OCTOBER 2025 – DC-based nonprofit ProPublica is on something of a tear here – three Rosebud awards in the last five weeks. The latest goes to Andy Kroll, formerly of Rolling Stone and Mother Jones, for his platter of recent stories (and a YouTube.com video) examining Russ Vought, Trump’s powerful OMB Director. Vought of course is the principle author of Project 2025, the conservative playbook that Trump pretended he knew nothing about on the campaign trail – and which became the lodestar of his second term. So far Vought, save for some cable interviews, has tried to keep a low profile, and gun-shy big newsrooms haven’t bird-dogged him the way they could. But Vought is the one swinging Trump’s wrecking ball on the federal government, and so far he’s had good success.
One of Kroll’s pieces on Vought posted at NewYorker.com, a sign that David Remnick and his editors respected Kroll’s work – and it merited a wider audience. It’s not a typical People Profile, but it’s close.
Yes, Kroll will immediately be attacked as a left-wing troublemaker writing a “take-down” of a key administration figure – but the facts about Vought’s agenda are indisputable at this point. Whatever the merits of downsizing the federal government – and even some Democrats admit there are – Vought’s personal views about embedding Christian nationalism into the US government and national policy, well, put him out in left field, if on the playing field at all.
Quite beyond the political duopoly that gotten us to this point, Washington remains village of characters: American politics is, more than ever in this Age of Trump 2, utterly personal.
https://www.newyorker.com/newsletter/the-daily/how-to-break-the-government
https://www.propublica.org/article/about-russell-vought-trump-shadow-president