All Of The Trump Cabinet Picks That Have Ties To Project 2025

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 28, 2025, 11:41 AM

all of the trump cabinet picks that have ties to project 2025

Find this story in your account’s ‘Saved for Later’ section. During his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump and aides repeatedly dismissed the idea of any association between them and Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation effort to draft a transition plan and detailed policy blueprint... At least 140 members of the first Trump administration helped with the plan, and multiple former Trump Cabinet members wrote much of Project 2025’s 922-page Mandate for Leadership manifesto — including top Trump adviser... Now that Trump and Team MAGA are headed back to the White House, they clearly aren’t keeping their distance anymore. Trump has named several Project 2025 authors and contributors to his White House Cabinet, and despite the fact that Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick vowed in September that “I won’t take a list from... Below is an updating list of everyone with ties to Project 2025 who is currently set to serve in the second Trump administration.

Trump has named Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, as the next FCC chair. Carr authored the FCC chapter of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, which argues the agency should prioritize “reining in Big Tech, promoting national security, unleashing economic prosperity, and ensuring FCC accountability and good governance.”... It also calls for adopting a more hawkish FCC approach to foreign adversaries, such as China, like banning TikTok on national-security grounds. And Carr writes that the FCC should make it easier for Elon Musk’s Starlink and other space companies to launch more communication satellites. Pete Hoekstra is former representative and current Michigan Republican Party chairman who served as U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands during the first Trump administration.

Trump has nominated him to be the next U.S. ambassador to Canada. Hoekstra is listed as a contributor to Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership. It’s not clear how he contributed, but the Department of Education chapter cites a critical report he authored in Congress on the Department. In 2011, Hoekstra was also named a visiting distinguished fellow with the Heritage Foundation where he focused on education reform. Molly Butler/Media Matters | Trump photo: Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons

The following figures have been picked for positions in Trump's second term Written by Sophie Lawton, Madeline Peltz & John Knefel 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 --... 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. Donald Trump has nominated several people for his Cabinet who are tied to Project 2025, despite the President-elect and his team distancing themselves from the conservative manifesto. Trump has named at least four nominees to his next Cabinet who are listed as contributors to Project 2025 or helped write The Heritage Foundation's 922-page document outlining how a potential Republican administration could... These include his upcoming border czar, Tom Homan, and Brendan Carr, who has been tapped to head the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In July, Trump said he knows "nothing" about Project 2025 and that some of the ideas it promotes—including limiting access to the abortion pill mifepristone and banning pornography—are "absolutely ridiculous and abysmal." Other policies,... A number of former Trump administration officials also serve as directors or advisers for Project 2025.

Newsweek has contacted the Trump transition team for comment via email. More names linked to Project 2025 could also be nominated to Trump's next Cabinet. Russ Vought, who previously served in Trump's Cabinet as director of the Office of Management and Budget, is in line for the same role again, according to reports by The Washington Post and CBS... Vought wrote a chapter of Project 2025 detailing how to bring changes to the executive branch. Project 2025 has captured the U.S. government.

More than 50 high-level Trump administration officials have links to groups behind the Heritage Foundation-backed plan, a DeSmog analysis found. That number includes many of President Trump’s closest advisors, from Stephen Miller to the recently departing Elon Musk. It also includes a full 70 percent of his cabinet. Some of the officials directly authored parts of “The Mandate for Leadership,” the now-notorious, 900-page proposal to “dismantle the administrative state” — the meat of Project 2025. Others recently worked for, donated to, or otherwise collaborated with one or more of the dozens of conservative groups that created the distinctly Christian Nationalist-flavored document. Some of these high-ranking officials have connections to five or more different Project 2025 groups, DeSmog’s analysis found.

In other words, Project 2025 isn’t just influential in Washington. Its friends and creators are literally running the show. Which helps to explain why the Trump administration has worked swiftly to implement the vision described in the “Mandate.” From across-the-board tariffs to the mass firing of tens of thousands of federal workers to attacking inclusive language and initiatives, from gutting whole agencies and departments to dramatically stepping up the rate of deportations... Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 during his campaign. Now he’s tapped several people tied to the controversial manifesto to serve in his administration.

Donald Trump listens while Russell Vought speaks during an executive order signing regarding federal regulations in the Roosevelt Room of the White House Oct. 9, 2019, in DC. When news first broke this summer about Project 2025, the conservative mandate for reshaping the federal government, then-candidate Donald Trump immediately distanced himself from the plan, calling some of it “ridiculous and abysmal.” Fast forward several months, and Trump, now the president-elect, has announced his intention to place several architects of the plan into top positions in his administration. Project 2025 is a 900-page “presidential transition” plan that consists of a playbook for the first 180 days in office. A coalition of conservative groups organized by The Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank, developed the plan to “rescue the country.” Some of its more controversial elements include elimination of government agencies, boosting the...

On July 5, 2024, Donald Trump dismissed Project 2025 outright. “I know nothing about it. I have no idea who is behind it… I have nothing to do with them.” That was thirteen months ago. Today, he presides over an administration where roughly 71% of cabinet-level officials, along with many of his most powerful aides, come directly from the Heritage Foundati… By Karen Yourish, Lazaro Gamio and Ashley Wu

A number of patterns have emerged among the people President-elect Donald J. Trump has indicated he wants to fill his cabinet and other senior-level positions in his administration. Some points of commonality are historically typical among senior White House and cabinet officials — Harvard, Yale and Princeton are well represented among his selections’ alma maters, for instance. Other uniting factors are unprecedented: Many on the list have denied or questioned the results of the 2020 presidential election, often a prerequisite for gaining Mr. Trump’s favor. And some lack the traditional qualifications shared by their predecessors.

Indeed, it appears that the most important qualifier in Mr. Trump’s mind has been fealty to him, which many of his picks have demonstrated in various ways over the past few years. See some of the links between more than 60 potential members (in some cases pending confirmation) of the incoming administration, below. As a former and potentially future president, Donald Trump hailed what would become Project 2025 as a road map for “exactly what our movement will do” with another crack at the White House. As the blueprint for a hard-right turn in America became a liability during the 2024 campaign, Trump pulled an about-face. He denied knowing anything about the “ridiculous and abysmal” plans written in part by his first-term aides and allies.

Now, after being elected the 47th president on Nov. 5, Trump is stocking his second administration with key players in the detailed effort he temporarily shunned. Most notably, Trump has tapped Russell Vought for an encore as director of the Office of Management and Budget; Tom Homan, his former immigration chief, as “border czar;” and immigration hardliner Stephen Miller as... Those moves have accelerated criticisms from Democrats who warn that Trump’s election hands government reins to movement conservatives who spent years envisioning how to concentrate power in the West Wing and impose a starkly... government and society. Trump and his aides maintain that he won a mandate to overhaul Washington.

All Of The Trump Cabinet Picks That Have Ties To Project 2025

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