# The ‘Shadow President’ Dismantling The Government  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: The ‘Shadow President’ Dismantling The Government - Show: Fresh Air - Owner / Host: NPR - Guests: [Andy Kroll](https://share.snipd.com/person/8d1fbe3f-eaa8-41a3-8c6a-85aa894661df) - Episode publish date: 2025-10-30 - Episode AI description: Andy Kroll, an investigative reporter for ProPublica, dives into the intriguing world of Russell Vought, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Kroll paints Vought as a 'shadow president' seeking to undermine federal independence. They discuss Vought's strategy of using shutdowns as leverage, his radical constitutionalist views, and how he blends culture wars with budget cuts. Kroll also highlights the long-term implications for public service and predicts looming legal battles over executive power. - Duration: 43:22 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/0850c40c-bf8b-48eb-87c8-c41e1f806d83) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/74968254-1b39-42d5-89fb-0ba0e44cf3a3) - Export date: 2026-02-17T23:20:52 ## Snips ### [OMB As A Power Choke Point](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8bcfd5f5-1b4d-43ff-aaaf-e14bf0d59fd1) 🎧 00:17 - 05:06 (04:48) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/b86b1606-2594-487d-a9dc-25fe8797bef7" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Russell Vought uses OMB to radically expand presidential power and dismantle federal agencies. - He frames bureaucracy as a 'deep state' that must be weakened to restore presidential control. #### 💬 Quote > There is this office, OMB, that sits in between Congress and the agencies that in the hands of Russ Vought has become this choke point to cut off funding...and to exert the president's will in a way that we honestly haven't seen since the Nixon administration. > — Andy Kroll Andy Kroll on how Vought uses OMB to control agencies #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Russell Vogt has been called the shadow president, including by my guest, journalist Andy Kroll. Vogt is the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Not the sexiest sounding title, but he's the architect behind the Trump administration's dismantling of federal agencies, slashing foreign aid, pausing or canceling over $400 billion for infrastructure and clean energy projects in blue states, ending the Justice Department's independence from the president, stuffing so many budget cuts in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, and expanding the power of the president. He was also one of the people behind Project 2025, which was intended to be a blueprint for a second Trump term, and that's what it's become. Vogt describes himself as a radical constitutionalist. Andy Kroll has been investigating how Vogt has been using his power and what his goals are. Kroll covers the Justice Department and Judiciary System for ProPublica, where he's written extensively about vote. Kroll has an article in The New Yorker in collaboration with ProPublica titled Donald Trump's Deep State Wrecking Ball. Kroll is also the journalist who first got access to and published the video of vote saying this back in 2023. 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 their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma. Okay, **Terry Gross:** and there's one more Russell Vogt clip I want to play for you that will give you more of a sense of Vogt's goals and strategy. When he was on the Carlson show on November 18, 2024, just 13 days after Trump was reelected, Carlson asked Vogt about his priorities. This was on top of Vogt's list. So my belief for anyone who wants to listen is that you have to, the president has to move executively as fast and as aggressively as possible with a radical constitutional perspective to be able to dismantle that bureaucracy in their power centers. And I think there are a couple of ways to do it. Number one is going after the whole notion of independence. There are no independent agencies. Congress may have viewed them as such, SEC or the FCC, CFPB, the whole alphabet soup. But that is not something that the Constitution understands. So there may be different strategies with each one of them about how you dismantle them. But as an administration, the whole notion of an independent agency should be thrown out, particularly with the Department of Justice, in which there's literally no law. All it is, precedent from the Watergate era that the attorney general and those lawyers don't work for the president. And who do they work for? They think that they work for themselves. They think that they are. So they have the power to kill people just because they awarded themselves that power. They have power to kill people. I mean, they believe that they have the power for for all of the the prosecutions and that the president doesn't get a say in any of that. And we have to go at that as hard as we possibly can. Well, **Terry Gross:** Andy Crow, welcome to Fresh Air. We have a lot to talk about. We sure **Andy Kroll:** do. It's a real pleasure to be here. Pleasure **Terry Gross:** to have you. So let's get into what we just heard Russell Vogt say. I'll start with federal agencies. Why are they such a big target for Vogt? **Andy Kroll:** the chief reasons that, in his view, the American government