Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Politics

Russ Vought Makes a Power Play for Trump’s Energy Policy

The president’s early executive orders give the once-and-future head of the Office of Management and Budget far-reaching powers.

Russ Vought Makes a Power Play for Trump’s Energy Policy
Illustration by Simon Abranowicz

When Donald Trump has talked about his new administration’s energy policy leaders, he has focused, so far, on a specific type of person.

You might call them energy insiders. At the highest level, they include Doug Burgum, the former North Dakota governor and incoming interior secretary, and Chris Wright, the fracking executive and incoming energy secretary. Both soon-to-be officials know a lot about how the energy industry works, and they hold beliefs about energy development that — while far from aligned with the climate policy mainstream — are directionally in agreement with many in the fossil fuel industry itself.

But based on a close reading of Trump’s initial executive orders, they are not the only officials who will wield power in the Trump administration. Instead, crucial energy policy will be decided in part by a small number of individuals who have no special insight into the energy industry, but who do have various dogmatic ideas about how the government and the economy should work. The most powerful of this second group is Russ Vought, a lead author of Project 2025 and the director-designate of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Trump’s initial orders establish the White House Office of Management and Budget, known as OMB, as an unmistakable de facto power center for energy and climate policy in the administration. In clause after clause of Trump’s orders, energy officials across the federal government are told to consult with the OMB director before they can make a decision, rewrite a regulation, or disburse funding.

Even in more constrained presidencies, OMB has been a particularly powerful agency. As the largest office in the White House, OMB is in charge of writing the president’s annual budget proposal and working with Congress on legislation; one of its suboffices, the Office of Information and Regulation, approves new federal rules before they are finalized.

Vought’s vision for the agency goes far beyond those traditional lines, though. He believes that OMB can play a role in curtailing the size of the federal government and firing reams of civil servants. He argues that the White House can claw back funding that has been appropriated by Congress, even though the Constitution gives control over “the power of the purse” to Congress alone.

Trump’s executive orders suggest that Vought’s OMB will seek to uproot existing energy policy — and that some of his earliest attempts at freezing congressional spending may affect the climate.

A provision in Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” executive order, signed hours after his inauguration, pauses all funding tied to the Inflation Reduction Act or Bipartisan Infrastructure Law until Vought personally approves of it.

This provision appeared to freeze all funding tied to either law for 90 days, a drastic move that could already violate Congress’s spending authority under the Constitution. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974, a federal law that governs this authority, allows the president to pause funding for 45 days, not 90. (Vought believes that this law is “unconstitutional.”)

Then it allows Vought and Kevin Hassett, who will lead Trump’s National Economic Council, discretion over whether that money gets spent. “No funds identified in this subsection … shall be disbursed by a given agency until the Director of OMB and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy have determined that such disbursements are consistent with any review recommendations they have chosen to adopt,” the order says.

After this order threw billions of dollars of federal highway and transportation funding into question, the White House seemed to walk back some of the policy Tuesday, clarifying that it only sought to block funding related to what it called President Joe Biden’s “Green New Deal.” (Even this change still leaves open exactly what funding has been frozen.)

This is not the only place where OMB appears in Trump’s energy orders. The “Unleashing American Energy” directive requires the head of the Environmental Protection Administration to reopen a study into whether carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases are dangerous air pollutants.

The EPA first found that greenhouse gases cause climate change — and are therefore dangerous — in 2009. The first Trump administration didn’t try to overturn this finding because it is scientifically unimpeachable.

The same order also says that OMB will soon issue new rules governing agency actions “when procuring goods and services, making decisions about leases, and making other arrangements that result in disbursements of Federal funds.”

Missing from the new executive orders is virtually any mention of the National Energy Council, the new Burgum-led entity that Trump has said he will create in the White House. It’s still unclear what role this body will play in the Trump administration, but it has been described as a nerve center for decision-making about all energy policy. The new array of orders suggest OMB may already be claiming part of that role.

That said, the Interior and Energy secretaries make their own appearance in the orders. The orders direct the Secretary of the Interior to investigate what can be done to speed up and grant permits for domestic mining. And the orders convene the Endangered Species Act’s so-called “God squad,” a council of agency heads that can override provisions in the conservation law. The Interior Secretary sits on this powerful committee.

The most significant sign of Wright’s influence, meanwhile, is that Trump’s declaration of an energy “emergency” calls out energy technologies that he favors or that his company has invested in, including geothermal technology and nuclear fission.

One possible reason for Wright and Burgum’s absence: Neither has yet joined the administration officially. Both are likely to be confirmed by the Senate on Thursday. They might want to talk to their colleague Russ Vought when they get in the door.

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Economy

Trumponomics Is Starting to Have Some Ugly Effects

The energy sector — including oil and gas — and manufacturing took some heavy hits in the latest jobs report.

A worker and a graph.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

We got a much better sense of what the American labor market is doing today. And the news was not good.

The economy added only 22,000 jobs last month, far fewer than economists had predicted, according to a new release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The new data also shows that the economy gained slightly more jobs in July than we thought at the time, but that it actually lost 13,000 jobs in June — making that month the first since 2020 to see a true decline in U.S. employment.

Keep reading...Show less
Climate Tech

Everybody Wants to Invest in Critical Mineral Startups

Trump’s enthusiasm for the space has proved contagious — building on what Biden started.

Mining and money.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

It’s become a well-known adage in energy circles that “critical minerals are the new oil.” As the world pushes — haltingly but persistently — toward decarbonization and electrification, minerals such as lithium, nickel, and copper have only risen in their strategic importance.

These elements are geographically concentrated, largely in spots with weighty implications for geopolitics and national security — lithium largely in South America and Australia, copper in South America, nickel in Indonesia, cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and graphite in China. They’re also subject to volatile price swings and dependent on vast infrastructure to get them out of the ground. But without them, there are no batteries, no magnets, no photovoltaic cells, no semiconductors, no electrical wiring. It is no surprise, then, that it’s already been a big year for investment.

Keep reading...Show less
Green
Energy

AM Briefing: Revolution Strikes Back

On a Justice Department crackdown, net zero’s costs, and Democrats’ nuclear fears

Revolution Wind Strikes Back at Trump’s Stop-Work Order
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Hurricane Lorena, a Category 1 storm, is threatening Mexico and the Southwestern U.S. with flooding and 80 mile-per-hour winds • In the Pacific, Hurricane Kiko strengthened to a Category 4 storm as it heads toward Hawaii • South Africa’s Northern Cape is facing extremely high fire risks.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Revolution Wind fights back against Trump’s stop-work order

The owners of Revolution Wind are fighting back against the stop-work order from President Donald Trump that halted construction on the offshore wind project off the coast of Rhode Island last month. On Thursday, Orsted and Skyborn Renewables filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accusing the Trump administration of causing “substantial harm” to a legally permitted project that was 80% complete. The litigation claimed that the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management “lacked legal authority for the stop-work order and that the stop-work order’s stated basis violated applicable law.”

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow