WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump has chosen several people who helped craft the controversial Project 2025 for key roles in his second administration, despite his repeated criticisms on the campaign trail of the conservative blueprint created by an outside group for his potential return to the White House.
In the more than two weeks since the 2024 race was called for Trump, the president-elect has tapped at least five people who wrote portions of or contributed to the project to positions in his administration.
The involvement in the project of those he has selected ranges from authors of full sections to people simply listed as contributors.
Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission who Trump announced this week as his pick to chair the agency next year, wrote Project 2025's full chapter focused on the FCC.
Trump’s choices for CIA director, John Ratcliffe; ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra; and “border czar," Tom Homan, are all listed in the project as contributors, which the text of the project describes as those who “generously” volunteered “their time and effort to assist the authors in the development and writing of this volume’s 30 chapters.”
Legislation introduced in 2019 by former Rep. Sean Duffy, who the president-elect tapped to be his transportation secretary, is also referenced in the text in a section on trade, although the Wisconsin Republican is not listed as a contributor or author.
Russell Vought — whom Trump announced Friday he has selected to be his director of the Office of Management and Budget, a position he held in Trump's first administration — authored a full chapter of Project 2025.
Project 2025 was curated by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation — which is home to a number of former staffers from the president-elect’s first term — during the Biden administration in an effort to plan for and help shape a potential second Trump administration.
The more than 900-page blueprint became a major storyline on the campaign trail ahead of November, as Democrats sought to use it to paint the GOP as extreme. Trump and Republicans appeared concerned it could become a liability — especially on issues such as abortion, a topic that seemed to boost Democrats in past elections — embarking on a full-force effort to distance themselves from it.
“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it,” Trump said in a post on his social media site, Truth Social, in July. “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”
Trump and the Republican party’s solid victory in November’s election, however, raised questions about the saliency of the project to voters, and some policies mentioned in the text — such as eliminating the Department of Education — are in the mix of possible moves by the president-elect.
But the origins of the three dozen people Trump has chosen for his administration thus far casts a wide net and includes sitting members of Congress, former Democrats such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, and TV personalities.
Note: This article was updated to say Trump has said he is nominating Russell Vought to be director of the Office of Management and Budget.