has ceased to serve the American people and that it has become this rogue bureaucracy where there are civil servants who are unelected and who have their own agendas. They, in his belief, ignore the president and carry out this plan, these policies, these rules and regulations that, again, in Russ Vogt's view, have become completely untethered from the will of the president and then the people who elected that president. And he wants to rip out as much of that bureaucracy as he possibly can. He calls it the deep state. He deeply believes that, as he put it in a --- ### [Independence Is Not Constitutional, He Says](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6495bb6a-82cc-404d-8629-878c4e7dc737) 🎧 02:15 - 03:55 (01:39) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/313834b2-42a4-464d-8cb1-83700b50a67a" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Vought argues independent agencies don't exist under his constitutional view and the president should control them. - He specifically targets DOJ independence as illegitimate precedent rather than law. #### 💬 Quote > There are no independent agencies...That is not something that the Constitution understands. ...With the Department of Justice, in which there's literally no law. All it is, is precedent from the Watergate era that the attorney general and those lawyers don't work for the president. > — Russell Vought Russell Vought on Tucker Carlson about independent agencies #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** When he was on the Tucker show on November 18, 2024, just 13 days after Trump was reelected, Carlson asked Vogt about his priorities. This was on top of Vogt's list. So my belief for anyone who wants to listen is that you have to, the president has to move executively as fast and as aggressively as possible with a radical constitutional perspective to be able to dismantle that bureaucracy in their power centers. And I think there are a couple of ways to do it. Number one is going after the whole notion of independence. There are no independent agencies. Congress may have viewed them as such, SEC or the FCC, CFPB, the whole alphabet soup. But that is not something that the Constitution understands. So there may be different strategies with each one of them about how you dismantle them. But as an administration, the whole notion of an independent agency should be thrown out, particularly with the Department of Justice, in which there's literally no law. All it is, is from the Watergate era that the attorney general and those lawyers don't work for the president. And who do they work for? They think that they work for themselves. They think that they are. So they have the power to kill people just because they awarded themselves that power. They have power to kill people. I mean, they believe that they have the power for for all of the the prosecutions and that the president doesn't get a say in any of that. And we have to go at that as hard as we possibly can. --- ### [Funding Freezes Create Administrative Chaos](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7c98e281-0f1e-489e-bd2a-e5036b6823c0) 🎧 11:59 - 14:21 (02:21) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/6caff20a-17c8-4753-a35d-870e3fb14e3f" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - OMB normally apportions funds to prevent agencies running out mid-year but Vought froze appropriations with open-ended reviews. - These freezes created chaos because agencies lacked timetables and reasons for the hold-ups. #### 💬 Quote > What it has done in a massive way...is actually say, we're just not going to portion that money, period. We've frozen money that is supposed to go from Congress to, say, the NIH, or the EPA, or the IRS. > — Andy Kroll Andy Kroll explaining OMB funding freezes #### 📚 Transcript **Andy Kroll:** Not in a permanent, official kind of way. The director of the Office of Management and Budget can't put a veto on, say, a multibillion dollar program to support clean energy or to build the Second Avenue subway in New York City. That is the role of Congress. Again, writes the laws, appropriates the money. What OMB does in normal times is what I've kind of likened to a loving but cautious parent who gives out an allowance to their kids at sort of regular intervals to try to make sure that those kids don't spend the money that's going to them in one fell swoop. So OMB apportions money, to use the wonky term, to federal agencies at a kind of regular cadence to basically make sure that, say, the EPA doesn't run out of money two months before the fiscal year's over. Agencies have some problems with controlling the spending if they don't have that sort of regulator in place, that cadence coming from OMB. So that's what OMB normally does. What it has done in a massive way, in an unprecedented with Russ Votencharge, is actually say, we're just not going to portion that money, period. We've frozen money that is supposed to go from Congress to, say, the National Institutes of Health, or the Environmental Protection Agency, or the IRS. We're freezing it. And they give various reasons. They say, we're doing a review of this funding, but these reviews have no timetable. The agencies don't know how long or why this review is happening. Or Vogt and his colleagues will say, this funding doesn't align with the president's