Key Project 2025 ideologues are joining Trump’s cabinet
Despite President-elect Donald Trump previously attempting to distance himself from Project 2025, the far-right policy paper produced by the Heritage Foundation, multiple members of his incoming administration were prominent authors of the document.
The most prominent Project 2025 contributor to join the president-elect’s inner circle is Russell Vought, who was tapped for director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Vought has been described as a crucial architect of the document, which the Heritage Foundation has published under the title “Mandate for Leadership” every four years since 1980, and he authored an entire chapter dedicated to executive power. Within that portion contains an argument for sweeping presidential power that would pressure independent federal agencies to bend towards the president’s will.
“The great challenge confronting a conservative President is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power — including power currently held by the executive branch — to the American people,” Vought writes in Project 2025.
Vought also believes that the White House should be able to dismantle large chunks of the federal government and remove public bureaucrats without congressional oversight. This has long been an urgent ideological perspective of Vought’s; the think tank he created, the Center for Renewing America (CRA), has long advocated for undermining the separation of government powers. For example, CRA has called for the use of military forces against civilian protestors and politicizing the Department of Justice.
Another important Project 2025 author, Brendan Carr, has been selected to run the Federal Communications Commission. Carr, who wrote the section on the FCC, calls for “reining in Big Tech, promoting national security, unleashing economic prosperity and ensuring FCC accountability and good governance.” However, some of Carr’s proposals are contradictory: He wants to crack down on perceived censorship by social media companies but also wants to ban TikTok because of its supposed threats to national security. And Carr’s supposed antagonisms towards Big Tech seem flat when you learn he wants to make it easier for companies like Elon Musk’s Starlink to launch communication satellites.
Other Trump cabinet nominees with Project 2025 ties include U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra, “border czar” Tom Homan and CIA director John Ratcliff — all of whom are listed as contributors to the most recent edition of the “Mandate for Leadership.” Additionally, individuals like Trump’s anti-immigration guru Stephen Miller and incoming White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt have collaborated with Project 2025 in the past but were not involved in the creation of the most recent document.
Lastly, there’s Vice President JD Vance, who while not involved with Project 2025 in any meaningful capacity, has been a champion of the Heritage Foundation and a close friend of its president, Kevin Roberts. Roberts, who recently had Vance pen the introduction to his book, “Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America.” Vance has called the think tank “the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.”