Business
Russell Vought, Trump’s Budget Chief, Wants to Cut ‘Woke’ Spending
Years before President Trump returned to the White House, his budget chief, Russell T. Vought, began mapping out a plan to shrink the federal government.
In Mr. Vought’s design, spending would be slashed by about $9 trillion over the next decade. Entire federal programs — from housing vouchers to student loans — would be eliminated. The government would fire thousands of civil workers, including those who investigated tax fraud. And Washington would restrict aid to the poor, requiring Americans to work in exchange for benefits.
The ideas formed the bedrock of Mr. Vought’s plan to end the “woke and weaponized” bureaucracy, a policy guide he issued in 2022 for fellow conservatives entering a key budget battle. His full vision did not come to fruition at the time, but the roughly 100-page blueprint has taken on heightened significance since Mr. Trump won re-election — and reinstalled Mr. Vought to his perch — foreshadowing their shared aim to reel in the size and reach of government.
In the perennial fight over the federal balance sheet, few officials are more important than Mr. Vought. As head of the Office of Management and Budget, he wields vast power over the United States government, its workers and the millions of people whose lives are shaped by the ebb and flow of federal funds.
Mr. Vought brings an aggressive style to the job, one revealed in podcast interviews and public writings, particularly in the years after Mr. Trump’s 2020 defeat. A longtime budget expert, he sketched out a vision for expansive presidential power in Project 2025, the conservative blueprint prepared by the Heritage Foundation for Mr. Trump. And in 2021, Mr. Vought founded his own organization, the Center for Renewing America, which describes itself as dedicated to “God, country and community.”
There, Mr. Vought refined an ambition to marry extreme fiscal austerity with Christian values, pledging to eliminate federal programs seen as too wasteful, “woke” or secular. In scrutinizing the budget, his approach has made him a natural ally of Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
Now back at O.M.B., Mr. Vought has assembled a team of like-minded advisers who are working to prepare Mr. Trump’s 2026 budget proposal. That blueprint may guide Congress in its work to extend a set of expensive and expiring tax cuts enacted in Mr. Trump’s first term.
Documents reviewed by The New York Times showed that as recently as late February, O.M.B. staff were compiling recommendations for sweeping cuts to programs that Republicans have long wanted to slash. Those cuts include imposing work requirements for recipients of food stamps, ending public service student loan forgiveness and phasing out certain federal Medicaid funds for states.
The president and Mr. Vought also subscribe to the idea that the White House should have expansive powers over the nation’s purse strings, halting or canceling federal spending even if Congress instructs otherwise. That stance has emboldened the White House to already interrupt the distribution of billions of dollars, including foreign aid, infrastructure spending and payments to food banks.
The delays have provoked lawsuits, and in a largely unnoticed move, they have triggered an investigation by the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan watchdog established by Congress that acknowledged its inquiries in February. Some Democrats contend that the budget office has violated the law in other ways, after it quietly disabled a government website on Monday that tracked the regular outflow of federal dollars.
“Taking down this website is not just illegal, it is a brazen move to hide this administration’s spending from the American people and from Congress,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington and Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the leading Democratic appropriators, in a statement this week.
Mr. Vought declined through a spokeswoman to be interviewed. In a preamble to his 2022 policy guide, he wrote: “The evidence of America’s fiscal brokenness is everywhere.”
Mr. Vought’s calls for austerity are hardly novel in Washington, where policymakers often lament the nation’s growing $36 trillion debt, but they carry new force at a moment when Mr. Trump looks to reshape the federal bureaucracy.
As DOGE agents blitz federal agencies — shuttering entire programs, dismissing thousands of workers and burrowing into sensitive federal computer systems — Mr. Vought has toiled quietly to lay the foundation for “making these cuts permanent in the long term,” he explained in an interview with Fox Business in February.
The same month, Mr. Vought ordered agencies to submit detailed plans by March and April indicating how they would cut spending, lay off workers and sell office buildings to save money and ensure they “advance the president’s policy priorities,” according to a memo sent to agency leaders.