priorities. It's part of the Green News scam, a term that they've used, or it's part of, quote unquote, transing our kids. And so they just the money back. And that has created this chaos across the federal government because the normal functioning of how laws get passed, money gets appropriated, and agencies do their work has been completely jammed up. --- ### [Pocket Rescission Sidesteps Congress](https://share.snipd.com/snip/37c18050-f582-4202-8c98-728c4cfb7f78) 🎧 15:57 - 18:45 (02:47) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/2e616093-1c09-4c91-8680-a77fb4e44053" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Vought revived rescission requests and used a 'pocket rescission' to let time expire instead of seeking Congress's vote. - That maneuver bypassed previous congressional checks and cut funding like for foreign aid and CPB. #### 💬 Quote > What Vote essentially told Congress was, I don't need your vote. I don't need you at all to rescind this money...He sees this pocket rescission kind of like a pocket veto, but specifically targeting funding and programs. > — Andy Kroll Andy Kroll on Vought's rescission tactics #### 📚 Transcript **Andy Kroll:** Yeah, and we're getting into the budgetary weeds here, but these are really critical. These **Terry Gross:** are powerful tools. **Andy Kroll:** Yeah, that's right. And they are very much the tools that vote has been using to accomplish the very goal he talked about in that Tucker Carlson clip that you played earlier. In June, the White House sent what's called a rescission request down Pennsylvania Avenue to Congress. What that asked Congress to do, that request, was to rescind $9 billion that Congress had already appropriated by law. It had passed a law that accounted for this money to go to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to go to foreign aid programs, and now the White House said to Congress, we want you to take a vote on rescinding that money, zeroing it out. The thing that is striking to me is that Vogt tried to do this in the first Trump administration, when he had a similar role at the Office of Management and Budget. And ultimately, he was the director at the end of the first Trump administration. They sent a massive rescissions request in the first Trump administration to Congress, and Congress said no. Congress narrowly defeated this measure, and it was seen back then as the legislative branch exerting its will, kind of standing up for itself and saying, we write the laws, we appropriate the money. We don't support you, the White House, coming over here and telling us to undo work that we've already done, the negotiations, the compromises, the deal making. Fast forward to this summer. VOTE goes back to the toolkit and sends another rescission request to Congress for Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding, for USAID foreign aid funding, and this time it passes. Congress votes to rescind this money, and the effects of that, of course, have pretty devastating for the programs and agencies affected. But then, a few months later, the vote takes an even more aggressive step in the same direction. He issues what he has called a pocket rescission. What that essentially means is it's a request that went to Congress and said, we want to rescind even more money. And this time it was about $5 billion, again, targeting foreign aid. But what Vote essentially told Congress was, I don't need your vote. I don't need you at all to rescind this money. --- ### [Trauma As A Strategy](https://share.snipd.com/snip/584bd859-033f-41f9-b856-14b71e4c980c) 🎧 21:47 - 26:40 (04:53) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/8375fddc-c366-4cfd-a0ce-ca2ca79b2c3b" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Vought appears to intend chaos as a tool to traumatize civil servants and discourage public service careers. - He celebrated past bureaucratic trauma and seems to replicate that effect deliberately. #### 💬 Quote > We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected...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. > — Russell Vought Russell Vought describing goals for civil servants (clip quoted on Fresh Air) #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** And sometimes that's contradicting what they've already voted to do. Is chaos a goal of Russell Votes? **Andy Kroll:** administration has done in less than a year and not come away with thinking that chaos is a goal and certainly an outcome that serves Vogt and his team's larger agenda of putting cracks in the federal government shaking the stability of this typically rock solid, steady institution that is the federal bureaucracy. I talked to dozens of people who have worked with Vote, who have observed him closely, talked with a lot of federal workers who have been affected by the funding freezes, affected by the mass layoffs, affected by all the different maneuvers that vote has attempted so far. and it came out of one of these conversations with a former civil servant, was how much this administration and really votes efforts have shattered this idea of public service, at least at the federal level, as a reliable, stable way to not just find employment, but to serve a greater good, to serve your country, to a part of this larger mission, this larger ideal. You know, the people who work in the federal