Former President Donald Trump attempted to distance himself from the right-wing agenda known as Project 2025 — despite the fact that it’s been pushed forward by people who worked in his first presidential administration and who would likely join his second.
“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” he wrote on Truth Social on Friday. “Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
Project 2025 was created by the Heritage Foundation and is backed by dozens of other arch-conservative groups. One of the three people on its leadership team is Paul Dans, the former chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management during the Trump administration. The Project 2025 team has put out a call for recruiting potential second-term Trump officials.
Other former Trump administration officials affiliated with Project 2025 include former housing secretary Ben Carson, former White House adviser Peter Navarro and former Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought (who is also working on the Republican National Committee’s 2024 platform).
The 900-page agenda lays out a policy blueprint for a potential second Trump term. Among other policies, the Project 2025 agenda recommends imposing a scheme to reclassify government workers — something Trump initially attempted in 2020 and plans to implement if reelected.
The plan would put more workers in a category known as Schedule F, stripping thousands of people of their job protections and and permitting them to be fired at any given time for any reason. Experts say Schedule F’s implementation would pave the way for authoritarianism and would have a chilling effect on the government, degrading public services like disaster relief, financial regulation and the administration of benefits, and would harm key welfare programs like Social Security.
In a campaign video last year, Trump described Schedule F as an effort to “remove rogue bureaucrats.”
“I will wield that power very aggressively,” he said.
In a statement on Friday, a spokesperson for the Biden-Harris campaign described Project 2025 as a “playbook for Trump to achieve his dream of being a dictator on day one, with unchecked, imperial power.”
“Project 2025 is the extreme policy and personnel playbook for Trump’s second term that should scare the hell out of the American people. Project 2025 staff and leadership routinely tout their connections to Trump’s team, and are the same people leading the RNC policy platform, Trump’s debate prep, campaign, and inner circle,” the spokesperson said.