Trump’s Budget Pick Grilled on What Exactly He Thinks Is “Woke”

Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, appeared before the Senate Wednesday and was grilled over what he considers a target in his anti-”woke” chopping block.

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine went after Vought during his confirmation hearing for what he wrote as president of the Center for Renewing America, specifically a budget proposal titled “A Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government.” In that proposal, Kaine said, Vought proposed deep cuts to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, also known as food stamps.

“Is providing nutrition assistance to low-income kids ‘woke and weaponized’? Kaine asked Vought, who refused to answer, replying that he “wasn’t here to talk about the budget that center put out.”

Kaine pressed further, but Vought claimed he was only there on behalf of the president. The Virginia senator then pointed out that in the same document, Vought proposed deep cuts to Medicaid for low-income families, tenant-based rental assistance, and low-income housing energy assistance.

“This was all in your document about ending woke and weaponized government. OK, let’s see, we want to traumatize federal employees and then we want to take all of these programs that help everyday people who are struggling and cut them because they’re ‘woke and weaponized.’ Those are your words, not mine,” Kaine concluded. “From the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks.”

Vought clearly did not want to address or defend his old recommendations in a Senate hearing, and it’s clear why, as the cuts he proposed would be unpopular with most Americans. In front of what he thought was a more friendly audience in August, though, Vought bragged to two undercover journalists about his love of “Christian nation-ism.” He also touted his organization’s efforts to draft executive orders and policy memos for Trump to use on day one of his presidency.

Vought also co-authored the conservative manifesto Project 2025. But in his hearing Wednesday, he refused to answer questions from senators about his role in drafting Trump’s new executive orders, just as he did last week over whether he would uphold the law if confirmed.

Kaine’s questioning of Vought exposed what the right-wing ideologue’s plans will be in the new Trump administration, and they seem to be straight from the Project 2025 and Christian nationalism playbook. Thanks to Republican control of the Senate, those plans won’t hurt his likely confirmation one bit.

House Republicans announced Wednesday that they will form a subcommittee to reinvestigate the January 6 insurrection, following Donald Trump’s sweeping pardons for the rioters.

The new select subcommittee will basically just be a way to continue to undermine the legitimate findings of the previous investigation into January 6, which Trump and MAGA Republicans have continued to claim are fraudulent.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said he hoped the committee would expose “false narratives peddled by the politically motivated January 6 committee.”

The select subcommittee will be chaired by Representative Barry Loudermilk, who also leads the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight and last month released a 128-page “interim report” by House Republicans on the January 6 committee.

In his report, Loudermilk demonstrated that House Republicans are in lockstep with Trump over investigating the president’s political enemies, and called for Liz Cheney, the former January 6 committee vice chair, to be criminally investigated. Loudermilk accused her of witness tampering and colluding with former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified about Trump’s erratic behavior on the day of the deadly riot.

Just hours before Wednesday’s announcement, Senate Majority Leader John Thune had been downplaying Trump’s decision to pardon some 1,500 January 6 riots, insisting that people should not think about the insurrection anymore.

“We’re not looking backwards, we’re looking forward,” he said, according to CNN’s Manu Raju. Thune said that the pardons were given on a case-by-case basis, and that former President Joe Biden had “opened the door” because he had engaged in the “most massive use of the pardon power that we’ve ever seen in history.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson did the same. “The president’s made his decision; I don’t second-guess those,” Johnson said. “We move forward; there are better days ahead of us, that’s what we’re excited about. We’re not looking backwards, we’re looking forwards.”

But of course, rushing them all through on his first day was anything but case-by-case, and Republicans aren’t the slightest bit interested in looking forward.

As Loudermilk told reporters Wednesday: “You’ve got to look backwards to look forward.”

Pete Hegseth doesn’t think women deserve the right to vote, according to his ex-sister-in-law.

NBC reported on Tuesday that senators received the affidavit of Danielle Hegseth that contained new allegations against Hegseth, including that he regularly passed out from alcohol abuse and made his second wife fear for her life. Senator Jack Reed noted that the affidavit contained claims that Hegseth’s ex-wife Samantha also had an “escape plan” and a “safe word” in case things went too far.

