During the campaign, Donald Trump denied knowing what the ultra-conservative Project 2025 promoted by the party meant. think tank Heritage Foundation. Now that he is president-elect, he has named nearly a half-dozen people who helped develop the plan to dismantle the current government and carry out the “Second American Revolution.”
These personalities will play important roles in the economy, immigration and the functioning of the administration. The latest addition is Russell T. Vought, who signs one of the chapters of the document.
Trump on Friday named Vought to head the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which oversees White House accounts and helps determine whether federal agencies are complying with the president’s policies.
Vough signs off on Chapter 2 of the “Taking the Reins of Government” section of Project 2025, in which he is tasked with analyzing executive orders and other unilateral actions that Trump could use to remove administrative restraints and reshape executive power in such a way that presidential power has more scope of action.
One suggestion from Vought is to control federal agencies and remove autonomy that could curb Trump’s wishes by dividing the budget into sections, so they are more frequently accountable to the executive branch. According to Vought, “the president’s agenda should be what matters to the departments and agencies that operate under his constitutional authority.”
In the same chapter, Vought also defines what the position Trump has now nominated him for should be, writing that the OMB director must be “the guardian of ‘commander’s intent'” before federal agencies. So once the Senate certifies Vought as OMB director, Trump can be sure he will have a loyal ally ready to expand his agenda.
“The director [del OMB] “You must view your work as the best and most complete approximation of the President’s vision for the policy agenda, always being prepared with real options for implementing said agenda within existing legal authorities and resources “, he wrote.
Under the previous Trump administration, Vought already held this position and it was he who advised the Republican to declare a national emergency on the Mexican border in order to circumvent Congressional control over the construction of the wall. This option suggested by Vought ultimately led to a constitutional conflict.
Recently, Trump said on Truth Social that his new administration was prepared to declare a national emergency and use military means to carry out its mass deportation agenda.
Vought always remained connected to the president-elect’s orbit, but when Democrats began emphasizing the 2025 plan during the campaign, Trump began to publicly distance himself from his former adviser, just as he had done with the document . Not only did he claim “nothing” about the project, but one of the major super PACs that supported Trump, MAGA Inc., launched its own Project 2025 page. The website aimed to capture search traffic from concerned voters and claimed that. it was a “hoax” on the part of the Democrats.
Now that he’s won the election, Vought has returned to the public spotlight, including in a recent interview with former Fox host Tucker Carlson. During the conversation, Vought explained what he previously said in Project 2025 about how Trump “must act as quickly and aggressively as possible, with a radical constitutional perspective, to be able to dismantle” agency power and federal officials.
Other names
Other names related to Project 2025 that Trump announced these days for his new administration are: Brendan Carr for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), who writes a chapter on this agency in Project 2025; Pete Hoekstra as ambassador to Canada and who is cited as a contributor to the drafting of the document; John Ratcliffe as director of the CIA and who is also cited as a collaborator; and Thomas Homan as the “Border Czar,” who is also on the long list of contributors.
The fact that Trump has surrounded himself with Project 2025 authors and collaborators is a further sign of how this plan can guide the Republican once he takes power. The most predictable case is that of border management. In recent weeks, Trump has already made clear that he will spare no resources to carry out the country’s “largest mass deportation in history.”
In Project 2025, migrants are presented as a threat to sovereignty. Homan explained last week in an interview on NewsMax that he was prepared to take on cities that resist mass deportations.
Carr’s election to the FCC, the agency responsible for regulating radio, television and telecommunications networks, also confirms that Trump intends to follow through on his threats against media and technology companies. In Project 2025, Carr argues that the agency should regulate the largest technology companies such as Apple, Meta, Google and Microsoft. It does not mention the platform According to Carr, these companies pose a threat to “individual liberty” in the United States due to the supposed expulsion of certain political viewpoints from their platforms.
There are, however, other names linked to the 2025 project that Trump ultimately excluded for his cabinet. Roger Severino, an anti-abortionist who played a leading role at the Health Department during the first Trump administration and wrote the health care chapter of Project 2025, was rejected by the presidential transition team . They excluded him from the government because of his connection to the project, according to what he published Policy.
The anti-abortion and conservative lobby has pressured Trump to appoint him to his cabinet, but on the issue of abortion, the Republican continues to seek to maintain some distance. During the campaign, he deviated by promising that he would not sign a federal ban on abortion and would let the states decide. That’s why he now wants to distance himself from the federal restrictions on abortion proposed by Severino in the document.
