Experts warn "don't be fooled" by Trump's Project 2025 denials: His "fingerprints are all over it"
Former President Donald Trump has tried repeatedly to distance himself from Project 2025, claiming he has no idea who is behind the 922-page policy manifesto, while his campaign managers have said they "greatly welcomed" the news that its Trump-allied director has left his role.
But Trump has extensive ties to Project 2025, which offers policy proposals to bring swaths of his campaign platform to life.
Regardless, political experts and observers told Salon that Project 2025 is just one part of a wide-ranging effort by Trump-allied conservative nonprofits to ensure the president hits the ground running in a potential second administration.
Those well-funded groups include the Heritage Foundation, the five-decade-old conservative think tank that fueled Ronald Reagan’s vision and staffing, and the Conservative Partnership Institute, a conservative umbrella organization founded in 2017 whose leadership includes former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Trump administration officials Wesley Denton and Ed Corrigan.
University of Illinois Chicago political science professor E.J. Fagan said it's likely that a second Trump administration would turn to such groups for help staffing its administration.
"I don't think it is plausible that that group of people, those organizations, and the people who work for them, would not be the bulk of highly salient policy positions in the Trump administration," Fagan told Salon.
Over the past several decades, presidential transition teams have come to rely on both conservative and liberal think tanks for a handful of increasingly key functions: most notably, providing gainful employment for political appointees awaiting their party's next win.
"Think tanks often serve as a shadow government where former appointees serve until a friendly administration is back in power," John Jay College of Criminal Justice public policy professor Heath Brown told Salon.
Fagan said the liberal Center for American Progress, founded in 2003, plays a similar role — allowing appointees to focus on policy while awaiting their party's next administration.
"You don't want your next deputy under secretary of the Treasury to go work for a lobbyist for four years,' Fagan said. "You want them to be doing policy planning. You want them to not develop conflicts of interest."
Brown said it's notable that the Conservative Partnership Institute has funded and helped launch a network of new rightwing groups founded by former Trump appointees and White House staffers since Trump left office.
"This is a novel role in Washington, providing organizing expertise and assistance to strengthen the conservative think tank infrastructure," he said.
Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk said CPI's network — which includes the American Accountability Foundation, Personnel Policy Operations and Election Integrity Network — overlaps with the mission and leaders of other associated groups, including the Heritage Foundation.
Former Trump aides have launched political nonprofits including America First Legal, the Center for Renewing America and America First Policy Institute.
"They have their allies and partners that they're working with, but they're all going in the same direction," Carrk told Salon, later adding: "There can be some overlap with personnel and where people are working in one group or another, or both."
Carrk said the rise of the Conservative Partnership Institute — and its focus on building a "permanent" conservative infrastructure ready to place MAGA loyalists in key positions — signals the rise of a powerful, organized Trump-fueled network that's come to dominate the GOP.
"What this speaks to is this movement of MAGA conservatives to consolidate power," Carrk said. "Basically, the agenda is the same, that they're working to pursue an agenda that gives more power to them, for them to have more control over our lives and to take away our freedoms."
He added: "They want to give more power to big corporate interests that can raise prices on middle class families as they see fit, more power to insurance companies to deny care, more power to drug companies to gouge seniors or everyone with prescription drugs."
THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION'S RISE
Fagan — author of "The Thinkers: The Rise of Partisan Think Tanks and the Polarization of American Politics" — said his research finds the influence of think tanks is strongly correlated with polarization of members of Congress.
"Heritage shows up in 1973 at kind of a low point of polarization," Fagan said. "Their goal is to make Republicans more conservative. "
The Heritage Foundation rose to the forefront of the modern conservative movement by helping provide Reagan's administration with a 3,000-page policy manuscript and staff.
In 1981, the Heritage Foundation expressed "disappointment" with Reagan's first term and how it handled political appointments, according to The New York Times at the time.
Reagan had turned down Heritage Foundation suggestions as appointees, partly for their lack of government experience — a lingering reflection of conservative "disdain" for careers in government, The New York Times Magazine reported.
Still, the Heritage Foundation also touted that Reagan acted on 60 percent of its 1,270 recommendations.
The Heritage Foundation's executive branch liaison Louis Cordia told The New York Times Magazine he "helped place about 250 conservatives in administration jobs" in 1985 alone.
Cordia acknowledged that many of those conservatives were leaving for the private sector, largely as lobbyists.
During the nineties, Fagan said the think tank grew to work more closely with House Republicans, offering harsh criticism of former President George W. Bush's immigration plan.
"They were often the harshest critics of George W. Bush," Fagan said. "They were very, very much kind of an influential outsider reorganization, until Trump comes along."'
By 2014, when former Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., — a Tea Party leader — took over as president, Heritage took a far-right turn.
Fagan said DeMint's leadership "radically transformed" Heritage — a process that's continued under Trump.
"Trump has changed the Republican Party and Heritage has changed along with it," Fagan said.
Fagan said that his research shows the quality and quantity of the Heritage Foundation's policy analysis has eroded over the years.
"It was much less evangelical and much less Trumpist," Fagan said. "The best way to describe it is Heritage used to be Reaganist and how it's Trumpist."