James C. Capretta, a former O.M.B. official now serving as a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said Mr. Vought’s actions reflected the view that “the federal executive branch really should be at the service of a president in a manner that goes beyond professional management of the agencies.”
The reorganization arrived weeks after the budget office, under interim leadership while Mr. Vought awaited Senate confirmation, froze nearly all federal spending. While political pressure and multiple lawsuits forced the White House to rescind that policy, budget officials have continued to halt the disbursement of some federal payments. Another arrived this week, when the Trump administration essentially refused to spend about $3 billion in emergency money to combat narcotics and fund other programs, a move that drew a rare bipartisan rebuke in the Senate.
“Every day, there is a headline about another institution, about funding that has been discontinued,” said Skye Perryman, the president of Democracy Forward, a left-leaning advocacy group that has sued O.M.B. over its actions.
The freezes underscored Mr. Vought’s long-held belief that the budget office must serve as the White House “air-traffic control system,” as he wrote in a chapter for Project 2025. There, and in much of his work, Mr. Vought has long criticized civil workers, portraying some of their actions as motivated by their “own agenda.” He previously promised to put them “in trauma,” he said in a video first surfaced by ProPublica.
“They’re constantly hiding the ball,” Mr. Vought said during a May 2023 podcast interview, adding that Republicans needed to “micromanage the heck out of everything that is part of your agency, or make sure that your right arms are.”
With the help of Mr. Trump, the two men have established a team in recent weeks that echoes Mr. Vought’s views.
The roster includes Mark Paoletta, the budget office’s general counsel, who served with Mr. Vought during the first Trump administration and later at the Center for Renewing America. Mr. Paoletta represented Virginia Thomas, the wife of the Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, during a House investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election. Mr. Paoletta drafted the since-revoked order that froze nearly all federal spending.
Jeffrey Bossert Clark, who is serving in a key O.M.B. office that oversees regulation, previously faced possible contempt of Congress charges for refusing to testify about accusations that he sought to undo the results of the 2020 race.
And Dan Bishop, whom Mr. Trump appointed as deputy director, is a former Republican congressman who, while serving in the North Carolina legislature, sponsored a bill that restricted transgender people from using their preferred public restrooms. The Senate confirmed his nomination on Wednesday.
Testifying this month, Mr. Bishop acknowledged that he agreed with those who believe the 2020 election had been rigged. The former congressman said the president had a mandate to pursue “an end to the waste and the Washington status quo.”
The comments angered Democrats, who recalled Mr. Trump’s first term, when he and Mr. Vought halted congressionally authorized aid to Ukraine in a standoff that laid the groundwork for House Democrats to impeach the president. The budget adviser maintained in 2021 — and, years later, at his own nomination hearing — that the White House had acted lawfully.
After the Senate confirmed him along party lines, Mr. Vought helped to secure a deal to stave off a government shutdown, wooing Republicans with a promise that the administration would take aggressive steps to slash spending. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump signaled that the White House could begin by submitting to Congress a formal list of proposed cuts, reflecting some of the savings identified by DOGE.
“I assume they’ll total everything up and get it to us,” Representative Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican and member of the House Budget Committee, said in an interview. “What the president will have will be sweet music to all of us who want a very conservative budget.”
At his Center for Renewing America, Mr. Vought in 2022 previewed his pursuit of stark cuts, targeting benefit programs including Medicaid. He proposed limiting its funding and eligibility, an idea he has resurfaced in recent weeks.
“You can get sizable levels of savings and reforms,” Mr. Vought told the Senate Budget Committee this year.
The term “woke” appeared 77 times in Mr. Vought’s document. The proposal looked to slash the “woke agenda” at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, targeting money meant for “niche and small population groups.” It proposed jettisoning billions of dollars in “woke foreign aid spending”; eliminating entire programs for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities; and striking the “secular, woke religion” of climate change from the federal ledger.
“That is the central and immediate threat facing the country — the one that all our statesmen must rise tall to vanquish,” Mr. Vought wrote in the preamble to his budget. “The battle cannot wait.”
