by Nick Surgey, ProPublica, and Andy Kroll, Documented.
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The director of Project 2025, a contentious playbook and policy guide for a right-wing national administration, has been slammed harshly by both Democratic organizations and former US President Donald Trump. But Project 2025’s program to teach an army of political appointees who could fight against the so-called heavy state government bureaucracy on behalf of a future Trump administration remains on track.
Different never-before-published videos created for Project 2025’s National Administration Academy form one of the cornerstone of that program. A person with access to these video provided them with the vast majority of them, totaling 23 totaling more than 14 days of information.
The Project 2025 video coach coming appointees on everything from the nuts and bolts of governing to how to outsmart officials. There are methods to prevent awkward Freedom of Information Act disclosures and prevent “left-wing judges” from overruling traditional policies. Any coming political appointee may be informed of some of the content’s program advice. Other parts of the coaching offer advice on fundamentally changing how the federal government works and what it does.
In a video, liberal activist and former U.S. Agency for International Development deputy chief of staff denies that climate change is a serious issue and claims that the action to fight it is merely a plot to” control people.”
According to Kozma, “his management will have to eliminate any references to climate change from totally everywhere” if the British people elect a conservative president.
In the same picture, Kozma calls the idea of female mobility “evil”. Katie Sullivan, a former acting assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice under Trump, criticizes executive actions taken by the administration of President Joe Biden that led to the creation of sex advisory roles throughout the federal government. According to Biden, the ultimate goal was “advancing equal rights and options, regardless of gender or sex identity.”
Sullivan says,” That position has to be eradicated, as well as all the work troops, the removal of all the capital plans from all the websites, and a complete overhaul of the language in internal and external policy documents and offer applications”.
Trump has tried to range himself from Project 2025 by falsely claiming to be unaware of it and to be unaware of its origins. He and Project 2025’s leader, Kevin Roberts, were actually flying on a private plane together. And in a 2022 speech at a Heritage Foundation event, Trump said,” This is a great party and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail programs for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to protect America”.
29 of the 36 speakers have worked for Trump in some capacity, including on his transition team from 2016 to 2017, in the administration, or in his reelection campaign, according to a review of the training videos. The 2025 project’s leader, Paul Dans, resigned two weeks ago, and the videos are mentioned on the project’s website. The Heritage Foundation said in a statement at the time of Dans ‘ resignation that it would end Project 2025’s policy-related work, but that its” collective efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels — federal, state, and local — will continue”.
The Heritage Foundation and the majority of the people in the videos cited in this story did not respond to ProPublica’s repeated requests for comment. One of the videos features a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, Karolina Leavitt, who stated,” Agenda 47 is our campaign’s only official policy agenda.”
Project 2025’s 887-page” Mandate for Leadership” document lays out a vast array of policy and governance proposals, including eliminating the Department of Education, slashing Medicaid, reclassifying tens of thousands of career civil servants so they could be more easily fired and replaced, giving the president greater power to control the DOJ and further restricting abortion access.
Democrats and liberal organizations have criticized the project’s policy as being “extreme” and “authoritarian,” drawing attention to the numerous connections between Trump and the project’s contributors, including the numerous.
Trump has always made misguided attempts to distance himself from Project 2025, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics president Noah Bookbinder. ” The discovery that the vast majority of speakers in Project 2025 training videos are alumni of the Trump administration or have other close ties to Trump’s political operation is unsurprising further evidence of the close connection there”.
The videos provide examples of lessons learned from the mistakes of the Trump administration, including how staffing issues and the lack of political appointees affected the administration. The advice contradicts conservative dogma, including the suggestion that the next administration might need to expand key government agencies in order to achieve the larger goal of slashing federal regulations.
Rick Dearborn, who helped lead Trump’s 2016 transition team and later served in the Trump White House as deputy chief of staff, recalled in one video how” tough” it was to find people to fill all of the key positions in the early days of the administration.
Dearborn claims that the personnel component of Project 2025 is” so crucial to the next president.” Establishing all of this, providing the expertise, talking to you like we are right now about what a transition is about, why do I want to be involved in it, and what would my position be — that’s a luxury we did n’t have,” referring to a database of potential political appointees.
