On the campaign trail, Donald Trump disavowed Project 2025. The post-election Donald Trump is humming a different tune.
Perhaps the ditty is called, “No One Should Confuse Campaigning With Governing.” Or maybe Russ Vought’s words are more apt for a song title: The rapture of “Graduate-Level Politics.” Either way, Trump certainly likes the melody and is embracing the Project 2025 agenda.
The clearest sign that Trump is warming to Project 2025 is that several of his nominees for high-level administrative posts have direct ties to the conservative playbook. Trump certainly likes the melody and is now embracing the Project 2025 agenda.
The most obvious sign that Trump is warming to Project 2025 is that several of his nominees for high-level administrative posts have direct ties to the conservative playbook. The author of Project 2025’s chapter on the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, has been tapped to lead that same agency. Tom Homan, Trump’s choice to direct his immigration effort as the nation’s “border czar,” is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a contributor to Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.” John Ratcliffe, another Project 2025 contributor will, if confirmed, lead the CIA.
It is too early to tell if Carr, Homan and Ratcliffe will be confirmed, but if and when they are we’ll have a clearer idea if their comments from the past are actually implemented.
However, we don’t have to wait to learn about the intent of two of Trump’s supporters, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who have been tapped to head the yet-to-be-established Department of Government Efficiency, a direct offspring of Project 2025’s principal ambition to “dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.”
On Nov. 20, they co-authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which they described how their mandate is to “cut the federal government down to size.”
There is no doubt that Democrats, Republicans and independents should applaud every effort to realize efficiencies in government. But we must be vigilant about the specifics of those savings — analyzing the costs and benefits to ensure that cuts are made for efficiency purposes and not based on political or cultural motivations that jeopardize the vulnerable and powerless.
Linda McMahon, a longtime Trump ally and the president-elect’s pick to run the Education Department, echoes wherever possible Project 2025’s plan to raze the half-century-old bureaucratic division. She has done so from her perch as leader of the America First Policy Institute, another conservative think tank with growing influence in the Trump administration.
AFPI’s America First Parents Initiative, its Higher Education Reform Initiative and even its Biblical Foundations Project all reiterate Project 2025’s rejection of DEI initiatives, transgender rights in participation, pronouns and naming, critical race theory, exposure to America’s discriminatory past, and so on.
Vought, widely anticipated to return as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, is the loudest proponent of Project 2025. He wrote the chapter on the Executive Office of the President, but his cheerleading for the Heritage Foundation’s right-wing agenda goes well beyond that individual contribution.
The CNN report on Vought’s beliefs should be alarming to all regardless of whether one is a Trump supporter. Vought calls for establishing a “Christian nation.” He refutes the legislative practice of carving out abortion exceptions for rape and incest. He insists that mass deportation of immigrants will “save the country.” He boasts that he is working on “shadow” operations that will control the government.
And when asked why the president-elect distanced himself from Project 2025, Vought’s response was teeming with admiration. “Graduate-level politics,” he said with a grin. “We’ve got to win elections.” So true. That’s music to Trump’s ears.
The verdict is still out but the trends are becoming more obvious.
Beau Breslin is the Joseph C. Palamountain Jr. Chair of Political Science at Skidmore College. He wrote this for The Fulcrum.
