Last night along a party-line vote, the U.S. Senate confirmed Russell Vought as the next director of the powerful White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which has been at the epicenter of the Trump administration’s push to remake the federal government in an authoritarian image.
In so doing, Senate Republicans betrayed their constitutional duty of advice and consent. During his confirmation hearing, Vought admitted his hostility toward and intention to defy our constitutional order. This should have been categorically disqualifying for any officer of the United States, but especially one as powerful as the OMB Director.
Vought’s confirmation sets off a constitutional crisis unlike any other in our nation’s recent history. It isn’t a discrete event like the January 6, 2021, insurrection, but rather will unfold in a cascading, chaotic fashion. It is the constitutional equivalent of tossing pennies off the top of the Empire State Building with reckless indifference to the inevitable damage to our democracy that will occur.
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James Goodwin | February 7, 2025
On February 6, the U.S. Senate confirmed Russell Vought as the next director of the powerful White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which has been at the epicenter of the Trump administration’s push to remake the federal government in an authoritarian image.
James Goodwin | February 5, 2025
Over the course of two posts, I have explored in detail my major takeaways from the new “10-out, 1-in” executive order. President Donald Trump sort of announced the order last Friday night with a Fact Sheet, but not the actual order itself. Remarkably, the order is still not on the White House website but can be viewed on a third-party website. In this post, I offer my final set of observations on what the order is likely to mean during the second Trump administration.
James Goodwin | February 4, 2025
In my previous post, I began exploring some of my major takeaways from the new “10-out, 1-in” executive order. President Donald Trump sort of announced the order Friday night with a Fact Sheet, but not the actual order itself. At this point, the order is not on the White House website but can be viewed on a third-party website. In this post, I will offer some additional observations and analysis.
Center for Progressive Reform | February 3, 2025
The second Trump administration’s disastrous early-term actions do nothing to address the economic inequality that our political classes have long ignored. In its first two weeks, the administration has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accords, reversed federal initiatives on environmental justice, withheld public health information, frozen spending on environmental and climate mitigation programs, threatened to withhold federal disaster aid, and just recently threatened to fire more than 1,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) workers who focus on climate and environmental enforcement.
James Goodwin | February 3, 2025
Late Friday night, while news about Elon Musk’s apparent unconstitutional purge of the Office Personnel Management was beginning to trickle out, President Trump quietly announced his promised executive order calling on agencies to eliminate 10 existing “rules” for every new rule they want to institute.
Brian Gumm, Bryan Dunning, Catalina Gonzalez, Federico Holm, James Goodwin, Minor Sinclair, Rachel Mayo, Sophie Loeb, Spencer Green, Tara Quinonez | January 30, 2025
We at the Center for Progressive Reform cannot sit idly by and watch the Trump administration’s relentless attacks on the transgender community here in the United States and around the world. The Center’s staff condemns the Trump administration’s attacks on the transgender community — especially trans children.
Daniel Farber | January 29, 2025
In recent days, President Donald Trump has said that he won’t provide relief for the Los Angeles fires unless California changes its voting laws and its water regulations. He also suggested that he’d like to abolish FEMA entirely. The first of Trump’s proposals is likely unconstitutional. The second one is both a terrible idea and beyond his legal authority.
Daniel Farber | January 28, 2025
A sleeper provision in one of President Donald Trump’s executive orders attempts to revolutionize the way the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) operates and cut environmental review to a minimum.
Sophie Loeb | January 28, 2025
On December 11, 2024, in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, 40 folks attended the first annual rural clean energy convening co-sponsored by the Center for Progressive Reform and the Center for Energy Education. Attendees included FEMA representatives, USDA and other government agency officials, local residents, county commissioners, and energy policy advocates. The main topic of the […]