President-elect Trump contended he knew nothing about Project 2025 — but several of his Cabinet picks certainly do.
The big picture: Trump has plucked a number of officials straight from the pages of the 900-plus-page Heritage Foundation-backed blueprint, which laid out plans to dramatically expand executive power and implement hardline conservative policies.
Driving the news: Most recently, Trump nominated Russ Vought — an architect of Project 2025 — to return as director of the Office of Management and Budget.
- Vought is one of the roughly 140 members of the first Trump administration who were involved in Project 2025, per CNN’s tally. He was at least the fifth Project 2025 contributor Trump has picked for a top job.
- Vought authored the Project 2025 chapter on the department he’s been tipped to lead, as did Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr.
- Other picks, like Stephen Miller, were associated with Project 2025 but not listed as authors.
Flashback: Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 as press coverage of its proposals became a headache on the campaign trail.
- “I have no idea who is behind it,” Trump wrote in a July Truth Social post. “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
Yes, but: Within a day of Trump’s victory, allies and right-wing commentators claimed that Project 2025 was the agenda all along.
Catch up quick: Project 2025 includes proposals for the president to replace thousands of career civil servants with loyalists and dissolve government agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — all in the name of streamlining government under the president’s control.
- It also includes hundreds of pages of policy recommendations — not all of which Trump has endorsed — from ending student debt relief, to criminalizing pornography, to restricting access to abortion pills.
What to watch: One key aspect of Project 2025 involved assembling a roster of potential appointees for the next Trump administration, and not just for the top-level jobs Trump has announced so far.
- Many forthcoming picks to staff government agencies are likely to have been vetted by Heritage under Project 2025.
What they’re saying: “All of President Trump’s cabinet nominees and appointments are whole-heartedly committed to President Trump’s agenda, not the agenda of outside groups,” Karoline Leavitt, a Trump transition spokesperson, said in a statement to Axios.
- “President Trump never had anything to do with Project 2025,” she said.
Here are the Trump Cabinet and White House picks with ties to Project 2025.
Russ Vought: OMB Director
The former and future OMB director is listed among the authors of Project 2025.
- Vought was also policy director on the committee that crafted the official Republican Party platform.
Zoom in: Vought wrote the Project 2025 chapter laying out priorities for the Executive Office of the President, which includes OMB.
- In it, he outlines ways to centralize executive power and reel in the federal bureaucracy, which he says “all too often is carrying out its own policy plans and preferences—or, worse yet, the policy plans and preferences of a radical, supposedly ‘woke’ faction of the country.”
- He characterizes the OMB director as a vessel for the president’s policy agenda, rather than as “the ambassador of the institutional interests of OMB and the wider bureaucracy.”
The intrigue: Vought was secretly recorded in July by the Centre for Climate Reporting during a conversation with reporters posing as potential donors.
- While on video, he discussed his plans to “take control of … bureaucracies,” saying he wants to “be the person who crushes the deep state.”
- He added that he wasn’t worried about Trump distancing himself from Project 2025, and that Trump had been very supportive of his group — the Center for Renewing America — which is listed on Project 2025’s advisory board.
Brendan Carr: FCC chief
Carr, currently the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission and Trump’s pick to lead it, outlined his plan to challenge “Big Tech” in the FCC chapter of Project 2025.
- In his section, he called for the FCC to issue an interpretation of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to eliminate “expansive, non-textual immunities that courts have read into the statute.”
- Section 230 protects online platforms — for example, Facebook or YouTube — from liability over content posted by their users.
- Carr also lays out proposals to expand broadband connectivity access, address TikTok’s “serious and unacceptable risk” and support emerging satellite technologies, among other goals.
Tom Homan, immigration czar
Homan, along with John Ratcliffe and Peter Hoekstra, is listed among the dozens of Project 2025 contributors who aided in “development and writing.”
- The former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during Trump’s first term, Homan would play a key role in implementing Trump’s far-reaching border policy proposals and promised mass deportations.
- Project 2025 calls for an immigration crackdown, including the elimination of some forms of visas, Axios’ Sareen Habeshian reports.
John Ratcliffe, CIA director
Ratcliffe, Trump’s nominee to lead the CIA and a former director of national intelligence, was consulted for the Project 2025 chapter dealing with the intelligence community.
- That chapter was authored by Dustin Carmack, Ratcliffe’s former chief of staff. It cites an interview with Ratcliffe in which he says previous intelligence directors had been “accustomed to yielding… to the preferences of the CIA and other agencies.”
Stephen Miller and other Trump picks
Miller, a longtime member of Trump’s inner circle and founder of the MAGA-aligned America First Legal, is slated to take on an expanded role in Trump’s White House return.
- While he is not listed as a contributor to the project, America First Legal was listed as on the Project 2025 advisory board — until the group reportedly asked to be removed.
Former Rep. Hoekstra (R-Mich.), formerly Trump’s ambassador to the Netherlands, is Trump’s pick for ambassador to Canada — and is listed as a Project 2025 contributor.
Zoom out: Other Trump picks were not explicitly listed as contributors or authors but were mentioned throughout the text.
- For example, policies introduced by former Reps. Dave Weldon (R-Fla.) and Rep. Sean Duffy
- (R-Wis.) — Trump’s picks for the CDC and Transportation, respectively — are endorsed in the text.
