As a former and potentially future president, Donald Trump welcomed what was about to happen Project 2025 as a roadmap for “exactly what our movement will do,” with another attack on the White House.
As the blueprint because a rightward turn in America became a liability during the 2024 election campaign, Trump made a U-turn. He denied knowing anything about the “ridiculous and abysmal” plans, some of which were written by his first-term aides and allies.
Now, having been elected the 47th president on Nov. 5, Trump is staffing his second administration with key players in the detail efforts he temporarily sidestepped. Most notably, Trump 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 deputy head of politics.
The moves have increased criticism from Democrats, who warn that Trump’s election will hand the reins of government to conservatives who have spent years contemplating how to concentrate power in the West Wing and a significant shift to the right throughout U.S. government and society could enforce.
Trump and his aides claim that he has been given a mandate to reform Washington. But they claim the details are his own business.
“President Trump never had anything to do with Project 2025,” Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “All nominees and appointments to President Trump’s Cabinet are fully committed to President Trump’s agenda, not the agenda of outside groups.”
Here’s a look at what some of Trump’s decisions mean for his second presidency.
As head of household, Vought envisions a sprawling, powerful position
The director of the Office of Management and Budget, a role Vought previously held under Trump and requires Senate confirmation, prepares the president’s proposed budget and is generally responsible for implementing the administration’s agenda across agencies.
The post is influential, but Vought, as author of a Project 2025 chapter on presidential authority, made it clear that he wants the post to wield more direct power.
“The director must view his job as the best and most comprehensive approximation of the president’s thoughts,” Vought wrote. The OMB, he wrote, “is the President’s air traffic control system” and should be “involved in all aspects of the White House policy process” and “become powerful enough to override the bureaucracy of executive agencies.”
Trump did not go into such details when naming Vought, but implicitly endorsed an aggressive approach. Vought, the president-elect said, “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State” — Trump’s panacea for the federal bureaucracy — and would help “restore fiscal sanity.”
Speaking on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast in June, Vought savored the potential tension: “We’re not going to save our country without a little confrontation.”
Vought could help Musk and Trump reshape the role and scope of government
The strategy of concentrating federal powers more closely on the presidency permeates Project 2025 and Trump’s campaign proposals. Vought’s vision is particularly impressive when paired with Trump’s proposals to dramatically expand presidential control over federal workers and government funds – ideas tied to the president-elect’s recruitment of megabillionaire Elon Musk and venture capitalist Vivek Ramaswamy head a “Department of Government Efficiency.”
Trump sought to reshape the federal civil service in his first term by reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service employees — who enjoy job protections through changes in the administration — as political appointees, making them easier to fire and to be replaced by loyalists. Currently, only around 4,000 of the federal government’s approximately 2 million employees are political appointees. President Joe Biden has revoked Trump’s changes. Trump can now use them again.
Meanwhile, Musk and Ramaswamy’s sweeping Trump “efficiency” targets may reflect an old, defunct constitutional theory that the president — not Congress — is the real guardian of federal spending. In his “Agenda 47,” Trump advocated so-called “impoundment,” which states that when lawmakers pass budget bills they only set a spending cap, not a floor. The theory is that the president can simply decide not to spend money on anything he deems unnecessary.
Vought did not dare confiscate in his chapter on Project 2025. However, he wrote, “The President should use every tool possible to propose and enforce fiscal discipline in the federal government.” Anything else would be a dismal failure.”
Trump’s election sparked immediate backlash.
“Russ Vought is a far-right ideologue who tried to break the law to give President Trump unilateral powers he does not have to override Congress’ spending decisions (and who again fought to give Trump the “To give the opportunity to spontaneously lay off tens of thousands of civil servants,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, a Democrat and outgoing Senate Appropriations chairwoman.
Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, top Democrats on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said Vought wants to “dismantle the skilled federal workforce” to the detriment of Americans, from veterans’ health care to everything from veterans’ health care dependent on social security benefits.
“Pain itself is the agenda,” they said.
Homan and Miller reflect the immigration intersections of Trump and Project 2025
Trump’s protests against Project 2025 were always glossed over Overlaps in the two agendas. Both want to reinstate Trump-era immigration restrictions. Project 2025 includes a litany of detailed proposals for various U.S. immigration laws, executive branch rules, and agreements with other countries—for example, to reduce the number of refugees, work visa recipients, and asylum seekers.
Miller is one of Trump’s most senior advisers and the architect of his immigration ideas, including his promise to deploy the largest deportation force in U.S. history. As deputy political director, who does not require Senate confirmation, Miller would remain in the inner circle of Trump’s West Wing.
“America is only for Americans and Americans,” Miller said of Trump Rally at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 27.
America First Legal, Miller’s organization founded as an ideological counterpoint to the American Civil Liberties Union, was listed as an advisory group for Project 2025 until Miller asked to remove the name due to negative attention.
Homan, a named Project 2025 contributor, was acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump’s first presidency and played a key role in the so-called Trump presidency “Family Separation Policy.”
When he introduced Trump 2.0 earlier this year, Homan said: “Nobody is off the table. If you’re here illegally, you better look over your shoulder.”
Contributors to Project 2025 include CIA and Federal Communications chiefs
John Ratcliffe, Trumps Choose the leadership of the CIAHe was previously one of Trump’s national intelligence directors. He is a contributor to Project 2025. The document’s chapter on U.S. intelligence was written by Dustin Carmack, Ratcliffe’s chief of staff in the first Trump administration.
Carmack mirrored Ratcliffe and Trump’s approach, saying the intelligence community was being too cautious. Ratcliffe, like the chapter attributed to Carmack, is hawkish on China. Throughout the Project 2025 document, Beijing is portrayed as a US adversary that cannot be trusted.
Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission’s ranking Republican, wrote and is the FCC’s chapter of Project 2025 Now it’s Trump’s election to take over the chairmanship of the committee. Carr wrote that the FCC chairman “is vested with significant authority that is not shared with other FCC members.” He called on the FCC to address “threats to individual freedom from companies that abuse market dominance,” particularly “Big Tech and their attempts to force diverse political viewpoints out of the digital city.”
He called for stricter transparency rules for social media platforms like Facebook And YouTube and “allow consumers to choose their own content filters and fact checkers, where appropriate.”
Carr and Ratcliffe would require Senate confirmation for their positions.