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Fact check: Who are the key stakeholders involved in Project 2025?
Executive summary
Project 2025 is a large, conservative policy-and-personnel playbook produced and coordinated by the Heritage Foundation with contributions from over 100 conservative organizations and dozens of former Trump officials; it presents both policy blueprints and personnel lists intended to rapidly remake the federal government if a conservative president takes office [1] [2] [3]. Major publicly documented elements include a long roster of institutional backers, named authors and advisers, explicit staffing suggestions, and proposals to sharply reduce or reorganize the federal civil service—claims that have provoked political pushback and competing narratives about the project’s reach and popularity [4] [1].
1. Big claim: Project 2025 is a coordinated long-list of conservative organizations and plans
The clearest, repeatedly documented claim is that more than 100 conservative organizations formally associated with or contributed to Project 2025’s materials, with the Heritage Foundation identified as the central convener and steward of the project [1] [2]. These organizational signatories reportedly include groups across legal advocacy, religious-right networks, gun-rights organizations, and conservative policy shops; the project itself frames this as a coalition effort to supply ready-made policy and personnel proposals to a future conservative administration [2] [3]. Supporters portray this as standard transitional planning; critics characterize it as an attempt to institutionalize partisan staffing and policy changes across the federal bureaucracy, an accusation grounded in the project’s own descriptions of personnel strategies and sweeping agency reforms [1].
2. Who authored the playbook: named writers and advisers matter
Project 2025’s publicly listed authors and advisers include named conservative policy operatives such as Paul Dans, Spencer Chretien, and Troup Hemenway, alongside senior conservative figures like Russ Vought and John McEntee in broader contributor lists [5] [3]. The presence of high-profile former administration officials and policy veterans lends operational credibility to the project’s staffing recommendations, and signals an orientation toward rapid executive implementation if the project’s scenarios were to be realized [5]. This cast of authors and advisers is also politically consequential because several are known for advocating robust executive action and administrative rollbacks, which helps explain both the project’s proposed policy direction and the intense scrutiny it has received from opponents and some neutral analysts [4] [3].
3. Personnel and transition claims: who would be placed where
Project 2025’s materials include suggested personnel lists and transition playbooks that critics say are designed to install loyalists and replace career civil servants; some reporting cites plans that could result in mass removals or reassignments of federal workers, with figures as high as tens of thousands discussed in public accounts [1]. The project’s own language emphasizes being “ready” to staff a conservative presidency quickly, and at least two dozen individuals who helped craft Project 2025 were later reported to be working in or advising the succeeding administration—an overlap that supporters argue shows the project’s practical value and opponents argue shows a blurring of nonpartisan civil service norms [4] [1].
4. Policy goals: sweeping administrative overhaul vs. mainstream transition work
Project 2025 frames its objectives as correcting what contributors describe as the “failings of big government” and an “undemocratic administrative state,” proposing sweeping changes in regulatory practices, agency missions, and internal personnel systems [1] [3]. Supporters frame these proposals as legitimate policy alternatives and standard transition readiness; critics emphasize the scale of proposed staffing changes and specific policy prescriptions—such as reinterpreting statutes or curbing agency discretion—as evidence the project seeks foundational, ideologically driven restructuring rather than routine transition planning [1] [4]. The central tension is whether these are partisan policy proposals offered for electoral debate or operational plans intended to be executed rapidly by a soon-to-be administrative team.
5. Competing narratives and provenance: what to believe and why dates matter
Reporting on Project 2025 spans 2024–2025 and includes both formal Heritage Foundation materials and investigative articles documenting contributors and critiques; more recent items document concrete personnel overlaps and implementation attempts, while earlier items catalog the founding lists of organizations and authors [2] [5] [1]. Some claims—particularly about specific Cabinet assignments attributed to named political figures—appear in trackers and aggregated lists with unclear sourcing and inconsistent dates, so these personnel-specific assertions require cross-checking against official announcements and reliable reporting before being treated as settled [6] [7] [8]. The most verifiable threads are the published contributor lists and the project’s own policy documents; the most contested threads involve implementation scale, concrete firing numbers, and the degree of formal coordination with any candidate or campaign [1] [2].
6. Bottom line: documented coalition, disputed intentions, open questions remain
Documentary evidence shows Project 2025 is a coordinated, well-documented effort led by the Heritage Foundation with broad conservative organizational participation, named authors, and explicit staffing and policy recommendations that aim to reshape federal governance; this core fact is well supported by the cited contributor lists and author pages [1] [2] [5]. What remains contested—and where further, contemporaneous reporting and official records will be decisive—is the actual scale of personnel removals executed, the legal and administrative limits encountered during implementation, and the extent to which specific named individuals in speculative trackers were formally appointed versus merely suggested in planning documents [4] [1] [8].