At Least 5 People Associated with Project 2025 Tapped to Serve in the Trump Administration

WASHINGTON, DC — Despite repeated claims to the contrary, President-elect Trump is not shying away from filling his cabinet with people associated with Project 2025, the extreme agenda that outlines how the next president could gut checks and balances to take more control over our lives. Accountable.US has identified several Project 2025 alumni – a number likely to grow – tapped to serve in the Trump administration. 

Before the election, the Trump campaign worked to distance themselves from Project 2025. However, now that the ballots have been cast, the President-Elect is nominating people affiliated with Project 2025, along with vetting its architect Russ Vought, for positions in his administration. So far this includes:

• Stephen Miller, appointed to be Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, founded and served as President of America First Legal (AFL), which was among the first groups to partner with Project 2025, and AFL’s executive director authored Project 2025’s agenda for the Department of Justice. 
• AFL dropped its public backing of Project 2025 in July 2024, after over two years supporting the extreme venture, amidst public backlash to the radical plans and Trump’s bad faith attempts to distance himself from the Project.
• Tom Homan, appointed to be border czar, is a Project 2025 contributor and was the acting director of ICE during Trump’s first term, until he resigned when the Senate refused to confirm him.
• John Ratcliffe, nominated to be the Director of the CIA, is a contributor to Project 2025 and served a brief stint as the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) at the end of Trump’s first term. Ratcliffe’s time as DNI was characterized by efforts to stir up distrust and misinformation about the then-upcoming 2020 presidential election.
• Brendan Carr, appointed to be Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman,  authored Project 2025’s plans for the FCC. His policy recommendations align with conservative talking points about the censoring of conservatives by social media platforms. His involvement has been criticized by members of Congress as a potential violation of the Hatch Act and other ethics rules. 
• Kristi Noem, nominated to be Secretary of Homeland Security, is connected to Project 2025 through Mark Miller, a staff member of her gubernatorial office who contributed to the Project’s manifesto.

In addition to giving top positions to Project 2025 affiliates, executive orders reportedly being considered by Trump also align with policy recommendations found in Project 2025. So far these include:

• Schedule F, which would transform the roles of about 50,000 civil servants’ jobs to make them more political and fireable at will, stripping their employment protections.
• Project 2025 identifies Schedule F specifically for the administration to adopt early on. “Identifying programmatic political workforce needs early and developing plans (for example, Schedule F).”
• A “Warrior Board” of retired generals and noncommissioned officers that would review currently serving generals, allowing the administration to purge the DOD leadership.
• Project 2025 recommends that the new administration “Reduce the number of generals. Rank creep is pervasive. The number of 0-6 to 0-9 officers is at an all-time high across the armed services (above World War II levels), and the actual battlefield experience of this officer corps is at an all-time low. The next President should limit the continued advancement of many of the existing cadre, many of whom have been advanced by prior Administrations for reasons other than their warfighting prowess.”
• Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. Project 2025 explicitly calls for withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement “To that end, the next conservative Administration should withdraw the U.S. from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.”