Loading summary
Andy Kroll
On the Media is supported by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com, progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law not available in all states.
WNYC Announcer
WNYC Studios is supported by Odoo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out Odoo at o d o o.com that's o d o o.com.
Brooke Gladstone
I'm Brooke Gladstone and this is the on the Media midweek Podcast Last week, amid a dismal news cycle, a flicker of sunshine. Russell Vogt, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, the man behind the firing of thousands of federal workers from various agencies, the man who famously said he'd put federal workers in trauma, got a setback in his plan to kill the the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Vote had called the bureau a quote, woke and weaponized agency against disfavored industries and individuals, and he'd spent much of the last year firing its staff and choking off funding. But last Friday, he was ordered by a federal judge to request money from the Federal Reserve to keep the agency afloat. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who's credited with creating the agency after the 2008 financial collapse, was was in a celebratory mood. The CFPB, she said, is, quote, an agency that has returned more than $21 billion directly to consumers cheated by big banks and giant corporations. But today, Russ Vogt was forced to request funding for the agency because we fought back in the courts. Back in October, I spoke to ProPublica reporter Andy Kroll, who'd just written a profile about Vogt. At that time, Vote was described by his boss as Darth Vader. You know Darth Vader, right? Donald Trump, they call him Darth Vader. I call him a fine man, but he's cutting Democrat priorities and they're never going to get him back. Whereupon Andy Crow one upped Trump's casting of this particular bureaucrat by dubbing him Shadow President.
Andy Kroll
The sources that I interviewed for this story work across the federal government and who deal with OMB in some cases on A day to day basis. That's how they described him to me.
Brooke Gladstone
But, you know, Trump has kind of been plagued by what people regard as shadow presidents. Elon Musk was a shadow president. Trump's Homeland Security Advisor, Stephen Miller, still dubbed a shadow president. And they've had extraordinary influence. But Vote is the shadow of shadows.
Andy Kroll
OMB normally acts almost like a loving but diligent parent to the many agencies that make up the executive branch. It apportions, to use the technical term, money that Congress has already approved to these different agencies so that the federal government can run. And that is what OMB looks like in normal times. What it looks like now is a place where Donald Trump's ideological agenda, in some cases his overtly political agenda, is being enacted. Russ Vogt has found this place to basically put a kink in the hose of the federal government to exert the President's will.
Brooke Gladstone
Give me just an example or two.
Andy Kroll
The National Institutes of Health, earlier this summer, the Office of Management and Budget froze more than $10 billion that was going toward outside medical research, the kind of cutting edge research that this country is known for, that saves lives, that develops new treatments. OMB froze that money, said that it was, quote, unquote, reviewing the money to ensure that it aligned with administration priorities in alignment with a MAGA agenda.
Brooke Gladstone
There is amazing amount of plain speaking in this administration about what its intention. There's no dog whistling.
Andy Kroll
No, there's not.
WNYC Announcer
It's.
Andy Kroll
Russ Vogt, I think, is a great example of that.
Brooke Gladstone
He's 49 years old, looks a little older, trim, graying beard. He gives off these tidy and meticulous vibes. That's the surface.
Andy Kroll
He originally hails from the Northeast. His father was a Marine who went on to be a union electrician. His mother was a public educator and then later founded a private Christian school. It's very clear that his family were very devout and that they believed in taking that faith into the public sphere. And I think the mom's decision to help open this school and to really promote an idea of education steeped in things like creationism or the notion that if we aren't fundamentally a Christian country, we will descend into apathy and sin and sickness is a really key part of understanding him because he really brings together today both the slash government at all costs mentality, but also a Christian nationalist worldview.
Brooke Gladstone
Vogt attends a private Christian high school, goes to Illinois to study at Wheaton College, and He moves to D.C. right after college in 1999 and landed a mailroom job in the office of Texas Senator Phil Graham, combative, libertarian, or as some said, the most hated man in America.
