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On the campaign trail and even in the months leading up to his inauguration, Donald Trump made one thing absolutely clear: He has nothing to do with Project 2025.
Now, to be fair, Trump relies on lies the same way most of us rely on oxygen, so it should come as no surprise that those Project 2025 claims were nothing but blatant untruths. Trump was always a key figure in the initiative’s plans, and he’s pursuing its aims with an unimpeded zeal. Now that he’s got the job secured, Trump is following Project 2025 to a T, allowing the terrifying document’s orders to take shape.
The first step in this process is the Trump team. The people Trump collects at his side are a vital aspect of Project 2025’s rollout, as it relies on these loyalists to ensure even its most rights-robbing aspects — including the defunding of vital information sources and the redefining of what makes a “woman” — see the light of day. Which is exactly what’s happening mere weeks into the second Trump administration, as the man in charge stacks governmental ranks with the worst the country has to offer, and all over their ties to an initiative he’s supposedly never read.
Every Trump team member associated with Project 2025
Project 2025 is a truly terrifying document, and if you haven’t taken the time to understand its contents, I suggest you start there. It’s important that we understand the plan behind the wild machinations currently ripping our government asunder, and those start with the architects of this ambitious plan and the chess pieces they provided to Trump to bring that plan to fruition.
Vice President JD Vance
May as well start from the top. Donald Trump’s second Veep, JD Vance, has been a Heritage Foundation darling from the start. Its broadly assumed that the blank, wet piece of lined paper that is JD Vance was only selected by Trump to satisfy the Project 2025 backers, and that line of thinking has been reinforced constantly over the months following Vance’s selection. He’s a prominent supporter of the Heritage Foundation, he’s praised the “good ideas” contained within the plan, and this man is a collaborator, not to mention longtime friend, of foundation president and Project 2025 architect Kevin D. Roberts. But sure, he’s got “nothing” to do with the initiative.
Pete Hoekstra – Nominee for U.S. ambassador to Canada
You likely haven’t heard his name with nearly the frequency of figures like Pete Hegseth, but Heokstra is a danger nonetheless. The former representative turned Michigan Republican Party chairman already has experience as ambassador — he served as ambassador to the Netherlands during the first Trump term — and he’s also a contributor to Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership. He helped make the terrifying plan a reality, and his ties to the Heritage Foundation go back more than a decade, at least.
Russell Vought — Nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget
This man has supervillain literally written into his name — hello weirdly fitting The Boys plug — so it’s little surprise that he’s the real-life incarnation of so many comic book baddies. Yet another key figure in Project 2025’s formation, Vought wrote the Mandate for Leadership’s Executive Office chapter, which pushes for extreme consolidation of power under the executive and urges Trump — and Trump alone — to seize near-unlimited power and wield it widely, regardless of the consequences.
Karoline Leavitt — White House press secretary
Karoline Leavitt’s had a rough start to her new position as White House press secretary, but is that slowing her down one bit? Of course not. The brazen lies she told at the outset of Trump’s second administration — which included the bombastic claim that $50 million in condoms was slated for deployment to Gaza thanks to Biden — are just the tip of the iceberg with the youngest member of the Trump team. She’s also distinctly connected to Project 2025, which she’s been involved with for some time now. She even starred in an unpublished video from Project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy, which really underlines how key her role is in the gradual unrolling of the initiative.
Tom Homan — Trump’s “border czar”
Tom Homan’s own Trumpian history made him a clear candidate for round two, and he was quickly tapped to once again enlist heartless policies to control America’s southern border. The first time around, Homan served as acting director of ICE, and this time he’s got a nice cozy role that doesn’t require those pesky Senate confirmations. Yet another contributor to Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, Homan’s exact connection to the document is unclear, but his loyalty to its aims couldn’t be more obvious.
Stephen Miller — reincarnated corpse and deputy chief of staff for policy
The utterly soulless Stephen Miller was an obvious choice for Trump’s second term, thanks to the heartless machinations of Trump’s first term that made him such a figure in far-right circles. He was the man behind the Muslim ban and the horrific separation of families at the U.S. border, and he’s set to unleash more horrors upon the states with his return to the White House. His conservative nonprofit America First Legal served as an advisory for Project 2025, and he’s been deeply entrenched in its aims for a good four years now.
John Ratcliffe — Director of the CIA
During Trump’s first term in the White House, John Ratcliffe served as Director of National Intelligence, and this time he’s headed to the CIA as its new director. Yet another noted author of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, Ratcliffe is also listed as a source in its Intelligence Community chapter. His ties to the initiative go nice and deep, and he’s been working closely with fellow Project 2025’s hardliners for years now.
Brendan Carr — FCC chair
Yet another key author in Project 2025’s composition, Brandan Carr has had his sights set on the initiative’s goals from the start. He wrote the FCC portion of the Mandate for Leadership, and urged the executive branch to make more space for Elon Musk’s growth, for one. He also proposed “eliminating the immunity big tech firms have for third-party content hosted on their platforms under Section 230, and targeting them over alleged censorship,” according to New York Magazine‘s Intelligencer, and “calls for adopting a more hawkish FCC approach to foreign adversaries, such as China, like banning TikTok on national-security grounds.”
The others
They don’t boast the same deep ties to Project 2025 as their far-right peers, but almost every Trump appointee — a pool that includes Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, incoming Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, incoming Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, surprising union ally and nominee for Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the actually insane Robert F. Kennedy Jr., proud Koch brother backer and nominee for Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, complete madwoman and Secretary of Education nominee Linda McMahon, and, of course, dog murderer and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem — have links back to the document and its country-rending aims.