government are doing it because the pay is great. They're not toiling away at the education department or the FBI because it's going to make them famous or they're going to achieve viral influencer status. They do it because they believe in this larger mission and they're willing to work under Democratic and Republican presidents. But there is this larger notion of public service, this ideal that drives them. That idea has really taken a beating in this administration, to the point that former federal workers I talked to have said, things are so chaotic, are so uncertain. I don't know if I would want to work for the federal government again, because I don't want to have to go through what I've already gone through this year. **Terry Gross:** I wonder if that's intentional. If you want to destroy federal agencies and the so-called deep state, one way to do it is to discourage people from working in federal government, to make it seem like you're not going to have a reliable job. We might take it away from you at any point. If the president thinks you're disloyal and you're not following his agenda, he has the right to fire you. We can defund agencies. We can close the doors of agencies. So, like, you're asking for instability. You might be an idealist, but, you know, this might not be good for you. I **Andy Kroll:** have to think that that is the intended outcome. And I think this comes back to the line of votes that set me down this path, this year-long path of reporting, which were these comments about wanting to put civil servants in trauma. I went back and looked at his social media footprint. He doesn't have a major presence online. He is not a Pete Hegseth or a Kash Patel who sees himself as this kind of public influencer type figure. But Vote does chime in every once in a while. He has over the years. And what I found actually was there was a New York Times article that came out when Joe Biden was president, but it talked about the lingering effects of the first Trump administration's chaos and the dysfunction and the aggressive policy changes at the top, specifically at the EPA. And there was someone in there in the New Times article who said that this was a traumatic experience for the people who worked at the EPA, the first Trump administration they were talking about here. And Russ Vogt shared this story online. And he shared it with a little message above that said, quote, straight into my veins, as in, I love what this story is conveying about federal workers feeling traumatized. And clearly his goal was to try to replicate that on a much larger scale. --- ### [Doge Opened A Door Vought Exploited](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0e16470f-6749-4c5b-a1e8-7a5187a16b73) 🎧 28:45 - 30:50 (02:05) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/02827191-6005-43d1-a107-973a834c518e" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Vought acted as a planner and took advantage of Elon Musk's Doge rapid purge to push his longer-term blueprint. - Doge served as a blunt instrument that opened opportunities Vought then exploited. #### 💬 Quote > Doge, with Musk at the head was kind of like a battering ram, a blunt force instrument that swept through the federal government...And so I think while there may have been some particular programs...Vought saw an opening to take advantage of what Doge showed was possible. > — Andy Kroll Andy Kroll describing interplay between Doge and Vought #### 📚 Transcript **Andy Kroll:** think the way to understand Vogt and Doge is this. Vogt is a planner. He's a thinker. He's a student of not just history, but how the federal government works and where the levers are that he can pull to try to enact his agenda. Doge, with Musk at the head was kind of like a battering ram, a blunt force instrument that swept through the federal government trying to get rid of as many employees, cancel as many programs as it could as fast as it could. And so I think while there may have been some particular programs, there may have been some specific offices that Russ Vogt may not have wanted to get rid of, or may not have had on his list of targets to be wound down, and Doge did go after those. Doge kind of changed the calculus for a vote, but for a lot of Trump administration officials. They saw that if you moved fast and broke things, to use the Silicon Valley catchphrase, you could kind of get away with it. Was **Terry Gross:** Russell Vogt the person behind Doge? Was it his idea start that? **Andy Kroll:** From all the reporting I've done, people I've talked to who are close to Doge, that was very much an Elon Musk idea, something that Musk pitched to the president and the president embraced. In some ways, I think Doge kind of got in the way initially of Vogt's plans that he had been crafting for years for a potential second Trump administration. But as things started to play out earlier this year, and as Doge started to move so aggressively through the federal government, I think Vogt saw an to take advantage of what Doge showed was possible and to take even more drastic action. --- ### [Provoking Lawsuits To Redefine Power](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1b90c1f5-32ef-41df-966e-65173cd5f482) 🎧 31:45 - 33:10 (01:24) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/da539b60-72c7-4ae1-ac5e-fc3c895a094b" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Vought