In response to a former Trump official admitting “it would be impossible to do a transition without including Project 2025 people,” DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd released the following statement: 

“Don’t take our word for it: Donald Trump’s own transition team knows that the Trump-Vance Project 2025 agenda is ‘radioactive,’ but a former staffer has gone on the record admitting that ‘it would be impossible to do a [Trump] transition without including Project 2025 people.’ Republicans are waking up to the reality that their toxic blueprint is driving away voters, but it’s impossible to disentangle Trump’s Republican Party from Project 2025. As we inch closer to Election Day, the American people understand the looming threat that a Trump administration would be staffed with his loyal extremists to gain unprecedented and virtually unchecked power, and that’s why voters will reject this dangerous and unpopular agenda once and for all in November.”

NEW: Trump campaign transition co-chair Howard Lutnick admitted that Donald Trump and JD Vance’s Project 2025 agenda is “radioactive” – and a former Trump official said Trump’s transition team has “already reached out” to people affiliated with Project 2025.

New York Post: “‘Heritage, because of Project 2025, is radioactive,’ Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick told The Post… one former member of the Trump presidential personnel office (PPO) [claimed] ‘it would be impossible to do a transition without including Project 2025 people.’

“Lutnick’s team has ‘already reached out’ to people affiliated with Project 2025, the source went on, arguing there is no possibility of staffing a second Trump administration ‘unless he’s going outside of the conservative movement.’

“The former PPO staffer added that the Project 2025 database includes Republicans from a wide-ranging list of different groups, including Turning Point USA and ‘state legislative staff.’”

It is crystal clear that 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.”

Trump: “There are some things in [Project 2025] that everybody would like.”

CNN: “Trump claims not to know who is behind Project 2025. A CNN review found at least 140 people who worked for him are involved”

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.”

The Week: “Many of Trump’s indicated plans for a second term fall in line with the Project 2025 outline.”

New York Times: “[Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts] told me that he views Heritage’s role today as ‘institutionalizing Trumpism.’ … 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.’”

Washington Post: “Trump took a private flight with Project 2025 leader in 2022”

“‘[The Heritage Foundation is] going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do,’ Trump said.”

Vance has deep ties to Project 2025 architects, has praised the extreme MAGA blueprint as containing “good ideas,” and “has made it impossible for Trump to run away from Project 2025.”

Vox: “J.D. Vance has made it impossible for Trump to run away from Project 2025”

Vance: “I’ve reviewed a lot of [Project 2025]. There are some good ideas in there.”

Vox: “Vance is on record supporting these [Project 2025] ideas. Last year, he signed a letter demanding that the Justice Department prosecute physicians and pharmacists ‘who break the Federal mail-order abortion laws.’ In 2022, he said he was ‘sympathetic’ to the idea that the federal government should stop efforts to help women traveling out of their states to get abortions. … The second controversial area where Vance is sympatico with Project 2025 is centralizing presidential power over the executive branch.”

New York Times: “Vance Championed 2017 Report on Families From Architects of Project 2025”

Axios: “J.D. Vance wrote foreword of upcoming book from Project 2025 architect”

New Republic: “Project 2025 Leader Is Overjoyed by Trump’s Vice Presidential Pick”

Vox: “Kevin Roberts, the president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation and the driving force behind Project 2025, told Ward that ‘[Vance] is absolutely going to be one of the leaders — if not the leader — of our movement.’”

Nick Corasaniti, New York Times: “[Roberts] reacted to the news [of Vance’s VP selection] ‘with a broad smile on my face’ and said that ‘privately, we were really rooting for him.’”

Politico: “[Project 2025 architect Russell Vought] told POLITICO Magazine that he is in ‘regular contact’ with Vance’s Hill office and that ‘we probably have one of the closest relationships with [Vance’s] office that we do with any Hill office.’”

Trump and Vance have repeatedly echoed extreme Project 2025 plans, which include banning abortion nationwide with or without Congress, cruel mass deportation schemes, mass firings of civil servants, and tax giveaways for billionaires and corporations.

