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By Joe Edwards
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Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project is a text produced by right-wing think tank and lobby group The Heritage Foundation, which is intended to serve as a guidebook for a future conservative administration.
Donald Trump and his campaign team have officially distanced themselves from Project 2025's radical blueprint, yet several key figures behind the project have political ties to the former president.
It's a lengthy document—about 900 pages—and some of the policies it proposes have garnered widespread attention, including bringing federal agencies under more direct control of the president, a rollback on environmental commitments, and abolishing the Department of Education.
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"Taken as a whole, it's a blueprint to capture and defenestrate the administrative state (or "deep state" as some prefer to call it), which conservatives have long suspected of promoting liberal values and stymying their own policy reforms. A big part of the plan is to politicize a top-tier of the civil service (perhaps up to 50,000 posts) and abolish and restructure several government departments (including the DHS)," said Andrew Wroe, a senior lecturer in American politics at the U.K.'s University of Kent.
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Paul Dans: Who Is He, What Does He Do at Project 2025, and How Is He Connected to Trump?
Dans is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and has previously worked as an attorney.
He is now the director of Project 2025, organizing policy and personnel recommendations and training for appointees in the next presidential administration.
Dans was chief of staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under Donald Trump, in charge of human resources policy. He was also the office's White House liaison.
He was appointed as chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission - an agency that provides planning guidance for Washington, D.C., and the surrounding areas - by Trump in 2021.
Spencer Chretien: Who Is He, What Does He Do at Project 2025 and How Is He Connected to Trump?
Spencer Chretien was the special assistant to the president in 2020 and 2021. He was also associate director of presidential personnel during this time, involved with the recruitment and placement of governmental political appointees.
He has previously worked for other conservative and libertarian organizations, including the American Legislative Exchange Council, Citizens against Government Waste and FreedomWorks.
Chretien is currently the associate director at Project 2025.
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Troup Hemenway: Who Is He, What Does He Do at Project 2025 and How Is He Connected to Trump?
Another associate director at Project 2025 is Troup Hemenway.
Hemenway was formerly the associate director of the Presidential Personnel Office under Trump, and oversaw presidential appointments in the Defense, Homeland Security, and Energy Departments as well as the intelligence community.
He was selected to assist the deputy director of the Presidential Personnel Office while he was still an undergraduate student, MSNBC reported.
He additionally founded the Association of Republican Presidential Appointees.
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Although several high-profile figures working behind the scenes at Project 2025 have associations with Trump, the former president has publicly distanced himself from it.
In a Truth Social post, Trump claimed he knew nothing of the project or who was behind it.
Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, told Newsweek: "Project 2025 has nothing to do with our campaign. It's a proposal from Heritage, an outside organization."
Leavitt pointed Newsweek to a previous statement issued by Trump campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, which said that "no aspect of future presidential staffing or policy announcements should be deemed official" unless Trump or a campaign member says it.
"Democrats are fixating on Project 2025 because they want to paint Trump as an extremist. At the same time, it's worth emphasizing that Trump has distanced himself from the document and that the official Republican Party platform this year has actually disappointed many social conservatives because it's so moderate," said Thomas Gift, professor of political science at University College London in the U.K.
"The Trump campaign can't be held accountable for every policy item pushed by right-wing think tanks like Heritage. While many of the brains behind Project 2025 have links to Trump, and there's little doubt Trump would draw ideas from it in a future administration, it's still an independent document," he added.
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