Donald Trump spent his presidential campaign running from Project 2025. Now, he’s using it to stock his White House and administration.
In recent days, Trump has tapped nearly a half-dozen Project 2025 authors and contributors, including Brendan Carr, who Trump picked this week to lead the FCC; former Rep. Pete Hoekstra, who got the nod for ambassador to Canada; and John Ratcliffe, who was tapped for director of the CIA. One of Trump’s first selections — Tom Homan as “border czar” — was also a Project 2025 contributor.
The next Project 2025 alum to join the administration could be Russ Vought, the president-elect’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, who is being closely considered for a return to the role, POLITICO reported this week. That’s despite Trump once calling the group’s work product “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” and the leader of his transition team, Howard Lutnick, saying the group had made itself “nuclear.”
Not anymore.
“I don’t think the Trump administration sees Project 2025 as toxic,” said Michael Cannon, director of health policy at the CATO Institute, who advised The Heritage Foundation project but declined to be listed as one of its authors. “So, it should not surprise us when some of the people who contributed to that effort get picked up by the administration.”
Now Project 2025 alums are slated to have key roles in his administration — particularly on the economy, immigration and dismantling the administrative state.
And with the most recent round of controversial Cabinet nominees, Cannon quipped, the Trump transition is “doing their level best to make Project 2025 look reasonable.”
Still, there are limits. Roger Severino, an anti-abortion stalwart who held a prominent role at HHS during the first Trump administration and was the lead author of Project 2025’s health care chapter, was rejected by Trump’s transition team to fill the No. 2 job at the agency over his participation in the project. Anti-abortion groups had lobbied hard for his nomination, but Trump’s team is trying to distance itself from the strict federal curbs on abortion Severino called for in Project 2025, after running on promises to leave the issue to the states.
In some cases — like Vought — it’s unclear whether the influence of Project 2025 alumni ever truly ceased, even when Trump repeatedly disavowed the project on the campaign trail. Despite those pronouncements, Vought has played a key role behind the scenes, informally advising the Trump campaign on trade and economic policy alongside Trump loyalists like Vince Haley, the campaign’s policy lead, and Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s former trade chief.
Vought wrote a section of the Heritage report on paring back federal spending and regulations, as well as Project 2025’s 180-day transition paybook. In an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show on X, he said he would pursue a “massive deregulatory agenda” alongside Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and be “as radical or aggressive as you can” in reducing full-time federal employees and contractors.
Officials at The Heritage Foundation, amid a rocky summer where some prominent Republicans were criticizing the group — namely, top operatives on the Trump campaign, like senior adviser Chris LaCivita — were already anticipating that their standing would vastly improve after the election. Throughout much of 2024, the think tank took the position of “we’re going to slide down a little bit and be quiet,” said a Heritage official granted anonymity to speak freely.
But by October, the official said, there were already signs that there “was less cautiousness about Project 2025 and Heritage,” giving way to quick nominations of Heritage fellows and Project 2025 contributors to Trump’s new administration.
At a book release party last week for Heritage President Kevin Roberts — whose September publication date was pushed back until after the election, amid concerns about the Project 2025 brand — Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) was among several members of Congress there to lend support for the organization.
“I told Kevin, I think it helps,” Norman told POLITICO of all the backlash and hand wringing over Heritage and Project 2025 in recent months, arguing that the publicity would ultimately serve to be helpful to the organization implementing its agenda.
That’s certainly not how Trump’s team saw things for months, though.
Democrats proved successful in raising awareness of the group’s plans, an effort that began in February and picked up traction by early summer. Voters began bringing up Project 2025 organically in focus groups conducted for President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign. Google searches started picking up, peaking in July.
That was around the time where Trump himself issued a statement on Truth Social, writing that “some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” and claiming he had “no idea who is behind it.”
Sensing a threat, MAGA Inc., the main super PAC supporting Trump, launchedits own Project 2025 website this summer, calling it a “hoax” and trying to capture concerned voters’ search traffic.
But those close to Project 2025 stress that Trump isn’t likely to adopt its recommendations wholesale.
“It was never accurate to say that Project 2025 was the Trump agenda,” Cannon said. “But he’s certainly friendly to parts of Project 2025 — particularly the most concerning, repressive parts, like immigration restrictions.”
The trade chapter of the report, for instance, included separate arguments for free trade and protectionist policies, reflecting a deep divide within Trump world over tariffs.
“Remember, you had Heritage giving 30 pages to a defense of free trade,” Cannon added. “So, there are also things in there that Trump doesn’t like and would never do.”
For Democrats, the spate of hires come as a deflating — if not unexpected — development in the transition. During the presidential campaign, Democrats went all in on linking Trump to the controversial blueprint, a controversial, hard-line conservative agenda. President Joe Biden’s rapid response team decided in February to start hammering the issue, according to a person with direct knowledge of the strategy, eventually seeing the effort take off ahead of Biden’s collapse in the June debate. Kamala Harris, after replacing Biden atop the Democratic ticket, spent at least $5 million tying Trump to Project 2025, according to AdImpact.
In response, Trump distanced himself from the project — only now to turn to some of its authors for roles in his administration.
“It’s the least surprising revelation that we’ve seen in this administration,” said Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, the possible Democratic National Committee chair candidate who hoisted an oversized prop version of the 900-page policy plan at the Democratic National Convention and railed against it during prime time. “You can’t look at something that had 140 members of the previous Trump administration who had a hand in writing this, and believe for a second that he had no idea what this was. So, yeah, it’s, ‘I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so.’”