Roll Call: “‘Dumping ground’: Trump echoes conservative ‘Project 2025’”

The Atlantic: “At the top of Vought and Dans’s must-do list for the next president: reissuing an executive order that Trump signed during his final months in office—and which President Joe Biden promptly reversed—that would allow the government to remove civil-service protections from as many as 50,000 federal jobs. The move would create a new class of employees known as Schedule F whom the president could fire at will.”

Associated Press: “Trump-era conservatives want to gut the ‘administrative state’ from within, by ousting federal employees they believe are standing in the way of the president’s agenda and replacing them with like-minded officials more eager to fulfill a new executive’s approach to governing.”

Vance: “I think that what Trump should do, like if I was giving him one piece of advice, is fire every single civil servant… replace them with our people.”

Rolling Stone: “Inside the MAGA Plan to Attack Birth Control, Surveil Women and Ban the Abortion Pill”

“GOP operatives have already crafted an expansive blueprint, 887 pages long, laying out in painstaking detail how they intend to govern, including plans to leverage virtually every arm, tool and agency of the federal government to attack abortion access.”

Rolling Stone: “Trump Wants to Ban Abortion Nationwide: Report”

Washington Post: “Vance urged DOJ to enforce Comstock Act, crack down on abortion pills”

CNN: “JD Vance said in 2022 he ‘would like abortion to be illegal nationally’”

CNN: “Project 2025’s proposals for reforming the country’s immigration laws appear heavily influenced by those who helped execute Trump’s early enforcement measures. Former acting US Customs and Border Protection chief Mark Morgan and former Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief Tom Homan – the faces of Trump’s polarizing policies – contributed to the project, as did Kathy Nuebel Kovarik, one of the policy advisers pushing to end certain immigrant protections behind the scenes.”

New York Times: “Sweeping Raids, Giant Camps and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 Immigration Plans”

Education Week: “Project 2025, a 900-page conservative policy agenda that proposes eliminating the U.S. Department of Education, has become a dominating force in the 2024 election campaign.” 

Trump Campaign: “President Trump pledges to close the Department of Education in Washington, D.C. and to send all education work and needs back to the States.”

Project 2025: “The corporate income tax rate should be reduced to 18 percent.”

CBS News: “Millions of low- and middle-class households would likely face significantly higher taxes under the Project 2025’s proposals.”

Washington Post: “Trump and his advisers have discussed deeper cuts to both individual and corporate tax rates that would build on his controversial 2017 tax law. … Trump’s advisers, though, have discussed proposals to make deeper cuts to the overall corporate tax rate, potentially to as low as 15 percent, or to use the revenue from the proposed tariffs to pay a dividend to U.S. households. Further cutting corporate taxes … would primarily benefit large firms.”

REALITY CHECK: The Trump-Vance Project 2025 agenda is extreme and unpopular – Americans are ready to reject this dangerous and out-of-touch MAGA playbook in November.

NBC News: “Poll: Project 2025 is broadly known and severely unpopular with voters”

Newsweek: “Project 2025’s Unpopularity Continues to Grow: New Poll”

Miami Herald: “As Americans learn more about Project 2025, they become more opposed, poll finds”

NBC News: “On Project 2025… a whopping 57% of voters have a negative view of it, versus just 4% who see it in a positive light.”

Navigator Research: “Project 2025 Has Become Significantly More Unfavorable Since Trump Attempted to Distance Himself From the Plan”

“A plurality of Americans believe Project 2025 accurately represents what Trump stands for.”

Navigator Research: “Americans oppose all the key elements in Project 2025, with the greatest concerns around health care, worker’s rights, and dismantling federal programs. Over four in five Americans oppose an array of policies proposed in Project 2025 such as ‘allowing employers to stop paying hourly workers overtime’ … Additionally, four in five oppose ‘allowing the government to monitor people’s pregnancies to potentially prosecute them if they miscarry.’

“Americans’ overall opposition to Project 2025 increases after reading about its specific policy goals. … Three in five Americans say Project 2025 would benefit the wealthiest Americans, CEOs, and corporations.”