intentionally tees up legal fights by pushing aggressive personnel moves and mass layoffs during shutdowns. - He aims to test and shift legal precedents to expand executive authority. #### 💬 Quote > This is one of those examples...It has teed up a legal fight...He's looking for ways to potentially get new precedent, change the law...and find certain laws unconstitutional, or just shift the line a little bit of what the executive power that a president has looks like. > — Andy Kroll Andy Kroll on Vought using aggressive actions to prompt litigation #### 📚 Transcript **Andy Kroll:** seeing this play out right now as we approach a month of a federal government shutdown here in Washington. Vote and OMB sent out this memo a few days before the shutdown, telling agencies to put together plans to lay off workers en masse during the shutdown. Now, that is something that all the legal experts I talked to, the congressional staffers, people steeped in the law of how personnel actions work in the federal government, say you can't do. You can't use a shutdown as an opportunity to lay off tens of thousands of people. That is exactly what Vogt told agencies to do. That's exactly what he has given interviews saying he wants to do. This is one of those examples of what you're talking about. It has teed up a legal fight that's playing out. A federal judge on the West Coast has, for now, temporarily halted vote's actions, these agency actions to lay off workers. But this seems like one of those moments where vote is testing the limit. He's looking for ways to potentially get new precedent, change the law. And I think you see a number of those attempts across the board, freezing programs, laying off workers. --- ### [Shutdowns As Policy Weapons](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bd16e596-81ce-4b69-8443-071086327e96) 🎧 33:51 - 35:12 (01:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/0285fc58-8f06-4747-ad75-7d78b09aadeb" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Vought prizes government shutdowns as leverage to force major policy rollbacks Congress won't grant. - He frames shutdowns as opportunities to undo programs like Obamacare subsidies or clean-energy funding. #### 💬 Quote > Vought sees shutdowns as these rare opportunities...to achieve big policy outcomes that you can't get through the normal course of Congress...Republicans need to love shutdowns because shutdowns are the way you save the country. > — Andy Kroll Andy Kroll quoting Vought on the political use of shutdowns #### 📚 Transcript **Andy Kroll:** Vote sees shutdowns as these rare opportunities, though they're increasingly less rare lately, to achieve big policy outcomes that you can't get through the normal course of Congress or the normal course of the federal government's business. I quote him in the story in one of, I think, about 50 briefings that he gave that I got a recording of saying, Republicans need to love shutdowns because shutdowns are the way you save the country. It's not just about using a shutdown as leverage to threaten or actually fire tens of thousands of federal workers. It's also the way that you try to achieve these really dramatic policy changes. Right now, this shutdown is all about these really critical subsidies for Obamacare. The next shutdown could be trying to get Democrats to concede to major policy changes, funding cuts on clean energy or infrastructure, unwinding, say, Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. VOTE sees these shutdowns as chances to get what you can't otherwise achieve. You can't otherwise get the opposing party to agree to when Congress is normally in session. That's why he's so eager for them. --- ### [Linking Budget Cuts To Culture Wars](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ca59a497-98b4-447e-ba1a-abd6f42ef3be) 🎧 37:09 - 39:00 (01:50) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/29035c56-b5a0-414e-b900-10196ded41f4" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Vought fused budgetary attacks with culture-war messaging by labeling programs 'woke and weaponized.' - That framing helps rally public support to defund targeted agencies and programs. #### 💬 Quote > He comes up with this phrase, woke and weaponized. Programs that have anything to do with diversity are too woke. The Justice Department and the FBI are weaponized. > — Andy Kroll Andy Kroll on Vought's messaging strategy #### 📚 Transcript **Andy Kroll:** Vote has spent nearly 30 years working in Washington and has toiled away as a staffer on Capitol Hill, as an activist for the Heritage Action Group, and then of course in the Trump administration, to try to find ways to convince the public to rally behind and then members of Congress to actually shrink the size of the federal government in a dramatic way. These were always arguments being had about the debt, the deficit, the specific dollar amounts of these programs. What I learned in my reporting, largely drawing on these recordings that I obtained for this story, is that Vogt comes to this realization that he has to link together the culture war and the fiscal wonky budgetary agenda he's going to be successful. It's not enough to just talk about impoundment, to talk about how much this or that program costs. You need to come up with a way that makes