Andy Kroll
Vogt's job working for Phil Gramm was one of the first jobs he held on Capitol Hill. He was a kid learning how Congress worked, how bills actually get made and passed, versus, you know, the West Wing version or the Schoolhouse Rock version, however you want to put it. Phil Graham is this iconoclastic, singular character in the Senate, someone for whom basically every program that required federal spending was an example of overreach or overspending, profligate behavior by the United States Congress, and he wanted to rein it in. Vogt went on to say that his time working for Graham laid the conservative foundation for the rest of his career. And just to give you a flavor, people would come to Phil Gramm and they would say, you want to cut this program that helps the poor? You want to cut this program that helps new mothers? Don't you have a heart, Senator Graham? And he would say in response, well, of course I do. I keep it in a jar on my desk. And Russ Vogt follows a really interesting trajectory when he arrives in Washington in the late 90s. In the beginning, it looks like the quintessential college graduation. Who's interested in politics, gets an internship, and begins to slowly climb the ranks through Congress, working for different members. Eventually, he gets pretty darn close to the top of the political power structure in the Republican party. But instead of sticking with it, he decides that the Republican party is betraying its principles. It has drifted from what it was meant to be. And he grows disillusioned and ultimately leaves a really influential job on Capitol Hill to work in activism.
Brooke Gladstone
He landed at Heritage Action, an offshoot of the Heritage foundation. And it's kind of aggressive and spiky. Describe how he did there.
Andy Kroll
Heritage action launched in 2010 in this very fraught moment in American politics. The Affordable Care act has recently been passed. This tea Party movement is brewing to push back on what conservatives see as this massive government overreach. And Heritage Action becomes the brawling, spiky is a great way to put it. Affiliate of the Heritage foundation, this long standing think tank really known for putting out policy papers. Kind of a tweedy, ivory tower kind of culture. And then it starts, this pugilistic activist arm called Heritage Action. And Russ Vogt goes there and basically becomes the chief antagonist, the most persistent tormentor of all of these members of Congress that he used to work for or work in support of when he was on the Hill. To take one example, in the 2010 elections, he designs this attack ad against a senior United States senator, Bob Corker of Tennessee. That puts Corker's face on a mailer next to three other people that a Republican doesn't want to be seen with. Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, and the Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmed did. Ajad. It's this kind of tactic that absolutely infuriates Republican leaders. Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, they are irate. And Russ Vote is loving it because he believes he has found a way to, to pressure Republicans to actually act in his view, the way Republicans should.
Brooke Gladstone
And then he gets on Trump's radar.
Andy Kroll
Because there are so few people in Washington who won, expected a Trump victory in 2016. And two were willing to go into the new administration and try to make sense of what this president elect Donald Trump actually wanted to do. But with Vogt, there are a couple of key things here to understand. One is that when he was marinating in the teachings and the wisdom of Phil Graham, he studied the Office of Management and Budget, the omb, knew what that agency could do, and he dreamed of working there because he had come to see it as the kind of place where you could enact the massive spending cuts, that you could rein in government in a way that you couldn't from Capitol Hill.
Brooke Gladstone
But that office isn't supposed to control the money. Constitutionally, it is appropriated by Congress. I mean, aren't there some suits about that?
Andy Kroll
There are some suits about that. And your analysis is in line with what the law says, what legal experts, conservatives, including the late Antonin Scalia, the late William Rehnquist, have said about the president's power or not to freeze funding that Congress has appropriated. But that is not what Russ Vogt believes.
Brooke Gladstone
In the first term, he was frustrated because there were so many people in the way, career officials and people in the cabinet that refused to let it go off the rails, like John Kelly or Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State. But Vote does have the substantial achievement you noted of being the cause of Trump's first impeachment.
Andy Kroll
That's right. The Ukraine funding freeze is the catalyst for Donald Trump's first impeachment trial. And remember, there was the funding freeze that the White House ordered and that vote carried out, and he had been itching to use this tool. Impoundment is the wonky term. But also remember, at the, at the same time, the White House is pressuring the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to investigate then presidential candidate Joe Biden and Biden's son, Hunter. And so that is where this possible quid pro quo you know, seemingly corrupt intent comes into play and these things all swirl together in in 2019 and lead to that first impeachment and vote is not only in the middle of the action behind the scenes. He refuses to comply with a subpoena as part of the investigation into the Ukraine freeze and is actually named in the articles of impeachment.
Brooke Gladstone
He has this long history of frustration with his own party, but nothing compared to the downright horror with which he regards the Democrats. You quote him saying last year, quote, the stark reality in America is that we are in the late stages of a complete Marxist takeover of the country in which our adversaries already hold the weapons of government apparatus. That would be the deep state. And so in the second term he took that apparatus over and used it.
