Apr. 14, 2026, 8:50 PM EDT

When White House budget director Russell Vought appears before lawmakers on Wednesday, he will almost certainly face questions about a ballooning Pentagon budgeta special war-funding request and an extended Homeland Security shutdown. But Democrats also plan to press him on an issue closer to the Capitol: why he has spent months dodging their questions altogether.

Vought is set to testify Wednesday before the House Budget Committee and again before the Senate’s budget panel on Thursday. It’s a long-awaited chance for Democrats eager to question him on several fronts — including the cost of the Iran war, cuts to health care spending, a demoralized federal workforce and what the government’s own watchdog has described as the illegal impoundment of federal funds.

Lawmakers also have a growing to-do list that involves Vought, including a war supplemental for President Donald Trump’s military campaign in Iran and a reconciliation bill that would fund immigration enforcement agencies. Congress is also supposed to adopt a budget, though that may slip after the president’s budget was weeks late and omitted any information about projected federal debts and deficits.

But Democrats see Vought as “missing and reclusive,” ignoring their questions for months, the Budget Committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, told MS NOW. Vought didn’t testify before the committee last year, a break with tradition. And written questions to Vought have been met with “stone cold silence,” Boyle said.

In JanuaryHouse Democrats pressed Vought for answers on the administration’s health care plans, its compliance with congressionally approved funding laws, its attempt to withhold nutrition aid during last year’s government shutdown, and plans for federal layoffs.

“He sent us not one word in response,” Boyle said. “And in doing so, it shows their contempt for the United States Congress, and it shows their contempt for our constitutional system.”

Boyle told MS NOW he plans to introduce legislation to legally require Office of Management and Budget directors to testify before the House Budget Committee, after Vought didn’t do so last year. He also said he aims to require that the OMB director respond to members of the committee.

Democrats didn’t hear back from Vought about testifying to the committee until March, when Boyle displayed a picture of Vought as a missing child on a milk carton. That prompted Vought to respond on X that, “I am coming to testify on April 15. You should get up to speed.”

House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, had previously assured reporters that Vought would testify in 2026, but Boyle said Democrats hadn’t gotten confirmation until the milk carton incident.

“That’s what shamed him into it,” Boyle said of Vought.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee and a member of the Budget Committee, also said Vought had not been responsive to questions from Democratic members of the Senate, including on the cost of the Iran war. She said she’d press Vought at Thursday’s hearing on whether he would distribute funds appropriated by Congress.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said he’d ask Vought questions “around this ‘traumatizing the federal workforce’ stuff,” and whether DOGE wasted money by firing employees who needed to be rehired later. And Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said he’d ask Vought “how he’s not a corrupt stooge of the fossil fuel industry.”

Senate Republicans, meanwhile, say they haven’t been pressing Vought hard for answers. For example, the missing debt and deficit data in the budget proposal — which Maya MacGuineas, president of the fiscally conservative Committee for a Responsible Budget called “an astonishing lack of information — hasn’t prompted pushback from conservative lawmakers.

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said he was unbothered by Vought’s decision to leave out the debt data in the president’s budget request.

“Nobody looks at it anyway,” Scott told MS NOW. “It’s just for you guys to write something.”

Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, said he’d ask Vought “to give a great update on the progress that we’ve made” in reducing the deficit. When asked about the missing debt and deficit information, Moreno said he didn’t know about it.

“I haven’t had a chance to see the whole thing, to be honest with you, so I’ve got to see what that’s all about,” Moreno told MS NOW.

In prepared remarks obtained by PunchbowlVought reportedly plans to say that, “when President Trump took office, the nation was facing financial catastrophe under the failed leadership of the Biden Administration and decades of status quo spending strangling our nation.”

But federal spending, according to the Treasury Departmenthas increased under Trump. And the federal deficit is going up. (The federal deficit was $1.8 trillion in fiscal 2025 and is projected to be $1.9 trillion in fiscal 2026according to the Congressional Budget Office.)

Republicans have also been patient with the lack of information about the cost of the Iran war.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters Tuesday he still hasn’t seen a request and doesn’t know how much it will cost.

“The only thing I think I’ve seen is what you guys report,” Thune told reporters.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told reporters he’d want to scour the funding request’s details before he decides if he’ll support it.

But when pressed whether the administration had answered his questions on the topic, Johnson made it clear he hadn’t focused on those details yet.

“Haven’t really asked,” he said.

Jack Fitzpatrick covers Congress for MS NOW. He previously reported for Bloomberg Government, Morning Consult and National Journal. He has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Arizona State University.

Apr. 14, 2026, 8:06 PM EDT

The Justice Department requested on Tuesday for a federal appeals court to erase the seditious conspiracy convictions of a group of leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys — two right-wing extremist groups who were involved in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.

The request asks the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to vacate the individuals’ convictions, effectively erasing their guilty verdicts, and to dismiss the charges with prejudice. A dismissal with prejudice prevents the government from bringing the cases again.

In January 2025, President Donald Trump had already either pardoned or commuted the prison sentences of most of the roughly 1,500 people charged in connection with the 2021 attack on the Capitol after Trump’s loss to President Joe Biden in 2020. While most of the defendants received pardons, wiping their convictions, Trump only commuted the sentences of 14 high-profile defendants to time served, which upheld their convictions while allowing them to leave prison.

The request by the Justice Department would go a step further and erase all the convictions for the extremist group leaders, including Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodeswho didn’t receive pardons last January.

Only 12 of those defendants were referenced in the Justice Department’s request on Tuesday. Rhodes, who was sentenced to 18 yearsin prison, is among those who would benefit.

“The government’s motion to vacate in this case is consistent with its practice of moving the Supreme Court to vacate convictions in cases where the government has decided in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of a criminal case is in the interests of justice — motions that the Supreme Court routinely grants,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing signed by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro.

Trump himself faces criminal a series of civil lawsuits related to his incitement of the Jan. 6 attack. A federal judge earlier this month rejected his efforts to end the suits ahead of his trial, which has not yet been scheduled.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.