Alan Rappeport contributed reporting.
Business
In Altadena, a woman is racing to buy land for her business that burned, before developers get it
Shelene Hearring is sprinting against big developers to try to buy a slice of Altadena on Lake Avenue, a part of the unincorporated town she sees as crucial to the community’s identity.
Hearring, who ran Two Dragon Martial Arts Studio for 18 years on Lake Avenue, placed a bid to buy the land after her studio burned down in the Eaton fire in January. The bid was accepted by the landowner this week, and Hearring notified the community that she has until Nov. 25 to raise $600,000 to secure the property.
“We want to maintain the sense of community that we used to have,” Hearring said. “Last week big businesses were looking to buy it up. I said no, we gotta have something for our community. We want to get back to where we used to be.”
Hearring’s case is one of the few instances, and possibly the only one, of an Altadena small business owner attempting to buy property they once rented by launching a GoFundMe campaign. When she learned the property was being sold, she realized developers were putting in offers. Now she’s hoping the community will support her efforts to stay in Altadena, as many residents fear the culture and fabric will change as more families move out and developers swoop in.
Across Altadena, the Eaton fire destroyed about 9,000 structures. Among them was the Two Dragon Martial Arts Studio, which one of Hearring’s family members photographed going up in flames. Today the lot has been cleared of debris and sits empty. It’s one of many Black-owned businesses lost in the fire.
The property at 2490 N. Lake Ave. had housed Hearring’s martial arts studio, a nail salon and other businesses. Before that the building had been the Altadena sheriff’s station, making it a community landmark, she said.
Hearring, who grew up in Altadena, also lost the home she was renting, forcing her to bounce from hotel to hotel until she found stable housing in Arcadia. As soon as she could, she started teaching classes outside at a park to maintain a sense of normalcy, until she secured a space to teach in Altadena. That effort, helped by a fundraising campaign, allowed her to keep paying staff and pay down loans she took out to keep the business afloat during the pandemic.
Altadena has been flooded by investors buying up properties. Melissa Michelson, co-founder and lead organizer of the Altadena Not for Sale movement, is tracking what’s listed, bought and sold. So far, of the 289 properties that have been sold, 168 were bought by limited liability investors and private equity firms, as opposed to 93 purchased by individuals, she said.
“The vultures are out there swarming,” Michelson said, referring to developers and investors looking to turn a profit following the devastation. “They’re not going away.”
Among the more prominent buyers has been Altadena local Edwin Castro, who won a $2-billion Powerball lottery jackpot in 2022 and has been purchasing empty lots under Black Lion Properties LLC, spending $10 million on 15 lots, according to the Wall Street Journal. Castro told the Journal he wants to lead the rebuilding effort in Altadena and intends to sell to families.
‘The vultures are out there swarming.’
— Melissa Michelson, co-founder and lead organizer of the Altadena Not for Sale movement, referring to developers buying up lots.
Michelson’s group began selling and donating “Altadena Not for Sale” yard signs that now dot empty lots, standing homes and storefronts around town. The group also launched a petition to urge the state Legislature to create greater protections against corporations coming in and buying up properties in the disaster zone. So far the petition has gathered about 1,500 signatures. Another group, the Altadena Dining Club, formed to try to keep local eateries afloat amid a drop in foot traffic around town.
With Hearring’s studio, Michelson said it is exciting to see the community support a small business owner going up against real estate speculators. The homeowners who make up Altadena Not for Sale also are adamant about remaining in the area.
“This is really unprecedented that a community is coming together like this,” she said.
As of Friday, Hearring had raised about $73,000 online, a far cry from what she needs to purchase the lot. But she said she’s hopeful. She envisions a space not just for her studio, but one where nonprofit groups and young people can come together.
“If we don’t hold the fort down, there will be nothing to come back to,” Hearring said.
Business
Supreme Court urged to block California laws requiring companies to disclose climate impacts
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups urged the Supreme Court on Friday to block new California laws that will require thousands of companies to disclose their emissions and their impacts on climate change.
