A New York Times reporter sparked controversy this week after suggesting in an article that President-elect Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, Russell T. Vough, helped promote a “unitary executive theory” ahead of Trump’s second term.
It drew sharp criticism on social media and among conservative analysts who argued the description of the theory was fundamentally untrue.
The report in question by Alan Rappeport focused on Vought’s nomination to head up OMB during Trump’s second presidency, a position he also held during Trump’s first term, and the work Vought did after Trump left office.
In the years after Trump’s first term, the Times report says, Vought founded a conservative think tank and served as an architect of Project 2025, described in the report as an effort by conservative groups to help advance executive branch power.
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The New York Times publishing headquarters (Alexandra Schuler/picture alliance via Getty Images)
The report says the legal underpinning of Project 2025 is “a maximalist version of the so-called unitary executive theory that rejects the idea that the government is composed of three separate branches” and “argues that presidential power over federal agencies is absolute.”
Though the article has since been updated to describe the unitary executive theory as three “separate but equal branches,” the article was panned by conservatives and others who disagreed with the Times’ characterization of the legal theory.
The White House in Washington, D.C. (Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
It was the second part of the statement in particular that sparked backlash from conservative commentators, including National Review editor Charles Cooke, who argued in an op-ed that the Constitution and its wording, in his view, is explicit about how the executive, legislative and judicial branches can exercise power and about the limitations of the executive branch.
“The United States is a democratic republic in which elected officials are held accountable for their decisions,” Cooke wrote in an op-ed for the National Review.
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Russ Vought, former director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, speaks during a panel discussion at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., Feb. 28, 2021. (Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“The only elected official who holds power within the executive branch is the president. For anyone else to exercise power without the permission or endorsement of the sole electee would be to create a fourth branch of government, unmoored from oversight, and thereby to undermine the whole apparatus.”
Others also took aim at the article on social media, arguing the Times reporter fundamentally misunderstood the unitary executive theory.
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“This is bad, even for the New York Times,” Iowa law school professor Andy Grewal wrote in a widely-shared post on X.
The New York Times did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for a response.
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