President-elect Donald Trump and the members of his team disavowed the conservative Project 2025 during the election after they saw the conservative transition plan and policy blueprint as a liability after Democrats used it to attack his campaign it was also revealed that some people who were close to the agenda may be made not to have an impact in the new administration.
While speaking on the development in September, Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of Trump’s transition and his nominee to serve as Commerce Secretary stated that they have made themselves nuclear to the development. It has been disclosed that as the elections were concluded the new administration is looking at turning into the project 2025 which will be a guide for some of the staff in the next administration.
A source familiar with the development further disclosed that as it stands, the transition officials are taking suggestions for potential hires from the extensive personnel database created by Project 2025,
In the past, Project 2025 which has details in a book with conservative policy recommendations got good attention from the democrats which was a central part of the effort was putting together a database that officials had framed as a conservative LinkedIn to help staff an incoming Republican administration.
The person familiar with the transition said officials overseeing plans for some departments and agencies have started to reach out to potential hires whose names and contact information were part of that database.
Individuals helping to fill out the personnel teams for the Trump transition operation have asked for and used information from the Project 2025 database because of the enormity of the task of filling out the more than 4,000 political appointee jobs that will become vacant in 2025, this person said.
The person, who worked on Project 2025 also stated that there are a lot of positions to fill and they have continued to send names over, including ones from the database as they are conservative, qualified and vetted. The individual also stated that it has been hard to find 4,000 solid people, so they have been happy to help.
The receptiveness to using the Project 2025 database for potential hires comes as the transition has already shown it is open to tapping contributors to the effort for administration jobs, including Tom Homan as border czar, Brendan Carr as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and John Ratcliffe as CIA director. Both Homan and Ratcliffe were listed as contributors to Project 2025, while Carr wrote a chapter on the FCC.
Also, former Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, a Project 2025 author who also functioned as the Republican National Committee’s platform policy director, is considered a potential government pick, for the president-elect.
It was disclosed that not all individuals are been welcomed into the government. In a report presented on Thursday by Politico, it disclosed that the transition rejected a push for former Trump administration official Roger Severino, who wrote Project 2025’s chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services, to serve as deputy secretary of the agency, over concerns about the anti-abortion policies he laid out in the policy blueprint.
The personnel database was a cornerstone of Project 2025. Under Paul Dans, a former Trump government official who led Project 2025, the group built a database of more than 10,000 candidates vetted for their MAGA certifications who would build out the government in the event Trump won, as ProPublica reported in August. The idea behind the effort was to ensure that a future Trump government would have the foot warriors necessary to quickly enact his plan after he has been made the president officially.
There seems to be tension between the Trump campaign and Project 2025, it was stated that the tension has continued to be high after Trump has continued to lambast and disavow the effort. The officials have indicated that they will not make any inquiry from the database for anybody who will be brought into the government. In his September interview with CNBC, Lutnick stated he won’t take a list from Project 2025.
Also states that the transition team of Donald Trump has not touched the document, he also revealed that anybody who says it’s got anything to do with us is just not telling the truth on purpose. He concluded that he was clear to zero.
Lutnick restated his point to the New York Post before last month’s vice presidential debate, calling Project 2025 radioactive.
A top Trump campaign adviser told Semafor in July that it was not the first time Team Trump aimed the Project 2025 personnel database. The campaigner stated that any organization that is purporting to be pushing ‘Trump policies,’ is probably the last organization that we’ll take references from for personnel.
A Republican operative who spoke on the outcome of the election after it was concluded stated that it would be kind of bull if the government tries to keep all the guys out of government.
The person who noted that if that is carried out it will be a big mistake stated that Project 2025 has a lot of names included in it which will make it difficult to utilise. It was stated that he thinks they make an example of a few people. Hopefully, some of them will be able to make it through
When asked about the activities of the transition using the Project 2025 database, a Trump transition official discussed that the transition is working to ensure great people are in a position to deliver the promises made through President Trump’s common sense agenda and overwhelming victory on Election Day.
Project 2025 recreated a huge role in Democratic movement advertising and the party’s anti-Trump message during both President Joe Biden’s and Vice President Kamala Harris’ bids, sparking Trump and his supporters to ratchet up their hexes and claim the policy agenda was not Trump’s.
There was plenty of overlapping between the Trump agenda and Project 2025 which featured assistance from dozens of officials from Trump’s first government. For example, the Project 2025 guideline blueprint and Trump’s Agenda 47 featured similar ideas on mass evictions and cutting the federal bureaucracy.
It was stated that the two have some similarities as Project 2025 included calls for banning pornography and dismantling the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It also featured stringent anti-abortion rights policies that clashed with Trump’s abortion message during the campaign.
At a July campaign event in Grand Rapids, Trump stated that people on the severe right came up with this Project 2025.
While speaking further he stated that it was very, very conservative. He also noted that the sort of the opposite of the radical left. According to him, one has the radical left and the radical right. Trump stated that they came up with this and he doesn’t know what it is.. He further explained that one will read some of these things and they are seriously extreme. But he doesn’t know anything about it.
A September NBC News vote found that 57% of registered voters viewed Project 2025 negatively while just 4% said they viewed the effort positively. But even over the summer, Project 2025 insiders weren’t sweating Trump and his campaign’s disavowals, viewing them as an effort to boost his electoral chances, not to flatly reject the ideas and people tied to the effort.
Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow, who railed against Project 2025 with a very large copy of the policy book at the Democratic National Convention in August, stated that the Democrats need to focus on their policy response to the elevation of Project 2025’s officials and ideas. She shared an Instagram post in which she promoted new legislation tightening restrictions around the collection and management of reproductive health data.
McMorrow stated that it has been easy to say that they had told them before but stated that it was important they now know what they are going to do. She noted that the odds are now left for the Democrats to fight back which she said she is doing now.