One of the laws is due to take effect on Jan. 1, and the emergency appeal asks the court to put it on hold temporarily.
Their lawyers argue the measures violate the 1st Amendment because the state would be forcing companies to speak on its preferred topic.
“In less than eight weeks, California will compel thousands of companies across the nation to speak on the deeply controversial topic of climate change,” they said in an appeal that also spoke for the California Chamber of Commerce and the Los Angeles County Business Federation.
They say the two new laws would require companies to disclose the “climate-related risks” they foresee and how their operations and emissions contribute to climate change.
“Both laws are part of California’s open campaign to force companies into the public debate on climate issues and pressure them to alter their behavior,” they said. Their aim, according to their sponsors, is to “make sure that the public actually knows who’s green and who isn’t.”
One law, Senate Bill 261, will require several thousand companies that do business in California to assess their “climate-related financial risk” and how they may reduce that risk. A second measure, SB 253, which applies to larger companies, requires them to assess and disclose their emissions and how their operations could affect the climate.
The appeal argues these laws amount to unconstitutional compelled speech.
“No state may violate 1st Amendment rights to set climate policy for the Nation. Compelled-speech laws are presumptively unconstitutional — especially where, as here, they dictate a value-laden script on a controversial subject such as climate change,” they argue.
Officials with the California Air Resources Board, whose chair Lauren Sanchez was named as defendant, said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.
The first-in-the-nation carbon disclosure laws were widely celebrated by environmental advocates at the time of their passage, with the nonprofit California Environmental Voters describing them as a “game-changer not just for our state but for the entire world.”
Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who authored SB 253, said at the time that the laws were “a simple but powerful tool in the fight to tackle climate change.”
“When corporations are transparent about the full scope of their emissions, they have the tools and incentives to tackle them,” Wiener said.
Michael Gerrard, a climate-change legal expert at Columbia University, described Friday’s motion as “the latest example of businesses and conservatives weaponizing the 1st Amendment.” He pointed to the Citizens United case, which said businesses have a free speech right to unlimited campaign contributions, as another example.
“Exxon tried and failed to use this argument in 2022 when it attempted to block an investigation by the Massachusetts Attorney General into whether it misled consumers and investors about the risks of climate change,” he said in an email. “Exxon claimed this investigation violated its First Amendment rights; the Massachusetts courts rejected this attempt.”
Under the Biden administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted similar climate-change disclosure rules. Companies would have been required to disclose the impact of climate change on their business and what they intended to do to mitigate the risk.
But the Chamber of Commerce sued and won a lower court ruling that blocked those rules.
And in March, Trump appointees said the SEC would retreat and not defend the “costly and unnecessarily intrusive climate-change disclosure rules.”
The emergency appeal challenging California’s disclosure laws was filed by Washington attorney Eugene Scalia, a son of the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
The companies have tried and failed to persuade judges in California to block the measures. Exxon Mobil filed a suit in Sacramento, while the Chamber of Commerce sued in Los Angeles.
In August, U.S. District Judge Otis Wright II in Los Angeles refused to block the laws on the grounds they “regulate commercial speech,” which gets less protection under the 1st Amendment. He said businesses are routinely required to disclose financial data and factual information on their operations.
The business lawyers said they had appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals asking for an injunction, but no action has been taken.
Shortly after the chamber’s appeal was filed, state attorneys for Iowa and 24 other Republican-leaning states joined in support. They said they “strongly oppose this radical green speech mandate that California seeks to impose on companies.”
The justices are likely to ask for a response next week from California’s state attorneys before acting on the appeal.
Savage reported from Washington, D.C., Smith from Los Angeles.
Warner Bros. Discovery has modified Chief Executive David Zaslav’s contract for a second time this year to prepare for the company’s proposed breakup.
This month’s alterations were outlined in an SEC filing on Thursday — a week before initial bids are due in the Warner Bros. Discovery auction. Industry sources expect Paramount, Comcast and Netflix to make offers for the embattled entertainment company that owns HBO, CNN, Food Network and the storied Warner Bros. movie and television studios.
