The Many Links Between Project 2025 and Trump’s World
"Former president Donald J. Trump has repeatedly claimed that he had nothing to do with Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative policy initiative to reshape the federal government. Mr. Trump has said that he has not read its proposals and does not know who is behind it. But Project 2025 has numerous ties to Mr. Trump and his campaign, a New York Times analysis has found.
The people behind Project 2025 are no strangers to the former president. The Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin D. Roberts, and a co-founder, Edwin J. Feulner, have each personally met with Mr. Trump. And the analysis of the Project 2025 playbook and its 307 authors and contributors revealed that well over half of them had been in Mr. Trump’s administration or on his campaign or transition teams.
Large portions of the “Mandate for Leadership,” the driving document behind Project 2025, were written by longtime Trump loyalists who were advisers to Mr. Trump during his first term.
Eighteen of the 40 authors and editors who worked on the document served in the first Trump administration:
Hover or tap to see each person’s name.
One worked on Mr. Trump’s first presidential transition team:
Twelve worked both in Mr. Trump’s first administration and on one of his transition or campaign teams:
Of the 267 additional contributors to the Project 2025 playbook, at least 144, highlighted in the list below, also worked in Mr. Trump’s administration or on his campaign or transition teams:
C. Anderson
E. Antoni
S. Baker
B. Bennett
J. Berlau
S. Bhagat
W. Bixby
J. Blackman
R. Bortins
R. Bovard
P. Brashers
P. T. Brown
J. Butcher
M. Byfield
F. Carroll
O. Cass
C. Christensen
C. De Ruyter
C. DeAngelis
C. DeBerry
A. Del Turco
D. Deptula
C. DeVore
J. Di Pane
M. Dickerson
D. Ditch
N. Dodson
M. Eden
J. Ehrett
W. Estrada
F. Farkish Thompson
B. Feigenbaum
B. Frohnen
C. Gacek
M. Garza
P. Geller
A. Gillen
C. R. Gore
D. Gortler
B. Gottstein
R. Greszler
A. Guernsey
A. Halikias
R. Hanania
S. Hankinson
J. Hayes
L. Heinzer
N. Hitchen
G. Hoffman
J. Humire
C. Iacovella
M. Israel
K. Ivory
A. Jones
E. Kao
A. Kheriaty
D. Kish
J. Krein
S. Kurtz
P. J. Larkin
N. Leamer
M. Lewis
B. Lieberman
J. G. Malcolm
J. Masterman
D. Mauler
D. McCall
E. Meese III
J. Melugin
F. Mermoud
M. Miller
C. Mitchell
C. Moon
R. Morrison
J. Moy
I. Murray
R. Nabil
M. Nasi
C. Orr
M. O’Brien
R. Poole
C. B. Porter
T. Pyle
J. Reddan
J. W. Richards
S. Rieley
L. Rios
M. Royce
W. Ruger
A. Ruse
B. D. Sadler
J. Sanders
D. Sauve
B. D. Schaefer
J. Schweppe
M. Scribner
J. Sewell
K. Sgamma
M. Sharp
Z. Smith
J. Spencer
T. W. Spoehr
P. St Onge
P. Stathatos
K. Stein
R. Stephany Saunders
B. Swearingen
M. Sweeney
B. Tolman
J. Trotter
T. Troy
E. Valdez
J. M. Vaughan
J. Venable
A. N. Vollmer
G. Walcher
D. M. Walsh
J. Ward
E. Waters
A. William Salter
A. Wolff
C. Ybarra
L. Zorc
Spokespeople for Project 2025 have denied that they are advocates for any particular candidate, and Project 2025 has no official ties to the Trump campaign. But the president of the Heritage Foundation told The New York Times in an interview in January that he views the foundation’s role as “institutionalizing Trumpism.”
While Mr. Trump has publicly disavowed Project 2025, there is significant overlap between the playbook and the plans Mr. Trump has articulated in campaign speeches and in his current campaign agenda, Agenda 47.
The policy playbook, known as the “Mandate for Leadership,” is just one pillar of Project 2025. Another is the group’s efforts to compile a database of thousands of vetted conservatives to staff a new conservative administration. That team is led by John McEntee and James Bacon, who helped during Mr. Trump’s first term to purge the federal government of people deemed disloyal to him.
The Heritage Foundation has been staffing Republican administrations since the Reagan era, though it has massively expanded its efforts in this election cycle. To limit the appearance of connection, Mr. Trump’s transition team has been excluding prominent people linked to Project 2025 from its preparations. (A co-chair of that team, Howard Lutnick, called the Heritage Foundation “radioactive” because of the initiative in an interview with The New York Post this month.) But if Mr. Trump were to win the election, it would be unlikely for him to maintain a total ban on those affiliated with Project 2025, given he is personally close to some of its critical players.
The New York Times reached out to the Heritage Foundation and the Trump campaign with its findings; neither responded.
The “Mandate for Leadership” is composed of 30 chapters, organized into five large sections. Here is a section-by-section breakdown showing some of the ways in which Project 2025’s policies and personnel overlap with Mr. Trump’s.
The executive branch and government personnel
The document’s first section calls for an escalation of executive power and a sweeping overhaul of government personnel. This includes reinstating a Trump executive order known as Schedule F, which would have enabled Mr. Trump to fire tens of thousands of federal workers and replace them with loyalists. Mr. Trump signed the order near the end of his presidency and President Joseph R. Biden Jr. later rescinded it.
Dennis Dean Kirk co-wrote the chapter in this section on central personnel agencies. Mr. Kirk was involved with the adoption of Schedule F, which Mr. Trump has pledged to immediately reinstate in a second term.
