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russell vought
Trump Keeps Giving Ominous Warnings About a Midterm 'Surprise.' Election Experts Say Whatever It Is, They're Ready
Hours later, during a rally in Maryland, he shouted out Russell Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Vought, a key architect of Project 2025, has been instrumental in Trump's second-term restructuring of the federal government and in weaponizing federal funding to exert leverage over states.
"We have some big surprises coming up in another few weeks, right, Russ?" Trump said. "He's going to be one of the very important people in the history of our country, in my opinion. He's got some great things happening.”
In light of Trump's suggestions that he could "nationalize" elections or outright "cancel" them, send immigration agents to polling places, seize voting machines, or use federal agencies to seek out "ineligible" voters, his unexplained intonations about a coming "surprise" immediately became the subject of rampant speculation.
"The time to prepare for him to try to steal an election is now," wrote Fox News anchor Jessica Tarlov. Former US Attorney Joyce Vance wrote that it signaled “election interference is in the offing.” Conservative Trump critic Pedro Gonzalez warned that it could signal a "repeat of 2020," when Trump attempted to overturn his loss to former President Joe Biden by pushing false claims of widespread voter fraud.
"Nothing this administration has done so far has come out of nowhere."
Common Dreams spoke with several voting rights and election security experts about what sorts of "surprises" Trump may have in store and what powers he may actually attempt to wield. They made one thing abundantly clear: Whatever he tries to do—legal or otherwise—they're ready.
"No one outside the administration knows what a 'Midterm Surprise' means, but nothing this administration has done so far has come out of nowhere," said Cerin Lindgrensavage, who serves as counsel for Protect Democracy. "They have been signaling their plans for months."
Lindgrensavage told Common Dreams that "one clue" was the administration's use of federal payouts to voters—which some critics have characterized as "bribes"—including Trump's promise to send each American adult a $5,000 check if Republicans emerge victorious. Last week, Trump announced that around 20 million Medicare recipients would receive $90 checks from a fund meant to improve the program.
"We've been paying attention to the accelerating pace at which federal money is being shipped out the door and heralded in big announcements, in ways that look more like popularity plays than what Congress intended the use of those funds for," Lindgrensavage said.
Michael McNulty, the senior policy director at Issue One, agreed that while we "can't know exactly" what Trump has in mind, "we can look at the pattern," which his organization has described as the "election takeover playbook."
"It starts with tired, recycled false election fraud narratives such as claims of foreign interference, noncitizen voting, mail-in voting problems—despite himself voting by mail in previous elections—or ‘corrupt’ election officials, even when the evidence contradicts them," McNulty explained. "He then uses that to justify trying to take control of election processes, whether through an emergency declaration, demands for state voter data and election materials, or federal agents near polling places."
"It ends," he said, "with efforts to undermine certification if the results aren't what the administration wants."
OMB has no formal authority over elections. But McNulty stressed that Vought could still use his office's powers to exert "indirect" influence over the states that run them.
"Withholding funds, imposing grant conditions, and coordination with other agencies," he said, "could be used to pressure states and localities."
Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for the second Trump administration, speaks during a Senate Committee on the Budget hearing to examine the president's fiscal year 2027 budget proposal on Capitol Hill on April 16, 2026, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
However, he said to "keep in mind those levers are limited by what Congress has authorized, and courts have repeatedly pushed back on funding conditions that go beyond the law."
McNulty told Common Dreams he is unaware of any specific effort directly tying OMB to election administration, but said there was a risk of possible coordination among OMB and the departments of Homeland Security and Justice "on voter data, security funding, and Election Day activity."
“We have strong protections in place, and we intend to use them."
Other experts suggested it was less useful to speculate on what Trump might do than to look at how he is already trying to exceed his legal authority.
Trump has repeatedly suggested that he should have had federal authorities seize voting machines in 2020. Democracy Docket reported on Tuesday that election denialist activists urged him to declare a "national emergency" to do just that while meeting with him in the White House recently.
Pamela Smith, the president and CEO of Verified Voting, said her organization was prepared in case Trump attempts to seize voting machines or other election materials.
“The states run elections, and the president has no authority to affect those processes, as courts have repeatedly shown," Smith told Common Dreams.
By preparing officials for what to do if chains of custody on ballots are broken, she said, "we are helping election offices prepare for any threats to ballots throughout the November 3 election and in the weeks that follow, so that every ballot can be tracked, secured, and accounted for."
