After distancing himself from Project 2025 during his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump has tapped some of its contributors to join his incoming administration.
Though the project itself encompassed a variety of things, including education and preparing personnel for a presidential transition, public focus, and criticism, revolved around the book it produced — Mandate for Leadership – the Conservative Promise. Though the Trump team went to great lengths to distance the candidate from the project, he is now enlisting the help of some of its contributors.
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Tom Homan, Trump’s designated “border czar,” was listed in the Mandate for Leadership as a contributor. Brendan Carr, Trump’s pick for head of the Federal Communications Commission, wrote the section on the FCC in the Project 2025 tome.
Carr provided hints of how he would run the agency in the book, listing four priorities: reigning in Big Tech, promoting national security, unleashing economic prosperity, and ensuring FCC accountability and good governance. As part of ensuring national security, he called for a ban on TikTok, citing connections with the Chinese Communist Party. Trump reportedly opposes a ban on the app.
Carr has served on the FCC since being appointed by Trump in 2017, a position he has held during the transition to the Biden administration.
Trump is also expected to tap Russ Vought as the head of the Office of Management and Budget, a position he held during the first administration. Vought was a prominent figure in Project 2025, writing one of the leading chapters of the Mandate for Leadership, regarding the executive office of the president.
In his section, Vought bemoaned the rule of bureaucracy in the executive branch, urging the president to take a decisive role.
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“That enormous power is not vested in departments or agencies, in staff or administrative bodies, in nongovernmental organizations or other equities and interests close to the government. The President must set and enforce a plan for the executive branch,” he wrote.
Democrats catching wind of Trump’s plans to dip into the Project 2025 bench are slamming him for working with people he had previously denounced.
“After spending months lying to the American people about the ties between his campaign and Project 2025, Donald Trump has spent the past two weeks rewarding the Project 2025 lackeys who crafted this dangerous blueprint with new jobs in his administration,” Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Rosemary Boeglin said.
Not all Project 2025 contributors have seen good fortune; however, their work on the project has even served as a barrier. Six people familiar with the matter told Politico that Mandate for Leadership author Roger Severino was wanted by many conservatives to be selected as deputy secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services. However, he was rejected due to his work on Project 2025.
“Heritage was lobbying hard,” one of the people told the outlet. But “the internal feeling was that [Trump campaign manager Chris] LaCivita and that crew had spent a lot of political capital trying to kill Project 2025 and they didn’t want to do this because that would be going backwards.”
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Opposing Project 2025 became one of the central pitches of the Harris campaign, which portrayed it as the dystopian handbook for a second Trump administration that threatened to destroy democracy and curtail citizens’ rights. In nearly every public appearance in the final months of the campaign, Harris directly connected Trump with the project, despite his frequent denials of involvement.
Two former Trump officials familiar with discussions told Politico in October that several Project 2025 architects had been blacklisted from a future Trump administration.
