As a former and perhaps future president, Donald Trump has praised what he would become Project 2025 As a roadmap for “exactly what our movement will do” with another crack in the White House.
like Scheme The shift to the far right in America has become a burden during the 2024 campaign. Trump has turned on his face. He denied knowing anything about the “ridiculous and abysmal” plans written by his aides and allies during his first term.
Now, after being elected the 47th president on November 5, Trump is staffing his second administration with key players in the detailed efforts he has temporarily avoided. It is worth noting that Trump took advantage Russell Foote to appear as director of the Office of Management and Budget; Tom Homan, his former immigration chief “Border Czar”; and immigration hardliner Stephen Miller Vice President of Policy.
The moves have accelerated criticism from Democrats who warn that Trump’s election hands the reins of government to a movement of conservatives who have spent years envisioning how to concentrate power in the West Wing and force a stark shift to the right across American government and society.
Trump and his aides assert that he has a mandate to reform Washington. But they stress that the details belong to him alone.
Trump spokeswoman Carolyn Leavitt said in a statement: “President Trump had nothing to do with the 2025 project.” “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 picks portend for his second presidency.
As budget chief, Foote envisions a powerful and sweeping position
The director of the Office of Management and Budget, a role Vaught previously held under Trump that requires Senate confirmation, prepares the president’s proposed budget and is generally responsible for implementing the administration’s agenda across agencies.
The job is influential, but Foote has made clear, as author of the 2025 Project chapter on presidential power, that he wants the position to exercise more direct authority.
“The director must view his job as the best and most comprehensive approximation of the president’s mind,” Foote wrote. He wrote that the Office of Management and Budget “is the president’s air traffic control system” and should “be involved in every aspect of the White House policy process,” becoming “strong enough to transcend the bureaucracies of implementing agencies.”
Trump did not go into such detail when naming Foote, but he implicitly supported the aggressive action. The president-elect said Vaught “knows exactly how to dismantle the deep state” — Trump’s overarching tool for the federal bureaucracy — and will help “restore fiscal sanity.”
In June, speaking on former Trump aide Steve Bannon’s “War Room” show, Vaught relished the potential tension: “We’re not going to save our country without a little confrontation.”
Foote could help Musk and Trump reshape the role and scope of government
The strategy to further concentrate federal power in the presidency permeates Project 2025 and Trump’s campaign proposals. Foote’s vision is particularly striking when combined with Trump’s proposals to dramatically expand the president’s control over federal employees and the government’s purse strings — ideas that mesh with the president-elect exploiting mega-billionaire Elon Musk and venture capitalist Vivek Ramaswamy for gain. Leading “Government Efficiency Management”.
In his first term, Trump sought to reshape the federal civil service by reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers — who enjoy job protections through changes in administration — as political appointees, making it easier to fire them and replace them with loyalists. Currently, only about 4,000 of the federal government’s roughly 2 million workers are political appointees. President Joe Biden rescinded the changes made by Trump. Trump can now return them to their positions.
Meanwhile, Trump’s sweeping “efficiency” mandates from Musk and Ramaswamy could give rise to an old, outdated constitutional theory that the president — not Congress — is the true guardian of federal spending. On Agenda 47, Trump endorsed what is called “sequestration,” which stipulates that when lawmakers pass appropriations bills, they simply set a cap on spending, but not a floor. The theory goes that the president could simply decide not to spend money on anything he deems unnecessary.
Foote did not venture into the chapter on Project 2025. But he wrote: “The President must use every possible tool to propose and impose fiscal discipline on the federal government.” “Anything less than that will constitute a colossal failure.”
Trump’s choice sparked immediate backlash.
“Ross Vought is a far-right ideologue who tried to break the law to give President Trump unilateral power he does not have to override spending decisions made by Congress (and) who has fought and will fight again to give Trump the ability to summarily fire him.” “Tens of thousands of civil servants,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, a Democrat and outgoing Senate Appropriations Chair.
Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, the ranking Democrats on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said Vaught wants to “dismantle the specialized federal workforce” at the expense of Americans who depend on everything from veterans health care to veterans health care. . Social Security benefits.
“Pain itself is the agenda,” they said.
Homan and Miller reflect on the intersection of immigration between Trump and Project 2025
Trump’s protests about Project 2025 have always been ignored The overlap in the two agendas. Both want to reimpose Trump-era immigration restrictions. Project 2025 includes a series of detailed proposals for various U.S. immigration laws, executive branch rules, and agreements with other countries — for example, reducing the number of refugees, work visa recipients, and asylum seekers.
Miller is one of Trump’s longest-serving advisers and the architect of his immigration ideas, including his promise of the largest deportation force in US history. As deputy chief of policy, which is not subject to Senate confirmation, Miller will remain in Trump’s inner circle in the West Wing.
“America is for Americans and Americans only,” Miller said at Trump’s home. Madison Square Garden demonstration On October 27th.
America First Legal, which Miller founded as an ideological opponent of the ACLU, was listed as an advisory group for the 2025 project until Miller requested that the name be removed due to negative attention.
Homan, a contributor to the 2025 Project, was acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump’s first presidency, and played a key role in what became known as Trumpism. “Family separation policy”
“No one is off the table,” Homan said, while previewing Trump 2.0 earlier this year. “If you’re here illegally, you better look over your shoulder.”
Contributors to Project 2025 are slated to be the heads of the CIA and Federal Communications
John Ratcliffe, Trump Selected to lead the CIAHe was previously one of Trump’s Directors of National Intelligence. He is a contributor to Project 2025. Dustin Carmack, Ratcliffe’s chief of staff in the first Trump administration, wrote the US intelligence chapter in the document.
Reflecting the approach of Ratcliffe and Trump, Carmack declared that the intelligence establishment was very cautious. Ratcliffe, like the chapter attributed to Carmack, is hawkish on China. In the Project 2025 document, Beijing is portrayed as a US adversary that cannot be trusted.
Brendan Carr, a senior FCC Republican, wrote the FCC chapter of Project 2025 and is… Now Trump’s choice To chair the committee. The FCC chairman “is vested with significant power that is not shared” with other FCC members, Carr wrote. He called on the FCC to address “threats to individual liberty posed by companies that abuse their dominant market positions,” specifically “Big Tech companies and their attempts to keep diverse political views out of the digital city arena.”
He called for stricter transparency rules for social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube and “enabling consumers to choose their own content filters and fact-checkers, if any.”
Carr and Ratcliffe will need Senate confirmation for their positions.