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President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday that he intends to nominate outgoing Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., to be his deputy budget director, a consolation prize for the departing lawmaker who lost a close race for attorney general of his home state last month.
Bishop, a member of the House Freedom Caucus who was first elected in 2019, did not seek reelection this year after deciding to run for the statewide post back home. Bishop lost that election to a fellow departing House member, Rep. Jeff Jackson, D-N.C., by about 3 percentage points.
Jackson decided not to run for another House term after the GOP-controlled North Carolina legislature approved redrawn district lines that gave him little chance of returning to Congress.
Bishop is now in line for the No. 2 position in Trump’s Office of Management and Budget under Russ Vought, who was OMB director in Trump’s first term and is his intended nominee to serve in that position again.
Vought and Bishop first need to be confirmed by the Senate, where Democrats are certain to scrutinize their records in the hearing process.
“Dan will implement my cost-cutting and deregulatory agenda across all Agencies, and root out the Weaponized Deep State,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform, in announcing the decision.
Bishop, a Trump ally, serves on the Homeland Security and Judiciary committees. He also serves on the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which House Republicans set up after taking the majority in the 2022 midterm elections.
That appointment followed Bishop’s role in delaying former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s rise to the gavel, as he was one of 20 Republicans to initially block McCarthy from ascending to the speakership.
After negotiations with McCarthy, enough members eventually voted for him to allow him to become speaker.
Bishop was not one of the eight Republicans who joined with every Democrat to overthrow McCarthy in October 2023, but Bishop repeatedly made clear his displeasure with the ex-speaker. He blasted the debt limit deal McCarthy cut with President Joe Biden earlier that year as a “disaster” that would add trillions of dollars to the national credit card.
In a June 2023 interview on Fox News with then-host Pete Hegseth — who’s now Trump’s pick for Defense secretary — Bishop said McCarthy and GOP leaders “haven’t been square with the American people” about the debt limit deal, calling it a “missed opportunity” that split the Republican Conference.
He’s also routinely voted against stopgap and omnibus spending packages. Before the final spending bill for fiscal 2024 passed in March, Bishop issued a warning to his colleagues: “Woe betide the members who vote for this atrocious bill.”
Bishop served in both chambers of North Carolina’s state legislature before running for Congress, and rose to prominence for his role backing state legislation that barred transgender people from using their preferred bathrooms.
In Congress, Bishop has pushed legislation that would prohibit federal funding for schools that teach that the U.S. is “fundamentally racist,” or that “an individual, because of his or her race, bears responsibility for the actions committed by members of his or her race,” among other provisions.