Vought was a Project 2025 author. He wrote about weaponizing the federal workforce to increase presidential powers by targeting offices linked to the Executive Branch, including the OMB, National Economic Council, and National Security Council.

Vought has spoken frequently about his desire to use the power of the Executive Branch to shrink government in order to benefit corporations. Vought explicitly stated his intent to take sharp cuts to the bureaucracy, saying: “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.”

• Vought is invested in the Fidelity 500 index fund, which has 8.4% of its long position assets in fossil fuel stocks.
  

President Trump said Vought knows how to “end Weaponized Government” and Vought’s group the Center for Renewing America called one of its budget proposals “A Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government.” But Vought and his group are poised to weaponize the federal government against Trump’s political enemies, with Vought supportive of using the military against the American People via the Insurrection Act. Notably, Trump repeatedly considered invoking the Act in his first term.

Vought is also president and director of the Center for Renewing America, a Project 2025 advisory organization. From the beginning of 2023 to 2025, Vought was paid $542,204 in salary and bonus from the Center for Renewing America and its 501(c)4 lobbying arm.

• The Center for Renewing America was incubated by the Conservative Partnership Institute, which funded many of its early years, and the two organizations have shared an address on tax forms. While the Center was being developed, CPI spun off a for-profit HR department, Compass Professional, led by Vought. Compass was paid $1.3 million for providing "services" to the Conservative Partnership Institute, money which Vought and his business partners at Compass (three of whom were principles at Conservative Partnership Institute) could split.
  

In 2024, Vought received $15,000 from the Republican National Committee to “prepare the policy platform” for the Republican National Convention’s Committee on the Platform.