The Heritage Foundation president, Kevin D. Roberts, wrote the foreword to the Project 2025 document. Photo evidence shows he took a private flight with Mr. Trump in April of 2022 from Palm Beach, Fla., to a Heritage Foundation conference. There, Mr. Trump gave a keynote address, where he said of Mr. Roberts: “I know what he did and where he came from, and he’s going to be outstanding.”
Mr. Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance, wrote the foreword to Mr. Roberts’s forthcoming book, “Dawn’s Early Light.”
Circled, clockwise from top left: Kevin Roberts, Rick Dearborn and Russell T. Vought.
Sources: The Washington Post (Roberts); Evan Vucci/Associated Press (Dearborn and Vought)
In addition to Mr. Kirk, three other authors of the document’s first section served in Mr. Trump’s administration:
Rick Dearborn, who wrote the chapter on the White House office, served as a White House deputy chief of staff and as executive director of Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential transition team. Mr. Trump called him a “great asset to the administration” in a statement to The Oklahoman.
Russell T. Vought, Mr. Trump’s former budget director, was selected in May to be the policy director of the committee that develops the Republican Party’s platform.
Project 2025’s former director, Paul Dans, served as chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management in the Trump administration. He and Mr. Kirk co-wrote the chapter on personnel agencies. In recent months, Mr. Dans has criticized the Trump campaign and condemned Mr. Roberts’s “violent rhetoric.”
Immigration, national security and media
The document’s second section covers the Defense, Homeland Security and State Departments, as well as media agencies.
Ken Cuccinelli wrote the chapter on the Homeland Security Department. He served as acting deputy secretary of homeland security in the Trump administration and in another role led legal immigration efforts. In his chapter, Mr. Cuccinelli details aggressive immigration plans, including militarizing the Southern border and completing the border wall, the latter of which was a cornerstone of Mr. Trump’s first campaign. This election cycle, Mr. Trump has promised to lead the biggest deportation operation in American history and to use the military to secure the border.
Circled, from left: Ken Cuccinelli and Christopher Miller.
Sources: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images; Samuel Corum for The New York Times
Christopher Miller wrote the chapter on the Defense Department. He served in the last months of the Trump administration as the acting defense secretary. As president-elect, Mr. Biden said his transition team faced “obstruction” from Mr. Miller and the Defense Department, which Mr. Miller denied.
Mr. Miller’s chapter mentions reversing policies that currently allow transgender people to serve in the military. Early in his presidency, Mr. Trump announced on Twitter a ban on transgender people serving in the military, which Mr. Biden later reversed.
All of the five other authors in this section have connections to the first Trump administration, including Kiron K. Skinner, who wrote the chapter on the State Department. She led policy planning in that department and was also a member of Mr. Trump’s transition team in 2016.
Major executive departments
This section’s 11 chapters call for a significant contraction of many federal agencies and social programs.
The chapters call for a repeal of existing protections for L.G.B.T.Q. individuals and demand an end to many diversity, equity and inclusion programs. In many of his rallies, Mr. Trump has said he would “keep men out of women’s sports.” During his presidency, Mr. Trump erased protections for transgender patients in health care.
Project 2025 also calls for the federal government to further restrict abortion, including outlawing the abortion pill. Mr. Trump has said he opposes a federal abortion ban and that abortion rights should be decided by the states.
Gene Hamilton wrote the chapter on the Justice Department. Mr. Hamilton, a lawyer who served in the Trump administration, calls for sweeping changes to the Justice Department that would ultimately erode its independence from White House political control.
Mr. Trump has similarly criticized the legitimacy of the department, particularly its investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 election. He has said he would “completely overhaul” the department and pledged to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family.
Project 2025 additionally calls for the dismantling of the federal Education Department, which Mr. Trump has also pledged to do.
Circled, from left: Ben Carson in 2016 and 2024.
Source: Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Eight other authors who wrote chapters in this section are connected to Mr. Trump’s administration, including Jonathan Berry, who also served as chief counsel for the Trump transition team in 2016, and Ben Carson, who served in Mr. Trump’s cabinet as the secretary of the Housing and Urban Development Department.
Mr. Trump announced in September that Mr. Carson would be the national faith chairman of his 2024 campaign.
The economy
Seven authors of the section on the economy took on roles in Mr. Trump’s administration or on his 2016 campaign or transition teams. They include prominent advisers such as Stephen Moore and Peter Navarro, who spoke in support of Mr. Trump at the Republican National Convention this year.
Mr. Navarro wrote a chapter in this section about trade. He was the first senior Trump administration official to serve time over efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He had just been released from prison the morning of his convention speech, after completing a four-month sentence for defying a subpoena in the Jan. 6 investigation.
From left, circled: Karen Kerrigan and Peter Navarro.
Sources: Evan Vucci/Associated Press; Ken Cedeno/EPA, via Shutterstock
Both Project 2025 and Mr. Trump have proposed tax policies that would largely benefit corporations and wealthier Americans. Mr. Trump has said he would lower the corporate tax rate to 15 percent from 21 percent.
The Project 2025 blueprint’s authors also want to reduce the corporate tax rate, but they go further, with a proposal to collapse the tax code into just two brackets — 15 percent and 30 percent — while eliminating deductions, credits and exclusions. An analysis by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, found that this plan would raise taxes by thousands of dollars for individual middle-class households each year.
Karen Kerrigan wrote a chapter on the Small Business Administration. She is the president and chief executive of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council and sat with Mr. Trump at a 2017 tax policy meeting at the White House."
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