image of Donald Trump with text "Project 2025"

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The Trump administration personnel with ties to Project 2025

The following figures have been picked for positions in Trump's second term

Written by Sophie Lawton, Madeline Peltz & John Knefel

Published

Though President-elect Donald Trump tried throughout the 2024 campaign to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation-led initiative Project 2025 -- a sprawling right-wing plan to remake the federal government in the MAGA mold -- his transition team has named several individuals with tight connections to the initiative to key posts in his forthcoming administration.

This is no surprise. Eighteen of the writers and editors of Project 2025’s opus, Mandate for Leadership, served in the first Trump administration. Twelve more worked both in the administration and for one of the Trump campaign or transition teams. Of the 267 total contributors to the Project 2025 efforts, 144 worked in the first Trump administration or in his campaign or transition teams.

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts has expressed his appreciation for Trump’s nominees, saying he’s “ecstatic” about them and that the selections are “exceeding our expectations.” Roberts acknowledged that “it would be very difficult” for a Trump administration to make policy “without at least consulting” Project 2025.

Below, we share details on Trump’s Project 2025 allies who may be joining his administration. This piece will be updated on an ongoing basis.

Project 2025 contributors

  • Tom Homan, “border czar”

  • Trump has selected Tom Homan to serve as his “border czar” and run the administration’s border and immigration policy. After his stint as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump’s first administration, Homan joined The Heritage Foundation as a visiting fellow and was listed as a contributor to Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, the effort’s nearly 900-page policy book. He has promised to carry out “​​the biggest deportation operation this country has ever seen” and said that “no one’s off the table.” 

    In February 2022, Homan attended a white nationalist conference hosted by the American First Political Action Conference and its leader, white nationalist Nick Fuentes. Homan ultimately left before the conference began, and skipped a planned speaking gig there, claiming he was unfamiliar with Fuentes and his followers.

  • Brendan Carr, Federal Communications Commission chair

  • Trump has named Brendan Carr for FCC commissioner. Carr currently serves on the commission, after being nominated by Trump in 2017. Carr wrote Mandate for Leadership’s chapter on the FCC, arguing that the commission should focus on “reining in Big Tech, promoting national security, unleashing economic prosperity, and ensuring FCC accountability and good governance.” He also targeted TikTok.

    During the 2024 election, Carr echoed some of Trump’s attacks at broadcasters. Trump has repeatedly threatened to revoke the licenses of major broadcast TV news outlets, and Carr said he will make sure the FCC enforces laws that require broadcasters “to operate in the public interest.” 

  • Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy

  • Trump has picked Stephen Miller to head up the new administration’s homeland security policy. Miller is the founder and leader of a former Project 2025 partner organization, America First Legal, and appeared in recruitment videos shared on the project’s website. Miller has since tried to distance himself from the Heritage project even though AFL is mentioned 14 times in Mandate for Leadership. 

  • Karoline Leavitt, press secretary

  • Leavitt, selected to be the administration's press secretary, worked on the Trump ‘24 campaign, where she pushed claims that the Trump campaign had no connections to Project 2025 and other, election-related conspiracy theories. Leavitt also appeared in training videos for Project 2025. 

  • Russ Vought, Office of Management and Budget director

  • Russ Vought has been renominated to direct the Office of Management and Budget, a position he also held in Trump’s first term. Vought authored the second chapter of Mandate, on the Executive Office of the President, which argues that “a President today assumes office to find a sprawling federal bureaucracy that all too often is carrying out its own policy plans and preferences—or, worse yet, the policy plans and preferences of a radical, supposedly ‘woke’ faction of the country.” Vought is also a founder of the Center for Renewing America, a MAGA-aligned think tank and Project 2025 partner. He is an outspoken proponent of Christian nationalism, at one point calling for an “army” of right-wing activists with a “biblical worldview” to “go out and lead in reckless abandon.” .

    Vought is a leading voice advocating for Schedule F — a scheme to reclassify career civil servants as political appointees and thus make them easier to fire. The policy is a critical piece of a key Project 2025 priority to staff the federal bureaucracy with MAGA loyalists and undermine the agency independence. Vought told former Fox host Tucker Carlson,  “The whole notion of an independent agency should be thrown out.”

  • John Ratcliffe, CIA director

  • Trump has selected John Ratcliffe to lead the CIA. Ratcliffe served as Trump’s director of national intelligence during the COVID-19 pandemic though he had little prior intelligence experience. He drew criticism during his first nomination for having supported conspiracy theories related to the Mueller investigation, and during his time in the Trump administration Ratcliffe continued to spread disinformation about the Russia probe. Ratcliffe is listed as a contributor to Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership. 

  • Pete Hoekstra, Ambassador to Canada

  • Former Ambassador to the Netherlands Pete Hoekstra has been tapped to be Trump’s ambassador to Canada for the second administration. Most recently, Hoekstra served as chair of the Michigan Republican Party and worked with the anti-Muslim group Gatestone Institute. Hoekstra is listed as a contributor to the Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership.