As the fallout over the authoritarian Project 2025 initiative continues, more of its collaborators and authors are now aiming to duck the spotlight.
The Intercept reported Friday that four additional groups that were originally listed as supporting organizations of the far-right Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 playbook have jumped ship. This exodus includes groups whose leaders authored paragraphs and sections of the highly controversial 920-page document outlining extreme policy objectives for the next Republican administration to enact.
One of those groups, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), is described as an "influential think tank" for Republican-aligned economic policy. While the Heritage Foundation's list of Project 2025 partner organizations number near 100, CEI was one of the original 21 groups that first joined forces with Heritage to produce the document (referring to as "leading conservative partners" in June of 2022).The group's president, Kent Lassman, contributed a chapter along with CEI senior fellow Daren Bakst.
READ MORE: Anti-Trump group posts video of Trump praising Project 2025 authors after his latest denial
But according to the Intercept, CEI has quietly been removed from the Project 2025 website. This comes after America First Legal (AFL) — the organization helmed by former President Donald Trump's top immigration adviser, Stephen Miller — also requested that Heritage remove it from its list of collaborators. AFL was also one of Heritage's original "leading conservative partners" before its sudden removal from the list of Project 2025 supporters last week.
Heritage appears to be aware that its far-right policy proposals are making supporting groups uneasy and issued a disclaimer on its website earlier this year in an attempt to halt the exodus of supporting groups.
"The opinions of Project 2025 and The Heritage Foundation do not necessarily represent the opinions of every one of its advisory board partners," the disclaimer read.
Still, groups are continuing to bolt from the initiative as Project 2025 continues to break through into mainstream consciousness. The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), which the Intercept describes as a "hawkish foreign policy think tank," had its name removed from the project's supporters this spring.
READ MORE: Trump-aligned group quietly tries to distance itself from Project 2025 as outrage builds
“FDD was included in error,” a spokesperson told the outlet. “This was quickly corrected once known to us.”
Groups fleeing Project 2025 also include conservative organizations tied to the evangelical right. The Discovery Institute — which propagates "intelligent design" theory (often embraced by proponents of Young Earth Creationism) — was removed from the list of supporting groups sometime between June 25 and 28 of this year. Anti-abortion group United for Life and the Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy are also no longer listed on Project 2025's website.
Project 2025 is largely controversial due to its key plank of firing tens of thousands of federal employees in order to have them replaced by a Republican president. Criteria for inclusion in the next GOP administration is based not on policy knowledge or government experience, but more on loyalty to former President Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda. By staffing federal agencies with MAGA loyalists, Project 2025 would then aim to implement dozens of controversial conservative policies largely through executive action, with little opposition or interference from Congress.
Click here to read the Intercept's full report (email required).
READ MORE: More Americans searching for Project 2025 than for Taylor Swift or the NFL: analysis
