Coral Davenport

And I should say,

This comes from a place of thinking of the federal bureaucracy as something that is deeply problematic.

He calls it woke and weaponized, and he really thinks that the federal government is the problem.

And I should say another thing that comes up in my reporting a lot is the word nerd.

He really is this like hardworking policy nerd who has focused his whole career on this objective of smaller government with less spending and less workers.

He's such a true believer.

He even named his dog Milton for Milton Friedman, the free market economist.

And now he has met this moment of shrinking federal government.

Natalie, I have spent weeks and weeks of reporting trying to get at that.

And I should say that Russ Vogt did not grant me an interview for this piece, but I have read hundreds of pages of his writings.

I've listened to hours and hours of his podcasts.

I talked to between 30 and 40 people.

who are kind of in his orbit and have worked with him and know him and are his friends.

And what kind of came up is someone who really has believed this for a very, very long time.

He talked about that in his very first Senate confirmation hearing.

He grew up in a conservative, religious, blue-collar family.

He is the youngest of seven children, grew up in Trumbull, Connecticut.

His father, interestingly, was a union electrician, and he was a Marine Corps veteran.

His mother was a public school teacher.

In both of those cases, you know, I don't think of that as being something that would lead you into trying to work to minimize government, but he has described...