Pomona College professor Amanda Hollis-Brusky told Salon that unlike previous Republican presidencies that recruited from a mix of libertarian and conservative think tanks, "the Trump administration just went full board with Heritage."
THE RISE OF A CONSERVATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE
The Heritage Foundation played a key role in the 2016 Trump transition — in part because Trump fired his transition planner, Chris Christie, the day after the election.
"That meant a lot of the planning was essentially torn up,” Brown, the John Jay professor, told Salon. "The result of that was that Heritage had an outsized role to play."
Brown said though think tanks typically release big books of policy recommendations, those books may be dismissed as either repetitive of a candidate's agenda or impractical.
Still, the Heritage Foundation has touted that the Trump administration "embraced 64 percent of its policy solutions" offered in their 2016 policy proposal.
Politico reported in 2016 that the Heritage Foundation was "soliciting, stockpiling and vetting résumés for months" to help staff Trump's administration.
By 2018, the group said "hundreds" of people on its database of 3,000 conservatives had landed jobs in the Trump administration, according to The New York Times. The nonprofit said at least 66 of its own employees and alumni had joined Trump's administration.
The executive director of Trump's 2016 transition team, Rick Dearborn, returned to the Heritage Foundation to write Project 2025's chapter on the White House Office.
After Trump left office in 2021, former aides including immigration advisor Stephen Miller and domestic policy chief Brooke Rollins and Larry Kudlow launched their own right-wing political nonprofits with goals ranging from promoting and defending Trump policies to fighting right-wing legal battles.
Meadows joined the Conservative Partnership Institute to help lead its efforts to "train, equip and unite the conservative movement."
CPI is working to create what one supporter described to The New York as an "infrastructure" for an anti-establishment conservative movement.
The idea of such an infrastructure hearkens back to the Heritage Foundation's ambition to launch a "conservative infrastructure" from the Reagan administration.
"For five years now, we’ve been forming the networks and the strategies — and building the permanent infrastructure — that the conservative movement has needed for far too long," reads the CPI 2022 annual report.
This year, advocacy watchdog group Campaign for Accountability filed an IRS complaint alleging that CPI "indirectly engaged in political campaign activity through a for-profit subsidiary that provides services to" Trump's campaign.
The IRS prohibits 501(c)(3) nonprofits from directly or indirectly participating in political campaigns on behalf of any candidate.
According to IRS filings, the Heritage Foundation reported $106 million in revenue in 2022, compared with $36 million reported by CPI.
That contrasts with $40 million in 2022 revenue reported by the liberal Center for American Progress.
TRUMP TIES TO PROJECT 2025
The Heritage Foundation prepared policy manifestos for the Bush, Clinton and Trump Administrations, and began working on the latest — Project 2025 — in 2022.
Fagan said Project 2025 illustrates how far right Heritage has moved.
"The group of people they put together for Project 2025 was larger than in previous efforts, and importantly, it was entirely composed of the far-right portion of the Republican Party: the MAGA party," Fagan said. "So, we're not talking about the Chamber of Commerce. We weren't talking about the American Enterprise Institute, which was more influential during the Bush years."
In April 2023, Heritage published the manifesto, which is formally titled: "Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise."
Trump's campaign has repeatedly denied any link between Trump and Project 2025 this summer.
Dartmouth sociology professor John Campbell called that "hard to believe."
In July, Trump claimed on social media that he has "no idea who is behind" Project 2025.
But, dozens of Trump's former administration employees now work at the conservative groups that advised Project 2025, according to CNN.
And the Washington Post reported he took a private flight with Heritage's president in April 2022 on the way to the foundation's annual conference. Trump's spokesperson denied the Post's report that the nonprofit briefed Trump himself on Project 2025.
Trump spoke at the nonprofit's dinner, saying: "This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”
In September 2023, Trump's spokesperson acknowledged similarities between Project 2025 and Trump's own platform.
“Everyone knows his America First agenda actually works, which is why many are copying him," his spokesperson Liz Harrington told Politico.
And this week, the nonprofit Centre for Climate Reporting released an undercover video recorded July 24 in which Project 2025 author and former Trump administration official Russell Vought said the former president was "very supportive of what" Project 2025 does.
"He is running against the brand," Vought said of Trump's denials of any connection to Project 2025. "He is not running against any people. He's not running against any institutions. It's interesting he's in fact not even opposing himself to a particular policy. He's been at our organization, he's raised money for our organization, he's blessed it."
University of Cincinnati College of Law dean emeritus Joseph Tomain said regardless — the similarities between the manifesto and Trump's platform are undeniable.
"Let's assume he knows nothing about it," Tomain said. "The fact of the matter is his political agenda, and the political agenda of the project, run parallel to each other."
Scores of ideas floated by Trump over the years appear in fleshed-out form in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, which is backed by over a hundred conservative groups and whose contributors include over 100 former Trump administration officials.