John Cusick, assistant counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), told Common Dreams his group is preparing for threats ranging from federal interference in election administration to voter intimidation and mass voter challenges.
“We have strong protections in place, and we intend to use them,” Cusick said, pointing in particular to Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voter intimidation.
Demonstrators gather on the National Mall during a 'Defend the Vote' rally marking the 63rd anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington in Washington, DC, on August 28, 2026. (Photo by Mehmet Eser/Anadolu via Getty Images)
He noted that LDF has already sued over the prospect of federal law enforcement at polling places.
“Let me be plain," he said, "a polling place is not a checkpoint.”
Cusick said LDF is also working with national, state, and local partners to identify problems ahead of election day and train volunteers to observe and report suppression efforts.
"We will protect this election," he said. "But it should not take such a herculean effort from the civil rights community to secure and protect voting rights. Congress must meet its constitutional responsibility to ensure every eligible voter can participate free from discrimination, no matter where they live."
He called on Congress to strengthen voting rights protections, establish national election administration standards, and provide more funding directly to local election officials.
Celina Stewart, the CEO of the League of Women Voters, told Common Dreams she would not speculate on what surprise attacks Trump may have in store or attempt to "assign meaning where no evidence exists."
"What we do know is that election administration in the United States is governed by law, distributed across states and local jurisdictions, and constrained by constitutional checks and balances," she said. "No president has unilateral authority to control election administration, determine election outcomes, or override the lawful counting and certification of ballots."
"Any attempt by any federal official to exceed constitutional or statutory authority would be subject to legal challenge and public scrutiny," she said. "Our focus is not on political rhetoric but on ensuring that voters can cast ballots freely, that election officials can do their jobs without interference, and that the 2026 elections are administered according to law."
Russell Vought's Wholesale Attack on the Common Good Should Be a Top Issue for Any 2028 Democrat
Whatever their differences on policy and posture, these candidates share a common blind spot: they are not talking nearly enough about Russell Vought.
Whether we’re recounting the Department of Government Efficiency’s infiltration of the federal government or tracking the day-to-day material harms created by Trump administration policymaking, RDP has urgently sought to classify Vought as Trump 2.0’s top villain.
Democrats, however, have badly underinvested in making Vought as infamous as Elon Musk, his former DOGE co-lead. Our Kenny Stancil recently examined this reality in a Talking Points Memo op-ed, where he observed that:
“Democrats sent 478 unique emails mentioning Musk from January 27 to March 31, 2025—including 91 sent during the week of January 31 to February 7, the zenith of Musk’s D.C. rampage when DOGE infiltrated the Treasury Department and shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development. In comparison, Democrats mentioned Vought in just 28 emails between October 1 and November 12, 2025, even as the OMB director used the government shutdown to intensify his longstanding efforts to gut federal agencies and block the disbursement of congressionally appropriated funds [...] In all, Democratic lawmakers mentioned Vought in just 78 e-newsletters sent between January 20, 2025 and April 30, 2026. Musk, by contrast, was invoked in 858 emails during the same period—11 times more often.”
The ambitious politicians quietly auditioning for the Democratic presidential nomination have no reason to continue making this mistake. Any candidate serious about their presidential bid has both a strategic and moral imperative to build a coherent narrative against Vought—the main engineer behind the GOP’s government power grab.
Why Vought?
The case for candidates to make Vought a central villain in their 2028 campaigns is not merely because he deserves the attention. It’s also a political layup hiding in plain sight.
Presidential campaigns are, at their core, exercises in narrative construction. The most durable campaigns provide a compelling explanation of what went wrong and—most importantly—who’s at fault. FDR had his “economic royalists;” Obama had the financial industry that cratered the economy; and Biden had the chaotic Trump 1.0 administration and its lethal mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic and economic crisis.
The 2028 Democratic presidential nominee will need a similarly coherent villain. Vought embodies that role more completely than any other figure in the Trump administration, including Trump himself.
What makes Vought so uniquely suited for this role is his position as both the connective tissue between Trump’s two terms and the architect of a right-wing political project that will outlast Trump. Vought was a principal architect of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led blueprint for restructuring the executive branch around (Trump’s) unchecked presidential power. Vought’s fingerprints are on the document’s most radical chapters, including the one laying out a strategy to dismantle the administrative state. When Trump is gone, the devastation Vought wrought—gutted agencies, traumatized civil servants, impounded funds, weakened congressional oversight—will remain.