Andy Kroll
To, to shrink the government, fire employees en masse, freeze hundreds of billions of dollars, about 410 billion according to Democrats and the Appropriations Committee with the Supreme Court's help so far. The final rendering of how legal all of these machinations regarding federal funding are remains to be seen. The court is about to take these questions up and that's a really big issue going forward.
Brooke Gladstone
So let's stipulate that while we were distracted by flashier so called shadow presidents, he was always the guy behind the curtain. For instance, when we were watching Chainsaw Elon prance about and feed USAID into.
Andy Kroll
The wood chipper, Musk was seen wielding the chainsaw is seen as the face of Doge. Vogt is very much a methodical, behind the scenes kind of operator. There was tension between those two personalities. And from what I gather, there were moments when Vogt and his team at OMB were frustrated by what Doge and Musk were doing. But also times when Vogt and his folks saw Doge as a useful tool.
Brooke Gladstone
I mean, who was the boss?
Andy Kroll
The final accounting of all this I think will show, and I think my reporting points toward this, that the boss was Vote. That vote played a much more critical role, pointing Doge in certain directions to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, usaid, the US Institute of Peace than we understood at the time.
Brooke Gladstone
You know, you gotta wonder. Vote didn't agree to an interview with you nor answer the questions you sent him. But why is a guy who claims to have been raised on the idea of slashing spending, gleefully slashing jobs, such a big spender?
Andy Kroll
The Department of Homeland Security announcing today that it's going to buy two Gulf Stream jets for more than $170 million. The department says the jets are required to provide official travel for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other top officials.
Brooke Gladstone
The Trump administration authorized a $20 billion financial lifeline for Argentina as it faces a deepening economic crisis. But the justification of the deal has raised major questions and criticism about its merits.
WNYC Announcer
The president's so called big beautiful bill aims to cut taxes by more than $3 trillion. The CBO said today that that tax cut would result in an increase of the deficit by $2.4 trillion. It would also leave nearly 11 million people without health insurance over the next decade.
Brooke Gladstone
It comes as if Vote is really a budget hawk. How does he square those line items?
Andy Kroll
By fudging the math in the case of the one big beautiful bill, or in some cases just not remarking on new gilded ballrooms or private jets for the DHS secretary. He couches all of this discussion about cutting government, cutting jobs, cutting spending as trying to eliminate the quote, unquote, woke element in government to rein in weaponized agencies.
Brooke Gladstone
But part of this is tactical on Vogt's part, right? He gets to do what he wants to do. If he doesn't complain about what Trump.
Andy Kroll
Wants to do, it's no accident. That Vote is one of the very few people who served all four years of the first Trump administration, spent four years between the presidencies, working in service of the president and being very close in the inner circle. And then now he has come back. He knows what to say, what not to say, to have the trust of Donald Trump, which is a difficult thing to do. But Vogt also has a long term view. This is a project of his that has been in the works for decades, long predating Donald Trump. And in 2023, Steve Bannon and Russ Vogt are on stage together. And Bannon makes this comment that Trump is a very imperfect instrument, but he's an instrument of the Lord, Bannon and vote. They see Trump as someone to help them enable a larger vision. Trump is not the be all and end all. But then in 2024, in a speech that we obtained that hadn't been reported, Vogt goes even further. He says that Trump is this singular historic figure, someone unlike any other president in American history, put on this earth to defeat the deep state, to end this supposedly corrupt government that we have found ourselves in, and that that is nothing more than a gift of God.
Brooke Gladstone
And he believes that you believe he believes that?
Andy Kroll
I absolutely believe that he believes that, yes. In one recording we obtained, Vogt said that Republicans need to learn to love shutdowns, because shutdowns are the way we save the country. And that's the way he talks. He talks about in terms of winning for the future of Western civilization. He views these kinds of fights, this shutdown that we're in right now, for instance, as existential battles for the survival of the United States of America. And then of course, that makes you think, what won't this person do in a position of power?
Brooke Gladstone
Here's another tape of vote. It's in a private speech in 2023.
Andy Kroll
We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. We want 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 to put them in trauma. As he put it in an interview with Tucker Carlson, the people who work in the bureaucracy, quote, hate the American people. Now that's just such an inflammatory, unfair comment. When you know the kinds of people who work for the federal government, they're not doing it to get rich, they're not doing it to be famous. These people are public servants who serve our country in mostly invisible ways, but keep our country strong and healthy and running.
