Security detail for President Donald Trump’s budget chief and Project 2025 architect Russell Vought is being paid for by what’s left in funding for the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.
There isn’t much left of USAID after Trump and Vought worked together to dismantle the agency last year. Just around 100 staff members are left to close out all operations by September.
Still, the White House Office of Management and Budget, which Vought oversees, is allocating $15 million from what remains of USAID operating expenses to pay the US. Marshals Service to protect the political appointee through the end of 2026.
Earlier this year, a man was arrested and is facing attempted murder charges after law enforcement said he showed up at Vought’s Northern Virginia home with rubber gloves and a surgical mask.
According to officials within the Trump administration, Vought has received increased threats related to his work since being picked by the president and his control over Project 2025, the conservative blueprint that has influenced much of Trump’s second term.
Mother Jones has not seen or confirmed any of these threats.
As ProPublica reported in October, “Vought is the architect of Trump’s broader plan to fire civil servants, freeze government programs and dismantle entire agencies.” He’s overseen tens of thousands of federal employees losing their jobs and was tasked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to “oversee the closeout” of USAID, the agency now bankrolling his security detail.
The Trump administration’s decision to cease USAID operations around the world that assist in treating and preventing diseases, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Atul Gawande, will contribute to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people globally, with two-thirds of them being children.
Vought, who said he hopes to put bureaucrats “in trauma,” has even faced protests from his own neighbors—though that pushback consisted of yard signs and messages written in sidewalk chalk and not violent threats, per reporting from Mother Jones’ Isabela Dias.
One such sidewalk read: “I was hungry and the USA fed me. Until Vought cut USAID.”
This post has been syndicated from Mother Jones, where it was published under this address.