In response to Donald Trump’s campaign trying to hide their deep ties with Project 2025, DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd released the following statement: 

“Donald Trump is running on the extreme and unpopular Project 2025 agenda, plain and simple – and there is nothing Trump or his allies can say to distance themselves from this losing platform. Project 2025 is being run by Trump allies, modeled after Trump’s words, and designed to allow Trump to enact his dangerous agenda to be a ‘dictator on day one.’ The truth is, Trump will have nobody to blame but himself – and his out-of-touch MAGA allies like the Heritage Foundation – when the American people make him a loser again this November.”

Make no mistake: Project 2025 is “undeniably a Trump-driven operation.”

Axios: “This is undeniably a Trump-driven operation. The biggest tell: Johnny McEntee — one of Trump’s closest White House aides, and his most fervent internal loyalty enforcer — is a senior adviser to Project 2025. One of the most powerful architects is Stephen Miller, a top West Wing adviser for the Trump administration.”

Politico: “Many of the authors of the blueprint are former Trump officials, and the Heritage Foundation has spent the past year-plus recruiting people to implement the plans within the administration, Scott said.

“‘So they don’t just have a long, sprawling policy document,’ he said, ‘they also have a growing list of staff who are being tested to see if they are loyal to Trump and if they are willing to administer this in his potential administration.’

“While groups like Heritage have put forward conservative policy proposals in the past, Scott said Project 2025 is distinct in that it’s so comprehensive and far-reaching.

“‘It has so many groups contributing to it. It’s the whole conservative policy movement gathered together,’ he said.”

Vox: “Many of the authors of Mandate are members of the first Trump administration who would likely have roles in a second.

“Roger Severino, the author of the HHS chapter, was the director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights under Trump, a role in which he oversaw the removal of nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ Americans in health care settings. Gene Hamilton, the author of the Justice Department chapter, served in Trump’s DOJ and Department of Homeland Security and worked on the ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy that separated children from their parents at the border.

“‘These are all people that, in theory, Trump listens to,’ Ziegler told Vox.”

The Week: “Former Trump staffers involved with Project 2025 include former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump’s former senior adviser Stephen Miller, the latter of whom has been described as a white nationalist.” 

“However, as New York Magazine said, many of Trump’s indicated plans for a second term fall in line with the Project 2025 outline. This includes giving the president unchecked power over federal agencies and the total ability to bypass Congress. He has also pledged to appoint a special prosecutor to go after the Biden family and other political opponents, as well as the installation of loyalists throughout the government.”

The New Republic: “Johnny McEntee, who is helping lead the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—an especially ambitious initiative that has already published a 920-page ‘manual’ for Trump’s second term—had come to be known as ‘deputy president’ by late 2020.”

New York Times: “Roberts told me that he views Heritage’s role today as ‘institutionalizing Trumpism.’ This includes leading Project 2025, a transition blueprint that outlines a plan to consolidate power in the executive branch, dismantle federal agencies and recruit and vet government employees to free the next Republican president from a system that Roberts views as stacked against conservative power. The lesson of Trump’s first year in office, Roberts told me, is that ‘the Trump administration … simply got a slow start. And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated.’”