Despite spending the better part of the last month aggressively distancing his campaign from Project 2025, Donald Trump will likely give a chief architect of the far-right policy blueprint a key role in his administration should he win in November.
Russell Vought “is likely” to be appointed to a high-ranking position in a second Trump administration, the Associated Press reported Monday. Vought, who ran Trump’s Office of Management and Budget from July 2020 to January 2021, has been working on a 180-day “transition playbook” to expedite Project 2025’s implementation into the federal government.
That position could be as major as managing Trump’s White House, as rumors swirl that Vought is in the running to be Trump’s chief of staff.
Project 2025 reflects Trump’s core political philosophy and has been boosted by key allies, including former advisers Stephen Miller and John McEntee. The 920-page Christian nationalist manifesto has advanced seemingly outrageous policy positions, including dismantling wholesale staples of the executive branch, such as the Department of Education. It also proposes revisiting federal approval of the abortion pill, a national ban on pornography, placing the Justice Department under the control of the president, slashing federal funds for climate change research in an effort to sideline mitigation efforts, and increasing funding for the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
On July 5, Trump claimed that he “knew nothing about Project 2025” and had “no idea who is behind it.”
“I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
Despite Vought’s apparent opportunities at the top of a possible second Trump administration, the Republican nominee’s message was a clear attempt to obscure the fact that his own super PACs have run ads highlighting Project 2025’s policy goals. And as much as Trump has tried to distance himself from the conservative apparatus, Project 2025 has been thoroughly involved in staffing a future Trump presidency: Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts has claimed the project has already “trained and vetted” more than 10,000 people to replace executive branch employees should the presumptive GOP presidential candidate win in November.
But they may have more on the way: in November, Trump allies claimed they were looking to install as many as 54,000 pre-vetted Trump loyalists to the executive branch via a “Schedule F” executive order.
“Never before has the entire movement … banded together to construct a comprehensive plan to deconstruct the out-of-touch and weaponized administrative state,” Project 2025’s director, Paul Dans, told Axios at the time.
Regardless, senior Trump advisers have warned news outlets against reporting on the connections, repeatedly insisting that Project 2025 has no affiliation or involvement with the Trump campaign, and have instead pointed to Agenda47 as Trump’s official platform. They do not offer an explanation as to why Agenda47 is almost identical to Project 2025.