Dan Huff, a former legal adviser in the White House Presidential Personnel Office under Trump, says in another video that future appointees should be prepared to enact significant changes in American government and be ready to face blowback when they do.
According to Huff,” If you’re not on board with helping to implement a significant course correction because you’re afraid it’ll hurt your future employment prospects, it’ll hurt you socially.” That poses a serious threat, she said. It’s a real thing. But kindly ask that you all” sit this one out”!
References to” Eliminate Climate Change” were obtained from ProPublica and documented.
The project’s experts outline regulatory and policy changes that future political appointees should prepare for in a Republican administration.
A 50-minute discussion of alleged left-wing code words and biased language that future appointees should be aware of and root out is featured in one video,” Hidden Meanings: The Monsters in the Attic.” According to Kozma, U.S. intelligence agencies have cited climate change as a growing threat to global stability in that video, which shows how the issue has “infiltrated every aspect of the federal government.”
( Obtained by ProPublica and Documented )
Then, she claims to the audience, climate change is just a cover for population control. She makes air-quotes about the “impact on the environment” that” I think about the people who do n’t want you to have children because of.” She adds,” This is part of their ultimate goal to control people”.
Without specifying how the federal government would accomplish that, Katie Sullivan, the former acting assistant attorney general under Trump, advocates for removing the so-called critical race theory from public education later in the video. ( The federal government typically sets the standard for elementary and secondary education curricula, not the state or local level. )
” The noxious tenets of critical race theory and gender ideology should be excised from curriculum in every single public school in this country”, Sullivan says. Sullivan hung up after being contacted by ProPublica via phone. The representative did not respond.
( Obtained by ProPublica and Documented )
In a different video, David Burton, an economic policy expert at the Heritage Foundation, discusses the importance of an obscure yet influential agency called the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. OIRA was used by the Trump administration to enact regulations that were intended to be less stringent in terms of economic, fiscal, and environmental issues. Under Biden, OIRA took a more aggressive stance in favor of reviewing and developing new regulations, including those aimed at reducing housing discrimination, imposing a ban on the sale of “ghost guns,” and setting new targets for renewable fuel.
Burton, in the Project 2025 video, urges future political appointees to work in OIRA and argues that the office should “increase its staffing levels considerably” in service of the conservative goal of reining in the so-called administrative state, namely the federal agencies that craft and issue new regulations.
According to Burton,” Fifty people are insufficient to adequately monitor the federal government’s entire regulatory activities.” OIRA is one of the few government entities that restricts other agencies ‘ regulatory ambitions. ( Burton confirmed in a brief interview that he appeared in the video and endorsed expanding OIRA’s staffing levels. )
( Obtained by ProPublica and Documented )
Even an office tasked with examining regulations would seem to be ineffective in contrast to the conservative movement’s long-held goal of reducing government. Spencer Chretien, a former Trump White House aide who is now Project 2025’s associate director, addresses the tension in one video for anyone who is perplexed by Project 2025’s insistence that a conservative president should fill all appointee slots and possibly grow some functions.
” Some on the right even say that we, because we believe in small government, should just lead by example and not fill certain political positions”, Chretien says. If the president were to implement that,” I think it would be almost impossible to bring any conservative change to America.”
A Waiting Trump Government
The speakers in the Project 2025 videos are careful not to explicitly side with Trump or talk about what a future Trump administration might do. Instead, they use the terms” conservative president” and” conservative administration” for a foreseeable future.
However, there are many connections between Trump and the speakers in the videos. Most of those served Trump during his administration, working at the White House, the National Security Council, NASA, the Office of Management and Budget, USAID and the departments of Justice, Interior, State, Homeland Security, Transportation and Health and Human Services. Another speaker, who is Trump’s running mate for 2024, has previously worked for the Senate office of J. D. Vance.