Within Reed’s review of the affidavit was another deeply alarming claim: Hegseth reportedly believed that “women should not vote or work and that Christians needed to have more children so they could overtake the Muslim population.” This backward and racist take perfectly aligns with the brand of warrior Christian nationalism he’s been subscribing to for years.

This is the same man who described our current historical moment as “much like the 11th century.”

“We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we must,” he once wrote. “Arm yourself—metaphorically, intellectually, physically. Our fight is not with guns. Yet.”

The latest allegations come after Hegseth’s confirmation hearing last week. Many expected him to be confirmed before this news came out.

Fear of increased ICE raids have already negatively affected the nation’s agricultural sector, causing alarm that food prices could skyrocket in the near future as a result of Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies.

Bakersfield, California, saw a massive drop off in the number of field workers showing up for work last week after Border Patrol agents in unmarked Chevy Suburbans rounded up and detained immigrants in the area, profiling individuals they believed to be field workers, reported CalMatters.* The end result: acres of unpicked oranges roasting in the California sun at the height of the season.

Bakersfield makes up a small portion of California’s Central Valley, which produces approximately a quarter of the nation’s food. Kern County, where Bakersfield is located, has ranked within the top three agricultural counties in the nation for the last several years, largely off the backs of undocumented laborers, who are estimated to comprise more than half of the county’s workforce, according to CalMatters.

During a three-day operation in Kern County, undocumented workers were targeted walking in and out of gas stations, getting breakfast, at Home Depot, or while driving along the 99 Highway, leaving many with no other option than to simply stay at home.

“We’re in the middle of our citrus harvesting,” Casey Creamer, president of the industry group California Citrus Mutual, told CalMatters. “This sent shockwaves through the entire community. People aren’t going to work and kids aren’t going to school. Yesterday about 25 percent of the workforce, today 75 percent didn’t show up.”

Losing the bulk of America’s agricultural workforce overnight is a recipe for “absolute economic devastation,” according to Richard S. Gearhart, an associate professor of economics at Cal State-Bakersfield, who spoke with the nonprofit news outlet.

“You are talking about a recession-level event if this is the new long-term norm,” Gearhart said, arguing that the end result of Trump’s policies will be felt in the grocery store check-out lines across America.

The 47th president has effectively promised a full-throttle immigration crackdown for the next four years that includes attacking birthright citizenship and ordering high-profile ICE raids around the country against undocumented immigrants, decisions that could keep the backbone of the nation’s agricultural workforce inside.

But just two days into the administration, it appears that anti-immigration efforts will be a relative free-for-all. On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security announced it would roll back an Obama-era directive, suddenly allowing the immigration agency to detain people in sensitive areas such as hospitals, places of worship, court rooms, funerals, and weddings.

“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” a spokesperson for the agency said in a statement. “The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.”

* This article previously misstated when the raids in Bakersfield occurred.

Recently pardoned former Proud Boys founder Enrique Tarrio promised “retribution” in an interview with Alex Jones shortly after being freed from prison on Tuesday.

“I’d like to thank again President Donald J. Trump for helping us through these difficult times and releasing me, Joe Biggs, Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl, and Dominic Pezzola. Right? And all the J6ers,” Tarrio said. “We went through hell, and I’m gonna tell you, it was worth it, because what we stood for and what those guys stood for was what we’ve been fighting for and what we saw yesterday on the inauguration stage. I can’t tell you it’s been easy, but I will tell you it’s been worth it.”

The former Proud Boy was serving 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy over his role in planning January 6. He was freed after Trump pardoned or commuted every single person involved with the insurrection on Monday.

Tarrio struck a vengeful tone in what was nearly a 45-minute interview with Jones after his release.

They didn’t care about the evidence. They cared about putting Trump supporters in prison. Well, now it’s our turn. Now it’s our turn. I’m happy that the president’s focusing not on retribution and focusing on success, but I will tell you that I’m not gonna play by those rules. The people who did this, they need to feel the heat. They need to be put behind bars, and they need to be prosecuted. They pardon the J6 committee? Fine. In this country, our case proves that you could be put in prison for anything. They need to be imprisoned. We need to find and put them behind bars for what they did. They need to pay for what they did.

“We’ve got to do everything in our power to make sure that the next 4 years sets us up for the next 100 years.”

Tarrio split with the Proud Boys in 2021 after his former work as a federal informant came to light.