CNN
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Donald Trump recently made it clear he wants little to do with Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for the next Republican president, but it has sparked considerable backlash in his campaign for the White House.
“I have no idea who is behind this,” the former president recently claimed on social media.
Behind it are many people whom Trump knows well.
The Heritage Foundation’s 900-page second-term Trump playbook was written or co-written by six former Cabinet members, including four of Trump’s ambassador picks, including several who were instrumental in implementing his controversial immigration crackdown, and about 20 pages are credited to the president’s first deputy chief of staff.
Indeed, a CNN investigation found that at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration were involved with Project 2025, including more than half of the people listed as authors, editors or contributors to “A Mission to Leadership,” the project’s sweeping manifesto for executive branch reform.
Dozens more Trump administration staffers, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows and longtime adviser Stephen Miller, hold positions at conservative groups advising Project 2025. Those groups also include several lawyers deeply involved in Trump’s attempts to stay in power, including Trump’s impeachment lawyer Jay Sekulow and Cleta Mitchell and John Eastman, two of the legal architects of the failed plan to overturn the 2020 election.
To quantify the extent of involvement from within Trump’s inner circle, CNN examined more than 1,000 online bios, LinkedIn profiles and news clippings listed in a public directory of 110 organizations on Project 2025’s advisory board, as well as the names of more than 200 people who reportedly worked on “missions to leadership.”
In all, CNN found about 240 people with ties to both Project 2025 and Trump, covering nearly every aspect of Trump’s politics and White House time, from everyday military personnel in Washington to the highest levels of government. The number is likely even higher, as online resumes for many individuals were not available.
In addition to those who reported directly to Trump, others who worked on Project 2025 were appointed to independent positions by the former president, such as Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr, who wrote an entire chapter on proposed reforms to the agency, and Lisa Correnti, an abortion opponent who was appointed by Trump to lead the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
Several people involved with Project 2025 did not serve in the Trump administration but were influential in shaping his first term. One example is former U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman, who was the architect of the former president’s criminal justice reform legislation and later helped arrange the pardon of Charles Kushner, the father of Trump’s son-in-law. Tolman is listed as a contributor to A Mission to Leadership.
Project 2025’s extensive overlap with Trump’s allies, advisers and former staff has complicated his efforts to distance himself from the project. As President Joe Biden and Democrats increase pressure to link the Republican standard-bearer to the project’s more controversial policies, the Trump campaign has sought for months to make clear that Project 2025 does not speak for them.
Campaign spokesman Daniel Alvarez said in a statement to CNN that Trump only supports policies outlined in the Republican Party platform and on the former president’s website.
“The Biden campaign and the (Democratic National Committee) have nothing else to offer the American people, so they are lying and fear-mongering,” Alvarez said.
The group is led by the Heritage Foundation, a 51-year-old conservative group that aligned itself with Trump shortly after his 2016 election victory. The organization is led by Kevin Roberts, a Trump ally who appeared with Trump onstage one night in February and whom Trump praised for doing an “incredible job.”
Heritage conceived Project 2025 to help a Republican president start planning to hit the ground running after the election. One of its priorities is to create a roadmap for the new administration’s first 180 days and quickly realign all federal agencies to a conservative vision. Described on its website as “a movement-wide effort guided by conservative ideals to address and reform the deficiencies of big government and an undemocratic administrative state,” Project 2025 also aims to recruit, train and fill federal positions with thousands of conservative movement loyalists.
The American Accountability Foundation, one of the groups advising Project 2025, is also compiling a list of current federal officials it believes could undermine Trump’s plans for a second term. The Heritage Foundation is paying the group $100,000 for its work.
Many of Project 2025’s priorities are in line with those of the former president, particularly on immigration and cleaning up the federal bureaucracy. Both Trump and Project 2025 call for abolishing the Department of Education.
But Project 2025 has recently become a lightning rod for other ideas that Trump has not explicitly supported. “Obligations to Leadership” includes plans to ban pornography, revoke federal approval of the abortion drug mifepristone, exempt morning-after pills and male contraceptives from coverage required by the Affordable Care Act, make it harder for transgender adults to transition, and abolish the federal agency that oversees the National Weather Service.
The sprawling, detailed plan also runs counter to Trump’s desire for a streamlined Republican policy platform that lacks any language that could give Democrats an edge over Republicans this term.
Roberts faced criticism recently after saying in an interview that America is in the process of a second American War of Independence, and it will remain bloodless if the left allows it.
Three days later, Trump posted on Truth Social, “I know nothing about Project 2025.”
“I don’t agree with some of what they say and some of what they say is just ridiculous and terrible,” he wrote.
In response to Trump’s social media posts, a Project 2025 spokesperson issued a statement to CNN saying the group “does not speak on behalf of any candidate or campaign.”
“Ultimately, the decision as to which recommendations to adopt is up to President Trump,” the spokesman said.
The Trump campaign has repeatedly said in recent months that “reports about personnel and policy ideas specific to a second Trump administration are purely speculative and theoretical” and do not reflect the former president’s plans. Campaign managers Suzie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a statement that Project 2025 and similar policy proposals from outside the Trump campaign are “merely proposals.”
But Trump’s attempts to distance himself from Project 2025 are already facing credibility problems. Paul Danz, who oversees Project 2025, was a senior Trump White House official who previously said he would like to work for his former boss again. Shortly after Trump’s Truth Social post last week, Democrats pointed out that a Trump campaign spokesperson appeared in a Project 2025 recruiting video. On Tuesday, the Biden campaign posted dozens of examples of Trump’s ties to Project 2025.
CNN’s Project 2025 donor survey also revealed just how widespread Trump’s influence is, running through the upper echelons of a vast network of organizations working to steer the country in a conservative direction, from women’s groups and Christian colleges to conservative think tanks in Texas, Alabama and Mississippi.
New organizations centered on Trump’s political campaign, the conspiracy theories surrounding his election defeat, and the policies of his first term are also heavily involved in Project 2025. One of the advisory groups, America First Legal, was started by Miller, a key figure in shaping Trump’s immigration policies. Another is the Center for Renewing America, founded by former Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russ Voate, who wrote a detailed blueprint for consolidating executive power for Project 2025.
Vought recently oversaw the Republican Party committee that drafted a new platform heavily influenced by President Trump.
In addition to Vought, two former Trump administration cabinet members, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson and Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, also wrote chapters in “A Call to Leadership.” Three former department heads, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, Acting Secretary of Transportation Steven Bradbury and Acting Secretary of Labor Patrick Pizzella, also contributed to the book.
Project 2025’s immigration reform proposals appear to be heavily influenced by those who helped implement the Trump Administration’s earlier enforcement efforts. Former Acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan and former Commissioner of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan, the faces of the Trump Administration’s divisive policies, contributed to the project, as did Kathy Neubel Kovarik, one of the policy advisers who pushed behind the scenes to repeal certain immigration protections. Project 2025’s chapter on reforming the Department of Homeland Security was written by Ken Cuccinelli, who was the department’s top official under the Trump Administration.
Some of President Trump’s most controversial and high-profile hires were men who were said to have been on a “mission for leadership,” and some of them ended their terms in office in controversial ways.
Before he went to jail for failing to comply with congressional subpoenas as part of the House investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, President Trump adviser Peter Navarro wrote a defense of the former president’s trade policies and an argument for punitive tariffs.
Other contributors include Michael Pack, the conservative filmmaker who orchestrated mass layoffs at the U.S. Bureau of International Media after Trump took office; Frank Ucco, a senior White House adviser who once promoted far-right conspiracy theories on his radio talk show, including lies about President Obama’s citizenship; former NOAA employee David Legates, a prominent climate change skeptic who was investigated for publishing questionable research in a White House publication; and Mari Staal, the wine blogger-turned-lobbyist who left the Trump administration after being accused of pursuing dishonest State Department employees.
The 900-page culmination of their work will have ripple effects throughout the executive branch, dramatically changing not only the federal government but the daily lives of many Americans. Summarizing the effort, Roberts wrote in “A Call to Leadership” that Project 2025 is “the next conservative president’s last chance to save the republic.”
“Conservatives have just two years and one chance to get this right,” Roberts said. “With enemies at home and abroad, we cannot afford to fail. Time is running out. If we fail, we risk losing the fight for the very idea of America.”