In three different videos, Sullivan, the former DOJ acting assistant attorney general in charge of the department’s Office of Justice Programs, which receives billions in grant funding, appears. Leavitt, who is in a training video titled” The Art of Professionalism”, worked in the White House press office during Trump’s first presidency and is now the national press secretary for his reelection campaign.
These Trump alums ‘ advice and testimonials consistently veer away from the idea that Project 2025 trainees should anticipate receiving a hostile reception if they work for the federal government. In a video, Kozma, the former USAID deputy chief of staff, claims that “many” of her fellow Trump appointees went through “persecution” while serving in the government.
In a video titled” The Political Appointee’s Survival Guide”, Max Primorac, a former deputy administrator at USAID during the Trump administration, warns viewers that Washington is a place that “does not share your conservative values”, and that new hires will find that” there’s so much hostility to basic traditional values”.
( Obtained by ProPublica and Documented )
Former deputy press secretary at the Trump-era NASA, Kristen Eichamer, claims in the same video that the media spread lies about former president Donald Trump and employees of his administration. She claims that the Trump administration’s defamation on Twitter is almost a badge of honor.
Outthinking” the Left”
The videos also provide less overtly political instruction for incoming appointees, covering everything from the process of drafting a law to how to communicate with the media, how to handle a presidential transition, and best time management techniques.
The video series focuses on how the incoming Republican administration can avoid the errors of the previous Trump presidency. In one video, Roger Severino, the former director of the Office of Civil Rights in the Trump-era Department of Health and Human Services, explains that failure to meticulously follow federal procedure led to courts delaying or throwing out certain regulatory efforts on technical grounds.
Following his example, Severino, a long-time supporter of the anti-abortion movement, walks viewers through the ins and outs of procedural law and says they should prepare for” the left” to use every means at their disposal to derail the next conservative president. Severino refers to this as a “3D chess game.” ” You have to be always anticipating what the left is going to do to try to throw sand in the gears and trip you up and block your rule”. Severino stated in an email that he would forward Heritage’s spokespeople’s requests for an interview.
Some of the recommendations are based on the idea that some career employees might try to thwart a future conservative president’s agenda and how political appointees can avoid being derailed or stifled by the bureaucrats who work with them.
Sullivan urges viewers to “empower your political staff”, limit access to appointees ‘ calendars and leave out career staff from early meetings with more senior agency officials. Career staff members are being made aware that your political appointees are in charge, according to Sullivan.
According to Kozma, other advice included cleaning up personal social media accounts of any content that is “damaging, vulgar, or contradicts the policies you are there to implement” before the new administration takes office.
Alexei Woltornist, a former assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, encourages future appointees to bypass mainstream news outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post. Instead, they should concentrate on conservative media outlets, since that is the only source of trust for conservative voters.
The American people who support a conservative presidential administration do n’t read The Washington Post or The New York Times, according to Woltornist. ” To the contrary, if those outlets publish something, they’re going to assume it’s false. Therefore, working with conservative media outlets is the only way to get to them and gain any credibility.
( Obtained by ProPublica and Documented )
A group of conservative investigators advise future appointees on how to avoid creating a paper trail of sensitive communications that could be obtained by congressional committees or outside organizations under the Freedom of Information Act in a video about oversight and investigations.
” If you need to resolve something, if you can do it, it’s probably better to walk down the hall, buttonhole a guy and say,’ Hey, what are we going to do here?’ Talk the decision through, says American Accountability Foundation director Tom Jones, a former senator.
( Obtained by ProPublica and Documented )
Jones adds that agency attorneys may invoke public-records laws to obstruct the release of particular documents. But appointees are best served, he argues, if they do n’t put important communications in writing in the first place.
Instead of sending him an email and creating a thread that Accountable, Jones claims, “you’re probably better off going down to the canteen, getting a cup of coffee, talking it through, and making the decision. The US or another organization will return to play hide and seek.
Do you have any information about Project 2025 that we should know? Email address Andy Kroll to contact him via WhatsApp or Signal at 202-215-6203, or by kroll@propublica .org.
Videos prepared by Lisa Riordan Seville and Chris Morran. Research was conducted by Marianne Elba.
