Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, speaks on the floor of the Senate on Thursday. King urged his fellow senators to protect the U.S. Constitution and reject Russell Vought as the head of the White House budget office. Vought was later confirmed on a 53-47 vote.  Image taken from U.S. Senate broadcast

Sen. Angus King of Maine delivered a floor speech on Thursday urging his Senate colleagues to stand up for the U.S. Constitution and reject President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the office that oversees federal spending.

King said Russell Vought’s views of broad presidential authority, including the ability to withhold funding approved by Congress, and his involvement in drafting Project 2025, a collection of conservative policy proposals, reflect a coordinated assault by the new administration on the checks and balances that have made the United States an endurable democracy.

King called Vought “one of the ringleaders of this assault on our Constitution” hours before voting against his confirmation as director of the Office of Management and Budget.

The Senate voted 53-47 to confirm Vought shortly after 7:30 p.m. Thursday.

“Project 2025 is nothing less than a blueprint for the shredding of the Constitution and the transition of our country to authoritarian rule,” King said during a 20-minute floor speech. “(Vought) is the last person who should be put in the job at the heart of the operation of our government.”

King and the rest of Maine’s delegation have been increasingly critical of the new administration and have said they are being flooded with thousands of calls from worried constituents. The Senate’s phone system has been so overwhelmed that citizens are having trouble getting through, senators have said.

King, an independent and former Maine governor, caucuses with Senate Democrats, who took turns delivering floor speeches opposing Vought’s nomination through the night on Wednesday and continuing into Thursday.

Vought and technology billionaire Elon Musk have become the faces of the Trump administration’s aggressive moves to reshape the federal government and cut spending for programs they don’t support even though the funds have been allocated by Congress. Democrats used the full 30 hours afforded to them to drag out the confirmation vote.

KEY SUPPORT FROM COLLINS

Republicans, however, have a three-seat majority in the Senate, and Vought won key support from moderate Republicans, including Maine’s senior senator, Susan Collins, who voted in his favor.

Russell Vought, President Donald Trump’s nominee to direct the Office of Management and Budget, appears at a Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on Jan. 15. Rod Lamkey Jr./Associated Press

Collins told the Press Herald on Wednesday that she planned to vote to confirm Vought even though she opposes his belief that the president can withhold funding approved by Congress for programs he doesn’t support.

Collins said Vought is qualified, having held the position before during Trump’s first term. And he assured her over the weekend that he had no hand in the ill-fated order to unilaterally freeze federal grants and loans, which caused chaos and confusion before being rescinded by the administration amid fierce public backlash, even though the White House referred questions to Vought when the memo was issued.

Collins said any disputes over future so-called impoundments of federal funding, which would usurp her power as a chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, could be settled in the courts. A law passed in the wake of the Nixon administration clearly limits presidential authority to freeze spending, she said.

“I do intend to support his nomination,” Collins said. “If there are impoundments, I believe it will end up in court, and my hope is the court will rule in favor of the 1974 Impoundment and Budget Control Act.”

On Thursday, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey joined 11 attorneys general from other states to announce their intention to file a lawsuit aimed at preventing access to national payment systems by Elon Musk and his team.

“This level of access for unauthorized individuals is unlawful, unprecedented and unacceptable,” the group said in a written statement. “DOGE has no authority to access this information, which they explicitly sought in order to block critical payments that millions of Americans rely on —payments that support health care, childcare and other essential programs.”

King has repeatedly called out the administration’s aggressive moves, calling them illegal and an overreach of powers outlined in the Constitution.

MUSK’S ROLE QUESTIONED

King has joined other senators in sending letters demanding answers and opposing efforts by Musk and his unofficial advisory group, called the Department of Government Efficiency, to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development and to access sensitive governmental servers with classified information and personal information of federal employees.

King, along with seven Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, wrote White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles raising national security concerns about Musk and his team accessing classified information and sensitive personal information. They noted that the information accessed by Musk and DOGE is typically restricted to those with security credentials and extensive background checks.

The senators demanded answers about how Musk and his team are being vetted, the systems and records they’re accessing, and how they’re protecting information from misuse or public disclosure. The letter requests responses to 22 specific questions by Feb. 14.

Collins also expressed concerns about DOGE’s actions in an interview with the Press Herald on Wednesday and met with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to discuss the situation. Collins also serves with King on the intelligence committee, but she did not sign the letter.

Collins aides said that the senator was not asked to sign the intelligence committee letter and had nothing to report about who attended the bipartisan meeting or what steps they might take.

On Thursday, Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-1st District, and three other House Democrats wrote a letter to Lee Zeldin, the newly confirmed director of the Environmental Protection Agency, to demand answers to apparent ongoing funding freezes at the agency. The group requested answers by Feb. 12.

“We are outraged by the Environmental Protection Agency’s blatant and unlawful actions to abruptly halt crucial programs that are fundamental to the agency’s core mission of safeguarding human health and the environment,” they wrote. “These reckless actions are not only a gross dereliction of duty but will directly jeopardize families and communities, pollute our environment and accelerate climate change.

“The EPA’s decision to abandon these programs is a betrayal of its responsibility to uphold duly enacted spending laws. This is unacceptable and must be reversed immediately and completely to comply with the law and to protect the health of all Americans and the environments where they live.”

‘WHAT THE FRAMERS MOST FEARED’

During his floor speech, King urged everyone to see through the chaos and confusion caused by the blizzard of headline-grabbing executive orders, public statements and steady stream of reports of Trump’s actions at various agencies and instead focus on the thread that ties them all together — the direct assault on the Constitution.

“What I’m really worried about are the structural implications for our freedom and our government of what’s happening here,” King said. “We have to keep our eye on the big picture, not all the confusion and smoke that’s going on over the last couple weeks.”

As governor, King was at times frustrated by the slow pace of progress that comes with dealing with separate and co-equal branches of government. But he described those checks and balances “an essential feature of the system, not a bug” and that “the clumsy system is the mainspring of our freedom.”

King noted that Congress enacted the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, as a direct response to President Richard Nixon’s abuse of power and attempts to withhold funding approved by Congress. 

Thursday’s vote on Vought was another seminal moment for Congress to assert itself, he said.

“Shouldn’t this be an easy red line?” King said. “We’re experiencing in real time exactly what the framers most feared.

“When you clear away the smoke, clear away the DOGE, the executive orders, foreign policy pronouncements, more fundamentally, what’s happening is the shredding of the constitutional structure itself, and we have a profound responsibility, it seems to me, based on that pesky oath we all took to stop it, to stop it.”