During the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump claimed to know nothing about Project 2025—the deeply unpopular roadmap for a second Trump term created by the right-wing Heritage Foundation.
“I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” Trump said at the only debate he had with Vice President Kamala Harris, trying to distance himself from the plan that calls for banning medication abortion and purging the federal government of anyone not deemed sufficiently loyal to Trump, among other things. “I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it purposely. I’m not going to read it.”
But now, over a month since Trump’s unfortunate victory, he’s nominated at least seven people who either directly contributed to the document or who promoted it, according to a Daily Kos review—with more Project 2025 contributors rumored to be on the short list for other positions.
This breaks a promise from Trump’s transition co-chair Howard Lutnick, now Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Commerce. Lutnick said there would be no Project 2025 people in a second Trump administration.
“Heritage, because of Project 2025, is radioactive,” Lutnick told the New York Post the night of the vice presidential debate. “As in, none, zero, radioactive. So that’s a clear position.”
But now that Trump won, he is installing Project 2025 contributors and promoters to roles such as director of the CIA, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, ambassador to Canada, and border czar, to name a few.
And let’s not forget JD Vance, who wrote the foreword to a book by the head of Project 2025.
Here are the other Project 2025 contributors and promoters Trump has chosen for his administration.
Russ Vought, nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget
Trump tapped Russ Vought—who wrote a chapter in Project 2025 on the executive office of the president—to serve as the head of the Office of Management and Budget.
Vought wants Trump to amass more power by purging the federal government of employees deemed not sufficiently loyal to Trump, as well as by allowing Trump to take more unilateral executive actions to achieve his goals.
“The American people currently are not in control of their government, and the president hasn’t been either,” Vought said in an interview with right-wing webshow host Tucker Carlson, according to The New York Times. “We have to solve the woke and the weaponized bureaucracy and have the president take control of the executive branch.”
During the campaign, Vought was surreptitiously taped talking about how he would help implement Project 2025 goals if Trump won.
In the video, Vought said, “Eighty percent of my time is working on the plans of what’s necessary to take control of these bureaucracies. And we are working doggedly on that, whether it’s destroying their agencies’ notion of independence … whether that is thinking through how the deportation would work.”
Vought also said he would help Trump transform the country based on his Christian nationalist views.
“I want to make sure that we can say we are a Christian nation,” Vought is caught on camera saying. “And my viewpoint is mostly that I would probably be Christian nation-ism. That’s pretty close to Christian nationalism because I also believe in nationalism.”
Brendan Carr, nominee for chair of Federal Communications Commission
Trump nominated Brendan Carr, who wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC, to chair the commission that regulates communication in the United States. Carr is currently an FCC commissioner.
“Commissioner Carr is a warrior for Free Speech, and has fought against the regulatory Lawfare that has stifled Americans’ Freedoms, and held back our Economy,” Trump wrote in a statement announcing Carr’s nomination. “He will end the regulatory onslaught that has been crippling America’s Job Creators and Innovators, and ensure that the FCC delivers for rural America.”
In Project 2025, Carr called for going after Big Tech by reforming Section 230, which shields social media companies from being held liable for what users on their platforms say. Changing Section 230 would actually hurt internet users more than Big Tech, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which said in May: “[O]nline speech is frequently targeted with meritless lawsuits. Big Tech can afford to fight these lawsuits without Section 230. Everyday internet users, community forums, and small businesses cannot. Engine has estimated that without Section 230, many startups and small services would be inundated with costly litigation that could drive them offline.”
Tom Homan, border czar
Tom Homan—one of the masterminds of the inhumane family-separation policy Trump implemented in his first term in office—is listed as a contributor to Project 2025.
Project 2025 calls for allowing the Trump administration to use “expedited removal” for undocumented immigrants found at places like hospitals, schools, or churches. It also calls for building more immigration detention centers to keep undocumented immigrants locked up as they await deportation proceedings, which could take years.
Trump said that Homan, as border czar, will be “in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin.”
“I’m going to run the biggest deportation operation this country has ever seen,” Homan said in 2023, before Trump was the GOP nominee.
John Ratcliffe, nominee for CIA director
Trump picked John Ratcliffe, a former representative from Texas who served in the first Trump administration as director of national intelligence, to head the CIA.
Ratcliffe is also listed as a contributor to Project 2025, which calls for reforming the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was used during the probe of Trump’s possible collusion with Russia during the 2016 campaign.
“From exposing fake Russian collusion to be a Clinton campaign operation, to catching the FBI’s abuse of Civil Liberties at the FISA Court, John Ratcliffe has always been a warrior for Truth and Honesty with the American Public,” Trump said in a statement of Ratcliffe. “When 51 intelligence officials were lying about Hunter Biden’s laptop, there was one, John Ratcliffe, telling the truth to the American People.”
Pete Hoekstra, nominee to be ambassador to Canada
Trump nominated Pete Hoekstra, chair of the Michigan Republican Party, to serve as U.S. ambassador to Canada, saying in a statement that he gave Hoekstra the role because “Pete is well-respected in the Great State of Michigan – A State we won sizably.”
Hoekstra is listed as a contributor to Project 2025.
Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary
Trump chose Karoline Leavitt, a failed congressional candidate who worked as a spokesperson for Trump’s 2024 campaign, to be White House press secretary.
During the campaign, Leavitt insisted that Trump knew nothing about Project 2025.
“He has unveiled hundreds of policy proposals on his website. … The media likes to talk about Project 2025, which has nothing to do with our campaign. It is Agenda 47,” Leavitt said in August.
However, Leavitt herself appeared in a Project 2025 training video called “The Art of Professionalism,” where, according to Media Matters for America, Leavitt “discussed working in the Trump White House and how to navigate working for the federal government.”
James Braid, White House director of legislative affairs
Punchbowl News reported that Trump chose Braid as his liaison to Capitol Hill to help him get his legislative agenda through Congress.
Braid is a Vance ally, working as legislative director and deputy chief of staff in Vance’s U.S. Senate office.
Like Leavitt, Braid also starred in Project 2025 training videos, talking about congressional relations and how Trump could get the Project 2025 agenda through Congress.
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