For example, Project 2025 offers plans to expand presidential power, make it easier for Trump to fire civil servants and replace them with political appointees, shutter the Department of Education and make it easier to mass deport migrants. Trump has promised an executive order to cease federal programs that "promote sex and gender transition at any age" — page 474 of Project 2025 has a plan to have the federal government "acknowledge there is insufficient scientific evidence to support" coverage for gender-affirming surgeries in state plans.
In the Centre for Climate Reporting's video, Center for Renewing America research director Micah Meadowcroft, said Vought is supervising the second phase of Project 2025.
"The second phase after the book came out was to break down like actual sort of policy packets and executive orders and agenda items and things like that," Meadowcroft said.
Sarah Matthews, who served as deputy press secretary to Trump, said Trump has only tried to distance himself from Project 2025 because of its lack of popularity with voters.
Project 2025 includes a proposal to break up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and privatize its weather forecasting — essentially ending its popular free weather reports, which Project 2025 claims are less "reliable" than private forecasts. A 2020 Inspector General report found Trump's White House exerted political pressure on NOAA to issue a statement sharing his false claim that 2019 Hurricane Dorian would slam Alabama and calling a National Weather Service tweet "inconsistent."
"The thing is, Donald Trump's fingerprints are all over it," Matthews said at a July panel at New York University. "The people who drafted it are people that worked in his first administration who are still Trump loyalists and will go on to probably be in senior roles in a second Trump administration. So don't be fooled when he says: 'Oh, I don't know anything about this.' Clearly his campaign aides got to him."
She added: "We know that he his people are behind it, and that this is what a second Trump term would look like."
Brown said though Trump has unsuccessfully tried to distance himself from Project 2025, he believes the Heritage Foundation "will remain influential in Trump circles."
"Too many of his key advisers are associated with Trump and will remain so until the election, and after should he win," Brown said. "Distancing himself from Project 2025 and the hundreds of radical policy recommendations won’t change that. The real influence has always been through people, not policy documents."
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DATABASES OF LOYALISTS
To fill his administration’s ranks, Trump could lean on the help of the Heritage Foundation and CPI.
Despite Project 2025 former director Paul Dans stepping down from that role, the Heritage Foundation is continuing to work on its plan to assemble a database of people interested in serving in Trump's potential second term.
Academic experts said loyalty to Trump is top of mind for allies coming up with lists of job candidates for a potential second term.
"Obviously Trump is trying to run away from Project 2025, and the Heritage Foundation efforts, but I know that those think tanks and allies are pulling together almost telephone directories worth of possible appointees," Rudalevige said. "There's definitely an organized effort to try to make sure that they have identified loyalists who would serve in a new administration."
Dans told Brisbane-based ABC Investigations that the Heritage Foundation’s database of potential recruits exceeds 10,000 people "from all walks of life."
“It’s making sure that we have the right people who are going to be steeped in the battle plan," Dans said. "We want the person who keeps getting knocked down and is indefatigable.”
“We have a database with over 10,000 people from all walks of life entering into this, aspiring to serve,” said Dans, who served as chief of staff in the Office of Personnel Management under Trump. “We want people who’ve been canceled, who’ve figuratively given blood for the movement. These are mums who’ve challenged school boards. These are people who’ve stood up in their companies and said, ‘Enough with [diversity, equity and inclusion] and the woke agenda.’”
And The New Yorker recently revealed that the CPI's American Accountability Foundation is “investigating the personal profiles and social-media posts of federal employees to determine who might lack fealty to Trump.”
A few weeks after Trump’s February 2020 acquittal in his first impeachment trial, CPI’s vice president of programs Rachel Bovard told a network of conservative activists that vetting was a priority, according to The New Yorker’s description of footage obtained by watchdog group Documented.
“We work very closely . . . with the Office of Presidential Personnel at the White House. Because we see what happens when we don’t vet these people. That’s how we got Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, O.K.? That’s how we got Marie Yovanovitch. All these people that led the impeachment against President Trump shouldn’t have been there in the first place," Bovard said, referring to administration officials who blew testified against Trump at the impeachment trial.
Trump’s allies are also “drawing up lists” of loyalist lawyers — a potential contrast with the Trump administration's reliance on Federalist Society recommendations during his first term, according to The New York Times.
Brown said presidential transition teams themselves usually vet candidates with Congressional funding, and that it's unclear how useful the Heritage Foundation's database of resumes will prove.
"The so-called Conservative LinkedIn, however, has yet to be described or demonstrated in any detail, raising some questions about how effective that’s actually been so far," Brown said. "I’m dubious about how much vetting is even possible by an outside group in anything more than a cursory way."
Still, with 4,000 positions to fill for a Trump administration — and potentially tens of thousands of more if Trump follows through on his plan to replace more administration officials through what's known as Schedule F — Fagan said that Trump will likely turn to his rightwing groups and allies for help.
"4,000 people," Fagan said. "Who are you going to find if, for example, you didn't draw a lot of these far-right people from the Project 2025 group?"
He said Project 2025 or the Heritage Foundation doesn't have to formally chair Trump's transition to play a "very important role."
"I think even if Trump were to get on stage and say, 'I hate Project 2025, they're all losers,' I don't think there's a plausible path to staffing his administration without that group of people," Fagan said.