The 2028 Democratic nominee will be running, in part, on a platform of de-Trumpification and pro-democracy reconstruction. To make that transformative project tangible, voters need to understand what was destroyed, how systematically it was destroyed, and by whom. Vought is the answer to all three questions.
Moreover, the Republican nominee will be able to point to the fact that they are (presumably!) not Trump and seek to distance themselves from Trump. But Vought, the glue that binds each of the disparate elements of the GOP together, and Voughtism will still be around. The Republican party is not going to disavow corporate funded right wing think tanks, Christian nationalism, or boring but incredibly powerful white guys. Vought and Voughtism, unlike Trump, will not be disavowed.
The Record Is There. Use It
One advantage that 2028 candidates have over their counterparts in prior cycles is that the evidence against Vought is not abstract or speculative; it is documented, voluminous, and in many cases already adjudicated as illegal.
Consider the impoundment campaign alone. Since the start of Trump’s second term, the Government Accountability Office has identified at least six instances in which the administration committed clear violations of the Impoundment Control Act—the post-Nixon law passed specifically to prevent presidents from unilaterally withholding congressionally approved spending.
When Vought isn’t handwaving away these violations as “non-events with no consequence,” he’s blatantly lying to the American public about his illegal activity. At his April 2026 Senate Budget Committee testimony, Vought flatly denied having impounded any funds.
2028 hopefuls should be rallying around the negative consequences of Vought’s efforts to veto socially useful spending and harm government workers:
- At least $410 billion in funding owed to communities nationwide has been blocked or delayed under Vought’s watch.
- There are 278,000 fewer federal civil servants than there were at the start of Trump’s second term.
- Medicaid payment portals in at least 20 states went dark in the opening weeks of the administration’s funding freeze, leaving doctors and hospitals unable to access reimbursement systems.
- NOAA’s capacity to warn communities about severe weather has been degraded—a fact with life-and-death implications that any candidate running in a hurricane- or tornado-prone state would be wise to amplify.
None of this is the product of partisan gridlock or legislative failure. It is the deliberate handiwork of one man operating with a coherent ideological agenda, largely outside public view. Presidential campaigns exist to bring that kind of structural harm into public view.
Another aspect of Vought’s record that has direct implications for 2028 campaign strategy is what historian Colin Gordon calls “vindictive federalism:” the systematic withholding of federal funds from Democratic-led states and cities as a coercive tool to force compliance with the administration’s agenda. Our Aya Dardari explores this topic in detail in a new report.
This is not a peripheral concern for governors like Newsom or Shapiro. It is a direct attack on their executive authority and their constituents’ livelihoods. When Vought’s OMB freezes Medicaid reimbursements in California, or holds up SNAP payments in Pennsylvania, he isn’t engaging in abstract federal policy disputes. Vought’s actions inflict tangible harm upon real communities, which governors eyeing a 2028 run are well-positioned to document, personalize, and prosecute politically.
Any governor in the field should be holding press conferences that connect Vought’s funding maneuvers to closed roads, delayed medical treatments, and disrupted social services in their states. The argument writes itself: this is what a shadow president operating without accountability looks like, and this is what a Democratic administration will undo.
Candidates Need to Start Building an Anti-Vought Narrative Now
The 2026 midterms will consume most of the political oxygen between now and the formal start of the 2028 presidential race. But the pre-campaign period is precisely when narratives get built. Voters aren’t introduced to presidential candidates fresh in a general election; they encounter them having already absorbed years of framing and counter-framing about the state of the country.
The framing that will serve Democrats best in 2028 is one that identifies the damage, names the responsible party, and makes a credible case for restoration—and Vought gives the 2028 field everything they need to construct that framing:
- a paper trail of illegal acts;
- a documented theory of unlimited executive power;
- a catalog of concrete harms affecting voters across the country;
- and an extremist ideological agenda that the majority of Americans do not share.
The political process for building that case is not glamorous. It requires sustained attention to a man who is deliberately uncharismatic and strategically obscure. It also requires candidates to make the OMB directorship feel as urgent as any Cabinet post with a higher public profile.
But the alternative—arriving at the 2028 general election without having made Russell Vought a known, notorious quantity—is a gift to the Republican Party and the man who has spent decades reshaping the federal government in ways that no single election can easily reverse.
The 2028 Democratic nominee will be asking voters to believe that government can work for them again. The most compelling version of that argument starts with explaining, in detail, who broke it.
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