(Bloomberg) -- As a candidate, Donald Trump disavowed the MAGA manifesto Project 2025, calling its ideas “abysmal.” Now the president-elect has nominated or appointed to his incoming administration at least five people involved in the project.
The plan became public more than a year ago as the presidential campaign was intensifying. The project was led by the conservative Heritage Foundation and included views of anti-immigrant, anti-reproductive rights, small-government conservatives, gifting Democrats with an easy bullseye for attacks on Trump’s “extreme” views, as Democratic nominee Kamala Harris called them.
The plan proposes to eliminate climate-change rules, lessen worker protections, replace civil servants with Trump loyalists and dismantle at least parts of the Education, Commerce and Homeland Security departments, among other things.
Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 on the campaign trail, claiming to know nothing about it and saying he disagreed with some of its “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal” ideas. His own transition co-chair — and now Commerce Secretary-designate — Howard Lutnick told The Washington Post, “I won’t take a list from them. I won’t take a topic from them. I won’t touch them. They made themselves nuclear.”
At least five people involved in Project 2025 have been tapped for jobs in the second Trump administration.
Brendan Carr, author of the document’s chapter on the Federal Communications Commission, was nominated to lead the agency that regulates television and the Internet. Carr’s recommendations in Project 2025 include limiting protections for Big Tech companies that conservatives allege over-moderate content, particularly Meta Inc.’s Facebook and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. After his nomination, Carr pledged in a post on X to “dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans.”
Russ Vought, author of a core chapter arguing for cutting the size of the federal bureaucracy and strengthening the president’s control over it, is expected to be nominated to lead the Office of Management and Budget, according to CBS News. In his chapter, Vought focuses on reducing the size of government and allowing empowered political appointees to overrule career bureaucrats. Vought also encourages the aggressive use of executive orders from the start of the administration — something that Trump spokesman Jason Miller said the president-elect plans to do.
Tom Homan was tapped for a “border czar” role, and is listed as a contributor to the report. Project 2025 focuses on deporting millions of undocumented migrants, especially criminals. Trump says he plans to declare a national emergency, which would allow him to deploy the military to round up immigrants, guard detention camps and fly them out of the country. Homan, the public face of Trump’s zero-tolerance policies of his first term, has said that this time, he will brook no resistance in liberal cities. “If you’re not going to help us, get the hell out of the way,” he warned sanctuary cities.
John Ratcliffe was nominated to lead the Central Intelligence Agency and is another named contributor to Project 2025. Ratcliffe, a former member of Congress and Trump’s director of national intelligence in his first term, has consistently warned about the need to protect the US against Beijing’s aim to dominate economically, militarily and technologically, and criticized China’s largest companies as a front for the Communist Party. Project 2025 likewise warns extensively about the need to guard against the threat from China.
Pete Hoekstra was nominated as the Ambassador to Canada. A former member of the House intelligence committee, he was Trump’s envoy to the Netherlands in the first term and was criticized for hosting far-right politicians at an embassy party. Hoekstra is listed as a Project 2025 contributor, with the report noting his 1990s’ criticism of waste at the Department of Education, which Trump said he would dismantle.
None of the nominees immediately responded to requests for comment.
“President Trump never had anything to do with Project 2025,” said Karoline Leavitt, a Trump spokeswoman. “All of President Trump’s cabinet nominees and appointments are whole-heartedly committed to President Trump’s agenda, not the agenda of outside groups.”
Eighteen of the 40 Project 2025 authors and editors come from the first Trump first administration. Those include Ken Cuccinelli, the former acting deputy head of Homeland Security; Christopher Miller, the former acting Defense secretary; and Peter Navarro, a top trade adviser.
--With assistance from Emily Birnbaum.
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