Brooke Gladstone
So what's the end game here? As we white knuckle ourselves through, one of votes reported happy times. A government shutdown. It'll end. And if he really is shadow president, what are his priorities for the next three years?
Andy Kroll
One of the big things to watch is what is the high court going to say about unilaterally dissolving government unions and mass firing employees who supposedly have workplace protections? What is the Supreme Court going to say about the ombudsman unilaterally freezing hundreds of billions of dollars that Congress appropriated by law? Article 1, Power of the purse and vote has thrown a wrench, or as one person in our story put it, dropped a grenade into this system. That to me is the big, big question hanging over all of this right now. And I don't think it's a guarantee that this conservative supermajority marches in lockstep with the administration. But I certainly don't think it's a guarantee that they rule against Rough's vote in the White House either.
Brooke Gladstone
So like Stephen Miller, vote wants a blanket opinion that makes the presidency more powerful than it's ever been. It seems short sighted. It isn't always going to be their lot in power.
Andy Kroll
I have had the same thought many times. Where I come down is in two places. One is again vote in these private speeches he gave that I obtained the recordings of. You know, he talked about the 2024 election as akin to the 1860s, as akin to A civil war like moment.
Brooke Gladstone
Not the only one who thinks that.
Andy Kroll
No, he's not. That's right. But those were the stakes as he saw them. And then I also think that talking to people in government, talking to smart folks who observe government, the Trump administration can do so much damage in these four years, can traumatize so many federal workers, can throw such chaos into the federal bureaucracy that even a supercharged presidency under a Democrat can't rebuild.
Brooke Gladstone
I think federal workers were traumatized, but there are many glimmerings of shaking off the funk and maybe uniting with each other and with other opposition forces. I don't know, maybe that's just wishful thinking.
Andy Kroll
No, I think that's absolutely right. I mean, I talked with probably getting north of 100 at this point, federal workers, current fired folks who, you know, are in job limbo. I think one they believe that knowing explicitly would vote, has set out to do as it relates to them, does give them some agency because they see that this is explicitly what he's trying to do. Not a byproduct, not a bug, a feature. And also that there is solidarity among them, that they do have a voice and that voice can be powerful when they find each other. You know, people don't necessarily interact. When you're at CFPB and you're at cdc, the Fed, you're at the epa. But people are finding each other now and it's slow. But I hear that more and more people comparing notes, people comparing strategies, and I would not be surprised to see from collectives of federal workers speaking out to defend their jobs, defend their colleagues, defend this idea that the civil service workforce serves the American taxpayer to try to make this country work better, make people healthier, make roads safer, and make this democracy function. And that has been a heartening sign in this reporting.
Brooke Gladstone
Andy, thank you very much.
Andy Kroll
Thanks, Brooke.
Brooke Gladstone
Andy Kroll is a reporter at ProPublica covering justice and the rule of law. This interview first aired in October. See you Friday for the big show. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
WNYC Announcer
Since WNYC's first broadcast in 1924, we've been dedicated to creating the kind of content we know the world needs. In addition to this award winning reporting, your sponsorship also supports inspiring storytelling and extraordinary music that is free and accessible to all. To get in touch and find out more, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.
Podcast: On the Media (WNYC Studios)
Date: January 14, 2026
Hosts: Brooke Gladstone
Guest: Andy Kroll, ProPublica Reporter
This episode dives deep into the figure of Russel Vought, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under Donald Trump. Through a revealing conversation with journalist Andy Kroll, the episode examines Vought’s influence behind the scenes, his ideology, the methods he’s used to reshape the federal bureaucracy, and the ongoing legal and political ramifications of his tenure. The discussion sheds light on Vought’s history, his blend of Christian nationalism and anti-government zeal, and the lasting impacts he may have on the American state—a timely exploration as a federal judge temporarily stalls some of his more radical efforts.
The conversation is deeply analytical, sometimes incredulous or disturbed by Vought’s rhetoric and tactics, but also hopeful in the resilience and increasing cohesion of federal workers facing adversity.
This summary should provide a comprehensive sense of the episode’s arguments, highlights, and atmosphere for listeners and non-listeners alike.