Who created Project 2025?
What is project 2025? Author of the plan speaks
Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project, is a collection of conservative policy proposals and potential picks to fill positions if Donald Trump is reelected as president in November. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative nonprofit, organized the plan in 2022 which is "guided by the conservative cause to address and reform the failings of big government and an undemocratic administrative state," according to the Project 2025 website.
Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project, is not new but it entered the public consciousness when actress Taraji P. Henson mentioned it during the 2024 BET Awards earlier this month.
The collection of conservative policy proposals and potential picks for the next Republican president has been a political talking point for some time. While much is known about the proposals, less is known about who’s behind them.
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What is Project 2025?
Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project, is a collection of conservative policy proposals and guidelines to fill positions when the next Republican president is elected.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative nonprofit, organized the plan in 2022. The group is "guided by the conservative cause to address and reform the failings of big government and an undemocratic administrative state," according to the Project 2025 website.
This project will build on four pillars that will, collectively, pave the way for an effective conservative administration: a policy agenda, personnel, training, and a 180-day playbook.
The nearly 1,000-page plan involves having civic infrastructure in place in 2025 to take over and discard what Republicans claim is a "deep state" bureaucracy, in part by firing as many as 50,000 federal workers, the Associated Press reported last year.
Some conservatives are pushing to remove federal employees they consider an obstacle to a president’s agenda and want to replace them with individuals whose beliefs are aligned with a Republican president and are willing to undertake a new approach to governing.
According to the AP, if Trump is reelected as president, the plan would also restore Schedule F, an executive order during Trump's first term in office that reclassifies thousands of federal employees as at-will workers who can be fired.
The plan also calls for installing top allies in acting administrative roles to push past senators who attempt to block presidential Cabinet nominees.
In an interview with Politico, Stephen Moore, an adviser to the Trump campaign and co-author of the Project 2025 framework, said many are misunderstanding the framework of the project and its policies.
"It’s not meant to be a blueprint for Donald Trump — it’s meant to be a blueprint for a conservative president," Moore said. "We wrote this as our dream scenario," he added.
Who wrote Project 2025?
Project 2025 includes dozens of former senior Trump administration officials, including:
- Paul Dans, the director of the project, served as chief of staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under Trump.
- Russ Vought, who wrote one of the chapters, served as director of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump.
- John McEntee, a senior adviser for the project, previously served as director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office in the Trump administration.
Other key contributors to Project 2025
Mandy Gunasekara
Gunasekara, former chief of staff at Trump’s EPA, authored the Project 2025 strategy to downsize the agency and overhaul many of Biden’s environmental regulations.
In the official Project 2025 mandate, she wrote the EPA has "long been amenable to being coopted by the Left for political ends against the need to implement the agency’s true function: protecting public health and the environment in cooperation with states."
William Perry Pendley
Pendley, a former Trump Interior official, advocated in Project 2025 for reducing the size of national monuments and preventing future presidents from using executive power to protect federal lands.
Pendley, who led the Bureau of Land Management under Trump without Senate confirmation, was found by a judge to have unlawfully served in the position.
Bernard McNamee
McNamee, appointed by Trump to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), has been vocal about overturning Biden’s climate and infrastructure laws to enhance domestic energy production.
In the energy section of Project 2025, McNamee criticized the Department of Energy (DOE) for spending taxpayer money on renewable energy subsidies, which he claims undermine energy security and distort markets.
"DOE, instead of focusing on core energy and security issues, has been spending billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize renewable energy developers and investors, thereby making Americans less energy secure and distorting energy markets," McNamee wrote in his Project 2025 energy section.
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Goals of Project 2025
The nearly 1,000-page plan involves having civic infrastructure in place in 2025 to take over and discard what Republicans claim is a "deep state" bureaucracy, partly by firing as many as 50,000 federal workers, according to the Associated Press.
The plan also calls for installing top allies in acting administrative roles to bypass senators who attempt to block presidential Cabinet nominees.
Does Trump support Project 2025?
In a statement to Fox News Digital, Biden-Harris 2024 Rapid Response Director Ammar Moussa said, "Project 2025 was written for Donald Trump by the people who know him best. These are the same extremists who wrote the RNC’s policy platform, led Trump’s debate prep, and regularly tout their connections to Trump’s team. Oh, and Trump’s own SuperPAC has run ads promoting Project 2025."
Project 2025's website says, "the Trump administration relied heavily on Heritage’s "Mandate" for policy guidance, embracing nearly two-thirds of Heritage’s proposals within just one year in office.
However, earlier this month, Trump appeared to distance himself from Project 2025 by posting on his social media website that he "knows nothing" about it.
"I have no idea who is behind it. 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," he wrote.
Project 2025 said in a statement it is not tied to a specific candidate or campaign.
"We are a coalition of more than 110 conservative groups advocating policy and personnel recommendations for the next conservative president," it said. "But it is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement."
Megan Ziegler and the Associated Press contributed to this story. It was reported from Los Angeles.