Business

Trump’s Project 2025 Ties Explained—Even As He Distances Himself

August 9, 2024

Topline

Former President Donald Trump flew on a private jet with the head of the organization behind Project 2025, who also claims to have personally briefed the ex-president on the controversial policy agenda, according to the Washington Post—the latest report tying Trump to Project 2025 even as the ex-president has publicly disavowed it.

Then-President Donald Trump gives a speech at the Heritage Foundation’s President’s Club Meeting in … [+] Washington, DC, on October 17, 2017.

AFP via Getty Images

Key Facts

Project 2025 is a multi-pronged effort spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, with help from other conservative organizations, aimed at preparing for the next conservative administration—namely a second Trump administration—which has primarily garnered criticism for its 900-page policy blueprint proposing a total overhaul of the executive branch, which was first released last year.

Trump decried Project 2025 on Truth Social in July, saying he has “nothing to do with them” and calling some of its ideas “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” and his campaign advisor Chris LaCivita has also slammed the group and called the operation “a pain in the ass” to the Trump campaign—even as ties have emerged between the ex-president, his running mate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, and the Heritage Foundation.

Kevin Roberts: Trump flew on a private jet with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts in 2022, the Post reported Wednesday, before speaking at a Heritage Foundation event, and he also praised Roberts in a February speech as “doing an unbelievable job.”

Public Comments: Trump publicly cheered the Heritage Foundation’s policy work in the past, saying in 2022—before Project 2025’s agenda was released—that the organization was “going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do … when the American people give us a colossal mandate.”

Project 2025 Briefing: Roberts told the Post in April he had briefed Trump on Project 2025, saying he “personally [has] talked to President Trump about Project 2025 … because my role in the project has been to make sure that all of the candidates who have responded to our offer for a briefing on Project 2025 get one from me.”

JD Vance: Roberts has even closer ties to Vance, with the Heritage leader telling Politico in March the senator was “absolutely going to be one of the leaders—if not the leader—of our movement” and saying after Vance was named as Trump’s running mate that the Heritage Foundation had been privately “really rooting” for him to be the pick.

Kevin Roberts’ Book: Vance also wrote the foreword to Roberts’ forthcoming book outlining “a peaceful ‘Second American Revolution’” for conservative voters, in which Vance reportedly quotes Roberts as saying, “It’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets” and praises the Heritage Foundation as “the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.”

Project 2025 Authors: More than 140 former members of the Trump administration are involved with Project 2025, according to CNN, including six of his former Cabinet secretaries—and several people authored chapters whom the Post reports Trump has suggested could be in his second administration, including former advisor Peter Navarro, former Housing Secretary Ben Carson and former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller.

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Contra

LaCivita has denounced reports suggesting Trump is involved with Project 2025 because it was authored by people who once worked in his White House as “pure speculation,” saying about the authors’ former Trump administration roles, “So what?” The Post also reported Wednesday that while Trump flew with Roberts in 2022, a Heritage Foundation source said Roberts tried to bring up Project 2025 to the ex-president but he “seemed uninterested and moved on to another subject.” (The Trump campaign denied the ex-president spoke with Roberts about Project 2025 during the flight.) Though Vance has many reported ties to the Heritage Foundation, the VP candidate has also said while he thinks there are “some good ideas” in Project 2025, there are also ones he “disagrees” with, and has denied it having any connection to the Trump campaign.

Chief Critic

“Project 2025 has never and will never be an accurate reflection of President Trump’s policies,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told the Post Wednesday. “As President Trump himself and our campaign leadership have repeatedly stated, President Trump’s 20 promises to the forgotten men and women and the RNC platform are the only policies endorsed by President Trump for a second term.”

What Does Project 2025 Say?

Project 2025’s 900-page policy guide calls for a sweeping overhaul of the executive branch in line with conservative principles, such as emphasizing the nuclear family, preserving U.S. sovereignty and dismantling the so-called “administrative state.” It calls for broadly upending the federal workforce to replace career civil servants with political appointees, and proposes abolishing some federal agencies entirely, including the Departments of Education and Homeland Security. Its specific proposals are largely in line with conservative views, including getting rid of climate change and LGBTQ rights initiatives, ending student loan forgiveness and rescinding the federal approval for abortion drug mifepristone. It also proposes imposing baseline tax rates and overhauling the Federal Reserve to either end the government’s control over money entirely or return the U.S. to the gold standard, among other recommendations. Many of the measures are in line with Trump’s own Agenda47 suite of policy proposals, though others diverge with Trump’s views, such as imposing national abortion restrictions while Trump has called for leaving the issue up to the states.

What To Watch For

While Project 2025 has completed its policy blueprint, the Heritage Foundation confirmed last week it’s still moving forward with its plans to help staff a future Trump administration, which includes a LinkedIn-style database for potential federal employees and training programs. It’s less clear what’s happening with the “fourth pillar” of Project 2025, a playbook for the first 180 days of a second Trump presidency. The Heritage Foundation did not respond to a question about whether those efforts were still moving forward, and House Democrats sent a letter to Roberts on Tuesday asking about the status of the playbook, noting he has “conspicuously declined to publish or disclose” anything about the policy recommendations it’s making as part of that initiative.

What We Don’t Know

What will happen with Heritage Foundation staffers and Project 2025 authors if Trump wins. The Post previously reported Trump campaign advisors have threatened to blacklist anyone involved with the project, leaving some Heritage employees to discuss quitting in order to protect their future job prospects, though it remains unclear how any staffing would actually play out should Trump win. Citing an anonymous Project 2025 official, the Post reported Wednesday some authors of Project 2025 see the Trump backlash “as a disaster, a catastrophe, [and] that it’s really bad for them,” while others “think it’s going to blow over.”

Key Background

The Heritage Foundation, a major right-wing think tank, has provided policy recommendations to all incoming conservative administrations since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, and first released its ambitious policy agenda for 2025 last year. The policy blueprint has only gained national prominence recently as it’s come under fire from the left, with the Biden (now Harris) campaign painting it as an extreme agenda that should dissuade voters from electing Trump. That outcry fueled the Trump campaign’s disavowal of it, with Trump’s post decrying it giving Project 2025 further visibility. The Post’s Wednesday report comes as Heritage officials have made several moves in recent days in light of the backlash: Project 2025 president Paul Dans stepped down from his position last week, and Roberts delayed the publication of his book with Vance’s foreword from September until after the election. The Heritage Foundation said Dans’ departure comes as Project 2025 completed its policy work as scheduled, and said it delayed Roberts’ book in order to focus efforts on the election.