons to Keith Sonderling, Donald Trump, Howard Lutnick and Russell Vought. They have 60 days to respond, pushing the nest phase of the trial to August.

Citing safety concerns, the head of the CFPB (Russell Vought) signs an agreement with the head of the OMB (Russell Vought) to spend $4.7 milliion of the CFPB’s budget from now through December to provide a security detail for Russell Vought. This is the same time as the agency is facing its budget being slashed in half.

Russell Vought starts as Acting Director at USAID.

Marco Rubio announces on TruthSocial that Russell Vought has been named as the new Acting Administrator of USAID to “oversee the closeout” of the agency after much of its staff was fired, certain responsibilities were absorbed into the State Department and grants were slashed

The day before the beginning of the 2025 federal government shutdown, HHS proposes eliminating 8,000 jobs at the suggestion of Russell Vought, who wants to use the shutdown to inflict pain. HHS eventually lays off 1760 positions on October 10th, but was later revised to 954 after HHS blamed a coding error for firing too many people. Initially, HHS refuses to identify the creator for the layoff proposal within HHS, but it’s eventually revealed to be Rachel Riley.