Warner Bros. Discovery declined to comment.
The sale kicked off in September when David Ellison-led Paramount made an unsolicited offer for Warner Bros. Discovery — a month after Ellison and RedBird Capital Partners had acquired Paramount from the Redstone family in an $8-billion deal. The company since has made at least three bids — but all were unanimously rejected by the Warner Bros. Discovery board, which viewed them as too low.
Paramount’s most recent solicitation for Warner Bros. Discovery was for $23.50 per share, which would value the company at about $58 billion.
The external jockeying for Warner Bros. Discovery set the stage for Zaslav and the Warner board to amend his employment agreement. The contract was revised Nov. 7 to clarify that various spin-off configurations would result in the same incentives for Zaslav.
Previously, his contract was amended to outline his compensation and incentives should the Warner Bros. studios and HBO Max spin off from the parent company, as envisioned when Warner announced its breakup plans in June. At the time, Zaslav planned to stay on to run the studios and streaming company, which would be called Warner Bros. in a nod to its historic roots and the pioneering days of the movie industry.
The plan was for the company’s two dozen cable networks, including CNN, TNT, Animal Planet and TLC, to remain behind and the company renamed Discovery Global.
The company is forging ahead with its breakup plans. However, it now plans to spin off the cable channels (Discovery Global) and keep the studios, HBO and the HBO Max streaming service as the surviving corporate entity (Warner Bros.).
“The amendment clarifies that if the separation is achieved by retaining Warner Bros. and spinning off Discovery Global (a ‘Reverse Spinoff’) rather than spinning off Warner Bros. … the Reverse Spinoff will be treated in the same manner … for all purposes of the Zaslav arrangements,” the filing said.
Previously, the company had envisioned that the split would be complete by Dec. 31, 2026. But a full-blown auction could upset those plans — and the transaction could close at a later date.
Zaslav’s contract was modified to extend his employment through December 2030. Previously, his contract was set to expire in December 2027.
“This extension is intended to secure Mr. Zaslav’s leadership of WBD for the same period that we had contracted to have him serve as the chief executive officer of Warner Bros. following a separation,” the filing said.
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that nonbinding preliminary bids for the company are due Nov. 20.
Postgame Thoughts: LSU 23, Arkansas 22
Driver reportedly runs red light, causing multi-vehicle crash south of downtown Colorado Springs
‘So many people lost so much’: West Hartford couple joins hurricane relief in Jamaica
Favors III’s pick-6 leads strong defense in Delaware State’s 26-13 win over Howard – WTOP News
Ole Miss football fans chant, ‘We want Lane’ as Rebels defeat Florida
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Video: ‘It Didn’t Have to Happen This Way:’ U.Va. Faculty Call for Review of Police Response to Protests
Video: Sleepovers With Dinosaur Bones Are Back in N.Y.C.
Trump issues fresh pardons for Jan 6 defendants, including woman accused of threatening FBI on social media
2% of Russian global oil supply affected following Ukrainian attack
Judge indefinitely bars Trump from fining UC over alleged discrimination
Zohran Mamdani tells 1M social media followers to boycott Starbucks amid ongoing worker strike
-
Nebraska1 week agoWhere to watch Nebraska vs UCLA today: Time, TV channel for Week 11 game
-
Austin, TX1 week agoHalf-naked woman was allegedly tortured and chained in Texas backyard for months by five ‘friends’ who didn’t ‘like her anymore’
-
Hawaii7 days agoMissing Kapolei man found in Waipio, attorney says
-
Vermont4 days agoNorthern Lights to dazzle skies across these US states tonight – from Washington to Vermont to Maine | Today News
-
Southwest1 week agoTexas launches effort to install TPUSA in every high school and college
-
New Jersey6 days agoPolice investigate car collision, shooting in Orange, New Jersey
-
West Virginia5 days ago
Search for coal miner trapped in flooded West Virginia mine continues for third day
-
Seattle, WA7 days agoSoundgarden Enlist Jim Carrey and Seattle All-Stars for Rock Hall 2025 Ceremony
