Russell Vought, a prominent figure in conservative politics and the architect behind Project 2025, has been named as President-elect Donald Trumps nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), an office that oversees every federal agencies funding, performance, data collection, and communication to ensure that it aligns with the presidents agenda.As such, Vought, who served as director of the OMB during Trumps first term, could wield tremendous power to implement the largely Christian nationalist vision of both Trump and the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing organization that authored Project 2025, the blueprint for Trumps second presidency. This vision would largely roll back hard-won LGBTQ+ rights and protections. Related Linda McMahon will support Donald Trumps transphobia in the Department of Education The millionaire Trump donor has little educational experience but co-founded an anti-LGBTQ+ think tank. Russell Vought At a Glance Insights for the LGBTQ+ community Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more. Subscribe to our Newsletter today Location: Arlington, VirginiaParty Affiliation: RepublicanRace/Ethnicity: WhiteGender Identity: MaleSexual Orientation: StraightPronouns: He/HimLGBTQ+ Ally: No Social MediaX: @RussVoughtWebsite: AmericaRenewing.comBiographyRussell Vought, born on March 26, 1976, in Washington, D.C., and raised in Virginia, is a prominent American political figure known for his influential roles in government and conservative policy circles. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Wheaton College, Illinois, and a Juris Doctor from George Washington University Law School.Voughts career in public service includes significant positions such as serving as a legislative assistant for Sen. Phil Gramm, policy director for the House Republican Conference, and executive director of the Republican Study Committee. He also held the position of vice president at Heritage Action for America, the lobbying arm of The Heritage Foundation.In 2018, Vought was appointed Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under President Donald Trump. He later served as acting director and was confirmed as OMB director in July 2020, overseeing the administrations fiscal policies during a critical period.After his tenure at the OMB, Vought founded the Center for Renewing America in 2021, focusing on advancing conservative policies and combating critical race theory. He played a pivotal role in Project 2025, a conservative initiative aimed at reshaping the federal government. In November 2024, President-elect Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate Vought to lead the OMB once again.Voughts views have been described as aligning with Christian nationalism, advocating for the integration of Christian principles into government and society. Voughts stance on LGBTQ+ issuesWhile Vought hasnt made many public statements on various LGBTQ+ issues, his largely anti-LGBTQ+ views may be inferred from his work on Project 2025 and his Center for Renewing America. Same-sex marriageProject 2025 calls for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to be renamed the Department of Life and for the agency to officially define a family as consisting of a married father and mother and children. Project 2025 calls for federal funds to support only a biblically based definition of family that support[s] the formation of stable, married, nuclear families. The plans concept of a biblical nuclear family includes the idea that children should only be raised by their biological fathers and mothers because the male-female dyad is essential to human nature.This claim of parental hetero-superiority has been called baseless by theAmerican Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. These changes would not only limit LGBTQ+ couples access to family planning options, like access to in vitro fertilization (IVF), it would also nearly eliminate queer couples ability to foster and adopt children. In fact, Project 2025 would offer federal protections and support to agencies that discriminate against queer couples and LGBTQ+ families, Furthermore, Project 2025 proposes that only faith-based recipients who reaffirm that marriage is between one man and one woman would be eligible for Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education grants, funds that finance educational programs for familial life skills.Trans children in sportsVought has called the inclusion of trans athletes in sports, the end of womens sports [and] female-only spaces, etc. Kinzinger has never been a conservative. Latest example is he is one of a handful of Republicans pushing a terrible compromise on gender identity issues, the so-called Fairness for All Act. The end of women's sports, female-only spaces, etc. https://t.co/g4cvDNdeVK Russ Vought (@russvought) March 16, 2021In a letter opposing the Fairness for All Act, a Republican LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination bill with huge religious exemptions, Voughts Center for Renewing America wrote, Female-only spaces should be off limits to men who identify as women. Female sports should not be destroyed by male competitors.Project 2025s authors want to ban trans students from playing on sports teams associated with their gender. He has supported initiatives that would tie Title IX protections for female athletes to biological sex and deny federal funding to schools that permit transgender athletes to compete in womens sports. Project 2025 would eliminate any legal recognition of trans identity to begin with, making the inclusion of trans athletes in sports conceivably impossible. Transgender access to public bathroomsIn general, Project 2025 aims to end any legal recognition of trans identities and seeks to entirely deny the existence of such individuals, defining ones gender identity as exclusively either male or female based entirely by the sex they were assigned at birth.Additionally, Voughts Center for Renewing America has written that trans bathroom access allows biological males to enter girls bathrooms and dressing rooms in schools, places of public accommodation, and government facilities.His organization considers trans public accommodations laws in general an ill-defined and radical attempt to reorder American civilization that pushes a false and unscientific view that biology is fluid and a mutable social construct that can be altered merely by the cognitive choice of an individual and the misguided view that public policy affirming male and female biology is immoral.If trans people are allowed into bathrooms matching their gender identity, Women and girls would face immediate discrimination and unnecessary obstacles when it comes to going to the restroom in public facilities, or maintaining privacy in the workplace, Voughts organization claims. Dont say gay/LGBTQ+ discussions in schoolsVought has voiced support for a 2021 executive order signed by then-Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey requiring schools to notify parents ahead of time of any curriculum addressing sexuality and allowing them to opt their children out of such instruction. Project 2025 would apply this nationally while largely eradicating LGBTQ+ content in schools and prohibiting school districts from requiring teachers to speak about it.The foreword to Project 2025 states, The noxious tenets of critical race theory and gender ideology should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country. These theories poison our children. It goes on to equate LGBTQ+-inclusive content as pornography that should be criminalized a common aim of right-wing parents rights groups that have sought to ban queer-inclusive content in schools and public libraries.Children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries, the foreword adds. Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children has no claim to First Amendment protection. Pornography should be outlawed Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. Project 2025 also wants Congress to pass afederal Parents Bill of Rights that would allow parents to sue public schools for including any curricular content that offends them, the free speech organization PEN America writes. Doing so would subject schools to costly lawsuits that cow them into teaching only watered-down versions of history, social studies, literature and other humanities.Project 2025 also seeks to eliminate the Department of Education (DOE), the federal agency that (among other things) enforces anti-discrimination laws to ensure that all children are treated equally regardless of LGBTQ+ identity. The DOE tracks demographic information needed to document inequities in education. With such tracking ended, discrimination against queer students and viewpoints could easily proliferate while hidden from public view.Discrimination protectionsProject 2025 seeks to remove key terms associated with sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) from all federal rules and regulations, including the following: gender, gender identity, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health and reproductive rights. In doing so, it would severely prohibit federal agencies such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)or the Department of Housing and Urban Development from tracking data related to LGBTQ+ inequalities or enforcing anti-discrimination measures.The blueprint seeks to repeal policies from the Obama and Biden administrations as well as the U.S. Supreme Courts 2020 Bostock v. Clayton County that view anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination as a form of sex-based discrimination already prohibited by federal law. These policies help ensure equal access to government institutions and civil rights regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.The President should direct agencies to rescind regulations interpreting sex discrimination provisions as prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, sex characteristics Project 2025 states, urging federal workers to instead focus their enforcement of sex discrimination laws on the biological binary meaning of sex. Furthermore, the document seeks to end all federal funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs that help competently attract and serve people from diverse cultural backgrounds. In fact, Project 2025 views DEI policies as forms ofaffirmative discrimination against white, heterosexual, and Christian identities.Any person found to have participated in such initiatives even within state and local governments, institutions of higher education, corporations, and any other private employers would be subject to investigation by the Department of Justices Civil Rights Division and susceptible to possible discipline or firing.Lastly, Project 2025 calls for expanding legal protections for any individual or group that discriminates on the basis of religious beliefs. This could allow discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals in various contexts, including employment and public services. Gender-affirming care for minorsProject 2025 describes gender-affirming care for minors as a social contagion that especially affects young girls and claims that radical gender ideology is having a devastating effect on school-aged children today. It also refers to such care as a form of mutilation and child abuse and suggests punishing any adults who help kids obtain it.My side is not the one killing kids and encouraging girls to have their breasts removed. Russ Vought (@russvought) October 7, 2022Project 2025 suggests that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) should immediately end its collection of data on gender identity, which legitimizes the unscientific notion that men can become women (and vice versa). The report also calls for the National Institutes of Health to fund studies into the short-term and long-term negative effects of gender-affirming care, from social affirmation to surgery, and the use of so-called reparative therapy to convince children that they are not transgender, The 19th reported. Russell Voughts careerGraduated from George Washington University with a Bachelor of Arts in political scienceEarned a Juris Doctor degree from the George Washington University Law SchoolServed as policy director for the Republican Study Committee in the U.S. House of RepresentativesWorked as vice president of Heritage Action for America, the advocacy arm of The Heritage FoundationServed as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2019Appointed as director of the OMB in 2019, a role he held until 2021Played a key role in shaping the Trump administrations fiscal policies, including budget proposals and spending prioritiesBecame president of the Center for Renewing America, a conservative think tank, in 2021Served as a leading architect of Project 2025, a conservative policy agenda aimed at reshaping the federal government and executive branch for a future Republican administration Vought could majorly erode LGBTQ+ discrimination protectionsRussell Voughts oversight of the OMB could help implement systemic changes that would allow anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination and inequalities to worsen nationwide for years to come. Empowered by the Heritage Foundation, far-right Christian Nationalists, and Trumps supporters, he would have the authority to erase and exclude LGBTQ+ people from numerous facets of public life and civil inclusion. Related links Related Hate groups rejoice as Trump ends anti-racism training for government workers This is a sickness that cannot be allowed to continue, Trump tweeted. Please report any sightings so we can quickly extinguish! After win, Trump fans admit Project 2025 is the agenda Now that the election is over I think we can finally say that yeah actually Project 2025 is the agenda. Lol. Trump is bestowing prestigious appointments on his most extreme & anti-LGBTQ supporters On his way out the door, Trump is packing presidential commissions and boards with anti-LGBTQ politicians and conspiracy theorists, sanctifying their bad behavior. Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.