that program feel wrong on a cultural level. He comes up with this phrase, woke and weaponized. Programs that have anything to do with diversity are too woke. The Justice Department and the FBI are weaponized. It becomes a very sticky talking point. And I think it's a real inflection point for him where he brings together these two parts of his worldview and the larger MAGA agenda so that the public, or at least the president's followers, are along with him. They support, they understand why we're going after clean energy funding or why we're going after the community developmental financial institution, these wonky agencies that are now tagged as being too woke or they're being weaponized. --- ### [Religious Nationalism As Policy Rationale](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e9b03883-1496-4b2f-8940-e27fa30a0f51) 🎧 40:51 - 43:19 (02:28) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/e02de387-5511-4536-a45c-11703c7107dd" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Vought's Christian nationalist rhetoric seeks to infuse Judeo-Christian values into policy, affecting immigration, marriage, and abortion. - He envisions shaping government to reflect those religiously framed 'truths.' #### 💬 Quote > He has said...that if we are a Christian nation, then our immigration system should reflect that...He talks about Judeo-Christian values informing the work of people in public office...same-sex marriage are not compatible...Abortion rights, not in any form, not compatible. > — Andy Kroll Andy Kroll describing Vought's Christian nationalist views #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** Vogt describes himself as a Christian nationalist. And he says, of course I describe myself that way. I'm a Christian and I'm a nationalist. But when you say Christian nationalist, the implication is, or the definition is usually, that you want to define America as a Christian nation. So to what extent does Russell Vogt want to define America as a Christian nation? Like what is, does he have a vision of what a Christian nation would be? **Andy Kroll:** He's talked about this in private settings, what that actually means that we are a Christian nation, because he very much believes that. He has said that repeatedly. He talks about it in a couple of ways. For instance, he has argued that if we are a Christian nation, then our immigration system should reflect that. And there should be more vetting of people who want to come to this country legally, whether they believe Christianity or not. He has said, why would we let someone into this country who, for instance, believes in Sharia law? So that's one approach. Who do we even let into the country? He's also talked at great length about Judeo-Christian values and teachings informing the work of people in public office, people who make policies, people who work not only in Congress, but also in the executive branch and in the bureaucracy. How do you get policies that flow from Judeo-Christian worldviews? How do you make the legislative process more influenced by a Judeo-Christian worldview? For him to go by his own words, that would mean that things like same-sex marriage are not compatible with that Judeo-Christian worldview and shouldn't exist. Abortion rights, not in any form, not compatible with that Judeo-Christian worldview value system is how he's put it. He uses this term actual truth. I think it's a kind of a biblical truth notion when he talks about how do we more integrate this specific Judeo-Christian value system with the functioning of our American government. --- ### [Supreme Court Will Decide Lasting Effects](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6f2b8db2-4673-475d-8654-27f58756e903) 🎧 44:38 - 45:49 (01:11) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/daef8ddc-9d97-4020-a7ce-0ce369d53155" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Many of Vought's moves are likely to land before the Supreme Court, which could cement a more powerful executive. - Court rulings could permanently alter the separation-of-powers balance he seeks. #### 💬 Quote > So many of the changes, the policies, the executive powers that Vought has exercised in just this year alone are likely going to end up in legal battles before the conservative supermajority in the Supreme Court. > — Andy Kroll Andy Kroll on the legal trajectory of Vought's actions #### 📚 Transcript **Andy Kroll:** feeling that working for the federal government, that public service is not a safe and stable way to create a career, to be part of this larger American project, I think is a really, really major consequence and impact of what he's done. He has pushed the legal bounds of what the president can do to exert his will, talking about the funding freezes, talking about checking Congress's power of the purse, using the executive branch to choke off funding or redirect it to other places that are more in line with the president's agenda. Ultimately, I think the biggest consequences of vote's actions are going to play out in front of the United States Supreme Court. So many of the changes, the policies, the executive powers that vote has exercised in just this year alone are likely going to end up in legal battles before the conservative supermajority in the Supreme Court. --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts