1. Paul Dans

Co-Editor: Project 2025 (along with Steven Groves); Co-Author, Chapter 3: Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy (with Donald Devinem and Dennis Dean Kirk – see bios).

Bio highlights: Massachusetts Institute of Technology; University of Virginia School of Law.

• Director, 2025 Presidential Transition Project at the Heritage Foundation. Member, Republican National Lawyers Association.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Former Chief of Staff, Office of Personnel Management under Trump; also OPM’s White House liaison, working with the White House Office of Presidential Personnel to staff the approximately 4000 presidential appointees across the federal government.

• Appointed Chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission in January 2021.

Choice quotes:

• “We need to flood the zone with conservatives. This is a clarion call to come to Washington. People need to lay down their tools, and step aside from their professional life and say, ‘This is my lifetime moment to serve.’” Dans on Project 2025. (1)

2. Steven Groves

Co-Editor: Project 2025 (with Paul Dans).

Bio highlights: BA, Florida State University; MA Georgetown University Law Center; JD Ohio Northern University College of Law. Bernard and Barbara Lomas Senior Research Fellow/Margaret Thatcher Fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom.

Trump admin bonafides: Assistant Special Counsel

• First, as Ambassador Nikki Haley’s Chief of Staff at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations; second, as Special Assistant to the President and Assistant Special Counsel at the White House; third, as Deputy Press Secretary at the White House. Groves representing the White House in the investigation conducted by Robert Mueller into Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 election.

Learn more:

• Groves, Steven and Smith, Jack. “What proof does a DC jury need to convict someone who worked for Hillary Clinton?” Commentary, The Heritage Foundation online, June 1, 2022.

• Groves, Steven and Brumond, Ted R. “The left was wrong, wrong, wrong on cluster munitions,” The Heritage Foundation online, July 14, 2023.

3. Kevin Roberts

Author, Foreword: A Promise to America

Bio highlights: BA, University of Louisiana at Lafayette; MA, Virginia Tech; PhD, University of Texas.

• President of the Heritage Foundation since October 2021.

• CEO of the Austin-based rightwing think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a Project 2025 advisory group. States Trust, an affiliated states’ rights organization, is considered a “project” of TTTF, according to the Center for Media and Democracy.

• President, 2013, of Wyoming Catholic College. under his leadership, the college adopted a policy of refusing to accept federal student loans and grants, lest it be forced to violate Catholic tenets.

• Founder, 2006, John Paul the Great Academy, a co-ed, K-12 Catholic liberal arts school in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Choice quotes:

• [America] is “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless – if the left allows it to be.” – Kevin Roberts talking about Project 2025’s goals on The War Room with Steve Banno show, July 2, 2024.

4. Rick Dearborn

Author, Chapter 1: White House Office

Bio highlights: BA, Public Administration, University of Oklahoma.

• Distinguished visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation for the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. Former Chief of Staff for Jeff Sessions (R-AL) for a dozen years (out of overall twenty years with Sessions); crossed paths with Paul Ryan and Stephen Miller there.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Trump; White House Chief of Staff for Legislative, Intergovernmental Affairs and Implementation for less than a year from 2017 to 2018.

• Executive director of Trump's presidential transition team; served in various positions on the US Senate staff.

Choice quotes:

• In Chapter 1, Dearborn focuses on the importance of selecting the right person for the White House Counsel’s office, someone who is more of an “activist,” than whiteshoe firm lawyer, armed with legal skills and advice to guide the president and the White House in possibly uncharted legal waters, “including recommendations for reconsidering or reversing positions of the previous Administration in any significant litigation,” he writes. Dearborn favors a possible change of the present system to allow outside legal firms to provide help to the White House and president.

Learn more:

• “Rick Dearborn is a 'good ol' boy from Oklahoma' in the White House” (The Oklahoman, 2017.) (2) https://eu.oklahoman.com/story/news/politics/2017/07/30/rick-dearborn-is-a-goodol-boy-from-oklahoma-in-the-white-house/60584917007/

5. Russ Vought

Author, Chapter 2: Executive Office of the President of the US.

Bio highlights: BA, Wheaton College; JD, George Washington University Law School.

• Founder, Center for Renewing America (2021), a Project 2025 advisory group. Vought is a staunch Christian nationalist who has helped spearhead the push to align US law and policy on biblical doctrine in Project 2025.

• Former Vice-President of Heritage Action for America, the advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Director, Office of Management and Budget from July 2020 to January 2021.

• Acting director of OMB from 2019 to 2020, stepping up from deputy director of the OMB from 2018 to 2019.

• Often cited as a potential chief of staff in a second Trump White House.

Choice quotes:

• In a 2021 opinion piece, Vought wrote that Christian nationalism "recognizes America as a Christian nation" and makes "a commitment to an institutional separation between church and state, but not the separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society.” According to Vought, "Christians are under assault". He has sought to use his regular contacts with Trump to "elevate Christian nationalism as a focal point" should Trump be reelected president.

• “I love Ronald Reagan. But it’s not the 1980s, it’s 2023. It’s not just a big government we’re up against but a weaponized one.” Vought on Project 2025’s vision of purging 50,000 civil service employees and replacing them with Christian loyalists. (3)

• “We are living in a post-Constitutional time….” – Russell Vought, 2024. (4)

6. Dennis Dean Kirk

Co-author, Chapter 3: Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy (with Paul Dans and Donald Devinem – see bios).

Bio highlights: Northern Arizona University; Washburn University Law School.

• Associate Director of Personnel Policy with the Heritage Fund’s Project 2025; served in senior position in Trump and George Bush administration.

Trump admin bonafides: appointed but never confirmed or served under Trump.

• In 2018, Kirk was nominated by Trump to serve as chairman of the Merit Systems Protection Board and oversee administrative purges of the federal civil service. But the Senate delayed confirming him and he never served in the role. Union leaders did called the proposed purges an “assault on federal employees”, (Washington Post, May 2018).

Choice quotes:

• And Now a Word With … Dennis Dean Kirk, Federal Employment Law Training Group, 2020.

7. Christopher Miller

Co-author, Chapter 4: Department of Defense.

Bio highlights: BA, George Washington University; MA, Naval War College.

• Miller was in charge of the Pentagon on January 6, 2021, and is accused of delaying the deployment of National Guard troops so the mob that beat its way into the Capitol might succeed in creating more than a pause in the Senate’s count of Electoral College votes.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Acting Secretary of Defense, from Nov. 9, 2020, until Jan. 20, 2021. Note: all of the previous secretaries of defense still alive voiced concern about the transition of power to Miller and the role of the military in it. Pentagon officials reportedly tried to block the transition.

• Duties of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (ASD) for Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict. Previously served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) for Special Operations and Combating Terrorism (SOCT) on January 6, 2020, the date of the insurrection at the US Capitol.

• Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterterrorism and Transnational Threats at the National Security Council (NSC).

Choice quotes:

• In chapter 4, Miller calls the DOD “a deeply troubled institution,” and claims the department “has emphasized leftist politics over military readiness.”

• Miller told The Washington Post that a national mandate on military service should be “strongly considered,” adding, “Why wouldn't we give that a try?”. (5)

• Miller was in charge of the Pentagon on January 6, 2021, and is accused of delaying the deployment of National Guard troops so the mob that beat its way into the Capitol might succeed in creating more than a pause in the Senate’s count of Electoral College votes. (6)

• On December 18, 2020, Miller ordered the Pentagon to postpone 40 meetings with the incoming Joe Biden administration until January 1, 2021. Miller said that this was a “mutually agreed-upon holiday pause” with the Biden transition, but the Biden transition team said no such agreement had been made.

8. Ken Cucinelli

Co-author, Chapter 5: Department of Homeland Security.

Bio highlights: University of Virginia; MS, International Commerce and Policy, George Mason University; JD, George Mason University School of Law and Economics.

• Senior Fellow for Homeland Security and Immigration for the Center for Renewing America. Former attorney general of the Commonwealth of Virginia from 2010-2014. Former visiting fellow, Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Former Acting Director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services under Trump; Acting Deputy Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under Trump. There, he was key to enforcing President Trump’s top border and immigration priorities. (7)

• Cucinelli’s priority Project 2025 recommendation is to eliminate the Department of Homeland Security and remove all current members of its Homeland Security Advisory Committee.

Religious bonafides: Opus Dei, the militant Catholic branch.

Choice quotes:

• Cucinelli "compared immigration enforcement to fighting a rat infestation," Fortune magazine reported in 2019. (Defeat Project 2025) (8)

• While attorney general for Virginia, he [Cucinelli] was the first in the country to sue over Obamacare, and made critical advances against human trafficking, health care fraud, gangs, and child exploitation. (9)

• While at USCIS, he promulgated a rule that "could force immigrants to choose between accepting public benefits and a green card, (Defeat Project 2025).

Learn more: “Immigration Chief: 'Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor Who Can Stand On Their Own 2 Feet” (NPR, 2019).

9. Kiron K. Skinner

Co-author, Chapter 6: Department of State.

Bio highlights: Sacramento City College AA; Spelman College, BA; Sacramento City College; MA; Harvard University, PhD.

• Visiting fellow and presidential advisor, The Heritage Foundation. Editor of, and contributor to, several books about Ronald Reagan.

• W. Glenn Campbell research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Director, Policy Planning and Senior Adviser, US Department of State, 2018 – 2019

• Senior advisor to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Skinner was famously fired in 2019 over what State Department officials described as her “abusive” management style, including making homophobic remarks and accusing people of having affairs, according to two people: Top State Department adviser fired over 'abusive' management style, Politico, 2019.

Choice quotes:

• In her defense of the Trump Doctrine, and why U.S. competition with China would be especially bitter, Skinner infamously argued: “Because it’s the first time that we will have a great-power competitor that is not Caucasian.” (10)

10. Mora Namdar

Co-author of Chapter 8: Media Agencies. US Agency for Global Media (with Mike Gonzalez).

Bio highlights: Full name: Morvared Namdarkhan. Lawyer. BA, SMU in Dallas; Oxford University.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs; highly-placed lawyer in the US Agency for Global Media during the Trump Administration. The USAGM oversees the better-known Voice of America media outlet.

• Namdar's time in public service was not without controversy: while active VicePresident for legal at USAGM, she was among six top officials at Trump’s USAGM accused by whistleblowers of violating their authority by researching the voting records of employees suspected of being members of “the deep state” and suspended under the direction of Michael Pack, then-CEO of USAGM. 11 (In May 2023, an Office of Special Counsel investigation found Pack had abused his authority).

11. Max Primorac

Author, Chapter 9: Agency for International Development.

Bio highlights: BA, Franklin & Marshall College; MA, University of Chicago. Senior research fellow in the Heritage Foundation's Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom.

• Primorac held senior executive roles in the Bush administration at the US Department of State as Senior Advisor for Stabilization in the Office of the Secretary, and Deputy Director of Iraq’s multi-billion-dollar reconstruction program.

• In 2018, just before he joined USAID, Primorac promoted a client’s business interests to a U.N. agency funded by USAID, ProPublica reported. The client pitch sparked an ethics complaint by a State Department official, though the USAID inspector general declined to open an investigation of the incident.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Acting Chief Operating Officer at the US Agency for International Development.

• Primorac’s behavior while at USAID raised eyebrows among his colleagues. In 2019, Primorac expressed confidence during a government forum that Trump would win reelection. An independent agency investigated the incident and found that Primorac did not violate the Hatch Act, which bars government officials from engaging in political activities on the job. (12)

Choice quotes:

• “Max Primorac, a former USAID adviser and author of a controversial foreign aid policy for a potential Trump administration, spoke to Devex of his vision for a USAID with less money -- and no appetite for progressive politics.” (13)

12.Mandy Gunasekara

Author, Chapter 13: Environmental Protection Agency.

Bio highlights: BA, Communication; JD, University of Mississippi Law.

• 2019 founder of the “pro-Trump nonprofit” Energy 45 Fund.

• Senior fellow at Life:Powered, a pro-fossil-fuel initiative created by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF). (TPPF has received over $3 million from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation).

• Member of the CO2 Coalition, a group directed by climate change denier William Happer that portrays carbon dioxide as “a nutrient vital for life” and advocates for more of it in the atmosphere.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Chief of Staff, Environmental Protection Agency. Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation.

• Gunasekara’s CO2 Coalition profile describes her as “the chief architect of the Paris Accord withdrawal and the repeal of the Clean Power Plan” while serving as the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation.

• Energy 45 Fund is “a Jackson, Mississippi based 501(c)(4) educational organization dedicated to informing the public about the environmental and economic gains made under the Trump Administration” (Source: DeSmog).

Choice quotes:

• “...there is a void in the communication space of folks going out there and promoting the positive story of the president’s energy, economic and environmental agenda. So I get to defend the greatest president in modern history,” (14) (Politico 2019). Ex-EPA official on rollbacks, snowballs, and selling Trump,' PoliticoPro, 2019.

Learn more: Exxon sowed doubt about climate crisis, House Democrats hear in testimony, The Guardian, 2019.

13. Roger Severino

Author, Chapter 14: Department of Health and Human Services.

Bio highlights: BA, University of Southern California; MPA, Carnegie Mellon; JD, Harvard.

• Staunch Catholic activist, openly identified as member Opus Dei; spouse of Carrie Severino. Both Severinos are closely linked to Leonard Leo, managing his dark money trusts, and tied to other known Opus Dei members in Project 2025’s orbit.

• Vice-President, Domestic Policy at The Heritage Foundation; and its Joseph C. and Elizabeth A. Anderlik Fellow.

• Former Director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society for the Heritage Foundation. Former writer for conservative The Daily Signal publication.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Director, Office of Civil Rights (OCR) at the US Department of Health and Human Services from 2017 to 2021. Severino was lambasted by Senate Democrats as unqualified to lead the OCR at HHS during his tenure. (15)

• While at DeVos, Severino wrote scathing opinions on transgender issues, abortion rights, and gay marriage, and the Obama administration’s transgender policies. He repeatedly denounced and worked to oppose OCR’s implementation of Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which provides critical nondiscrimination protections based on gender identity and sex stereotyping in federally-funded health programs. He opposed the ACA’s contraceptive access provision and called for defunding Planned Parenthood.

Choice quotes:

• “Additionally, HHS should return to being known as the Department of Life by explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care,” – Chapter 14, Project 2025.

• “A radical social experiment” – Severino on the Obama guidance to allow transgender students to use a bathroom that matches their gender identity. (16)

• “Equivalent to housekeeping” – Severino on the Trump administration’s June 2020 reversal of a federal rule protecting transgender people from discrimination.

14. Ben Carson

Author, Chapter 15: Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Bio highlights: BA, Yale; MD, University of Michigan Medical School, 1973.

• Served as 17th US Secretary of HUD, from 2017 to 2021.

• Founder and chairman of the American Cornerstone Institute (ACI), now a Project 2025 Advisory Group member. It bills itself as a think tank promising to “champion conservative solutions to the real problems our nation faces.”

• Critics contend the institute appears to be a “funding vehicle for the good doctor himself,” according to Tropics of Meta, 2021. (17) Carson was criticized for spending up to $31,000 on a dining set in his HUD office in late 2017.

Choice quotes:

• Carson was accused by HUD members of making transphobic remarks at a meeting in San Francisco in September 2019. He warned that "big, hairy men" might infiltrate homeless shelters for women, prompting one woman to walk out, and calls for his resignation by Reps. Joe Kennedy III of Massachusetts and Jennifer Wexton of Virginia.

15. Gene Hamilton

Author, Chapter 17: Department of Justice.

Bio highlights: BA, University of Georgia; JD, Washington and Lee School of Law.

• VP and general counsel of America First Legal Foundation, a conservative nonprofit led by Stephen Miller and other senior Trump administration officials.

• Treasurer for Citizens for Sanity, a conservative PAC.

• As VP at America First, Hamilton has represented the state of Texas in a lawsuit aiming to reinstate Trump-era policies that bar unaccompanied migrant children from entering the United States.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Counselor to the Attorney General at the Department of Justice (DOJ) under Jeff Sessions (and also general counselor when Sessions was a senator); also served as a lawyer in Department of Homeland Security.

• Hamilton played key roles in ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, creating the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" family separation policy, and revoking the Temporary Protected Status of immigrants from Sudan and South Sudan.

Choice quotes:

• "America First Legal aims to organize Republican attorneys general to mount legal challenges to Biden administration policies.” – Gene Hamilton.

• America First flags were at the Jan 6 insurrection; Hamilton was required to give a deposition in a 2017 lawsuit against the Trump administration's handling of DACA, revealing that he was the author of the DHS memo ending the program.

16. Jonathan Berry

Author, Chapter 18: Department of Labor and Related Agencies.

Bio highlights: J.D., Columbia University, 2011, B.A., Yale University, 2005.

• Berry was head of the regulatory department in the Trump Department of Labor and served as Chief Counsel to the President-Elect Trump Transition, advising on ethics and legal policy.

• He previously served as a law clerk to Judge Jerry E. Smith of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and to Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., now on the Supreme Court of the United States. (18) He previously served at the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy, where he assisted with the confirmations of Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch and dozens of other federal judges.

• He also helped with the development of the Sessions and Brand memos on proper use of sub-regulatory guidance documents.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Counselor to the Attorney General at the Department of Justice (DOJ) under Jeff Sessions (and also general counselor when Sessions was a senator); also served as a lawyer in Department of Homeland Security.

• Hamilton played key roles in ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, creating the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" family separation policy, and revoking the Temporary Protected Status of immigrants from Sudan and South Sudan.

Choice quotes (Chapter 18):

• The DOL should promote regulations that prioritize traditional families by providing accommodations for pregnancy and childcare (but not abortion).

• Religious employers, employees, and institutions should be exempt from anti-discrimination policies.

Learn more:

• Rep. Ro Khanna, D-CA, questioning Berry (YouTube clip; The Hill article)

• Jonathan Berry bio (Defeat Project 2025)

17. Diana Furchtgott-Roth

Author, Chapter 19: Department of Transportation.

Bio highlights: Swarthmore College; Oxford University. Author.

• Director of the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment. Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow in Energy and Environmental Policy at The Heritage Foundation.

• Held senior roles in the White House under Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Deputy Assistant Secretary, Department of Transportation.

Choice quotes:

• "[The] Solution to hot weather is not reducing fossil fuels – it's more air conditioners." – Furchtgott-Roth. (X/Twitter, 2024).

Learn more:

• Furchtgott-Roth, Diana. Regulating to Disaster: How Green Jobs Policies are Destroying America's Economy, Encounter Books, 2012.

• Furchtgott-Roth, Diana. “Green Jobs: How unions and environmentalists came together to damage the U.S. economy,” Capital Research Center, November 7, 2012.

18. Brooks Tucker

Author, Chapter 20: Veterans Affairs.

Bio highlights: University of Maryland; Marine Corps Command and Staff College.

• Served for 20 years as an Infantry Officer on both active and reserve duty in the U.S. Marine Corps. Veteran of the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War, the Iraq Campaign during 2007-2008, and the Afghanistan Campaign in 2012.

• Former employee of the Koch brothers-funded Concerned Veterans for America (CVA).

• Called for dismantling the Veterans Affairs (VA) department when serving on a presidential commission in 2016.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Acting Chief of Staff, Veterans Affairs for Trump’s second VA Secretary, Robert Wilkie.

Choice quotes:

• "[The] Solution to hot weather is not reducing fossil fuels – it's more air conditioners." – Furchtgott-Roth. (X/Twitter, 2024).

Learn more:

• "For the first time, the VA is allowing access to abortion services, a medical procedure unrelated to military service that the VA lacks the legal authority and clinical proficiency to perform. In addition to continuing the grotesque culture of violence against the child in the womb, these sociopolitical initiatives and ideological indoctrinations distract from the department’s core missions." – Tucker, p. 642, Project 2025.

• Among other recommendations, Tucker’s proposes eliminating concurrent eligibility for both service-related disability benefits and military retirement benefits, which he claims would reduce mandatory outlays by at least $160 billion through 2032, and revising the disability rating awards that determine eligibility for benefits and determine monthly disability compensation to reap "significant cost savings. (19)

19. Thomas F. Gilman

Author, Chapter 21: Department of Commerce.

Bio highlights: BS, Finance, Villanova University.

• Director of ACLJ Action. Chairman of Torn-gat Metals. Former CEO, Chrysler Corporation.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Administration, and Chief Financial Officer, US Dept. of Commerce.

Choice quotes:

• The Department of Commerce “has suffered from decades of regulatory capture, ideological drift, and lack of focus.

• Goals: Fully staff the DOC Office of the Secretary with political appointees: send all existing detailees back to their home bureaus on Day One, to execute the President’s agenda.

20. William L. Walton

Co-author, Chapter 22: Department of the Treasury, along with David R. Burton and Stephen Moore.

Bio highlights: BS, Indiana University; MBA, Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business

• Heritage Foundation trustee and right-wing libertarian. Walton is Chairman of the Resolute Protector Foundation; former CEO, Allied Capital Corporation.

• Founder and chairman of Rappahannock Ventures LLC, a private equity firm, and Rush River Entertainment, a feature-film production company; host of the Bill Walton Show. Senior fellow for the Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth, Poverty, and Morality.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Served as co-head and Agency Action Leader for all federal economic agencies for 2016, 2017 president-elect Trump transition team.

Choice quotes:

• “The idea that he’s talking about helping transition to a government agency is remarkable in that he hates government and bristles at regulation.” –a critic on Bill Walton’s being tapped for the Trump landing team at Treasury. Walton was accused of mismanagement while at Allied, resulting in criminal investigation that revealed fraud in a small business unit. (20)

• As host of "The Bill Walton Show," Walton speaks on a wide range of right-wing topics from, "To Shrink Government, Cut Taxes: How the States are Doing it - With Grover Norquist," [Episode 215], and "Our Dystopian Green Energy Future," [Episode 232], to, "Defining a Man and a Woman": What's at stake?" [Episode 235].

21. Stephen Moore

Co-author, Chapter 22: Department of the Treasury, with David R. Burton and William L. Walton.

Bio highlights: Co-author, Chapter 22: Department of the Treasury, with David R. Burton and William L. Walton.

• Senior visiting fellow in Economics at The Heritage Foundation; 1983 Grover M. Hermann Fellow in Budgetary Affairs at the foundation.

• Founder of the anti-tax group Club for Growth, 1999; ousted in 2004.

• Founder, the 501(c)(4) Free Enterprise Fund, after ouster from Club for Growth.

• Joined the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal in 2005.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Top economic adviser to Trump 2016 campaign. In 2017, Moore was nominated to the Federal Reserve Board and worked with Larry Kudlow on overhauling the US tax policy for the Trump administration, later passed into law by Congress.

• Author, with co-author Laffer) of Trumponomics, lauding the Trump administration's economic policies, 2018.

Choice quotes:

• “Mr. Moore has written that it may be dangerous for women to earn more than men and has criticized women’s athletic abilities. During a 2016 debate on the minimum wage, Moore stated, ‘I’m a radical on this. I'd get rid of a lot of these child labor laws. I want people starting to work at 11, 12.’” – White House review of Moore’s writing, 2019. (21)

• “Moore dedicated his career to slashing Social Security benefits and taxes for billionaires when he wasn’t busy belittling women and people of color. With extremists like Moore calling the shots, Project 2025 may not have any credibility, but unfortunately, they have limitless resources from the dark money Leonard Leo network to undermine the health and retirement security of millions of Americans,” added Carrk. (Accountable, 2024). (22)

22. Jennifer Hazelton

Co-author, Chapter 23: Export-Import Bank. The Case for the Export-Import Bank (in two parts, with Veronique de Rugy).

Bio highlights: BA, University of Georgia; MA, Emory University.

• Former Deputy Assistant Administrator of Public Affairs for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

• Communications Director for the 2016 Trump-Pence campaign in Georgia.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Deputy Assistant Administrator, Public Affairs; Senior Consultant, Department of Defense.

Learn more: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/19/playbook-birthday-jenniferhazelton-329303.

23. Veronique de Rugy

Co-author of Chapter 23: Export-Import Bank. The Export-Import Bank Should Be Abolished (in two parts, with Jennifer Hazelton).

Bio highlights: MA, Paris Dauphine University; PhD, Panthéon-Sorbonne University. Conservative academic, economist, nationally syndicated columnist. Primary research interests: US economy, federal budget, taxation, tax competition, and cronyism.

• Holds George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and Senior Research Fellow at the right-wing Mercatus Center at George Mason University (Note: GMU is a Leonard-Leo funded institution, affiliated with Catholic branch Opus Dei (see our Special Report).

• Resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; policy analyst at the Cato Institute; research fellow at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.

• Contributing editor, Reason magazine.

Trump admin bonafides:

• No former position within Trump administration, just a fellow traveler.

Choice quotes:

• “The government has become so big that no one is accountable, oversight is impossible, and no one seems to care at all," – Veronique de Rugy, going after government malfeasance, in 2016. (23)

Learn more:

• de Rugy favors work requirements for child tax credits: “Veronique de Rugy: Expanding the child tax credit ignores historical precedent,” Fremont News Messenger, 2021.

• Ezra Klein interviews de Rugy, 2023 Transcript

24. Paul Winfree

Author, Chapter 24: Federal Reserve.

Bio highlights: BA, George Mason University; MA, London School of Economics; PhD, Queen's University, Belfast.

• Director of Economic Policy Studies; Acting Director of the Center for Data Analysis.

• Richard F. Aster Fellow at The Heritage Foundation; Chair, Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, Fulbright Program.

• Founder and President of N58 Policy Research, a firm providing analytical research and strategy for decision makers in matters of public policy.

Trump admin bonafides:

• 2016 transition team; Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy; Deputy Director at the Domestic Policy Council; Director of Budget Policy.

25. Peter Navarro

Co-author, Chapter 26: Trade. The Case for Fair Trade (in two parts; with Kent Lassman).

Bio highlights: MPA, Harvard; PhD, Harvard.

Trump admin bonafides:

• First served as Deputy Assistant to the President and director of the short-lived White House National Trade Council; then Assistant to the President, Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy in the new Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy.

• Navarro, who sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election, was the second exTrump aide to be convicted of contempt of Congress; Bannon was convicted of the same offense the preceding year. (24)

Choice quotes:

• A former Trump White House official says he and right-wing provocateur Steve Bannon were actually behind the last-ditch coordinated effort by rogue Republicans in Congress to halt certification of the 2020 election results and keep President Donald Trump in power earlier this year, in a plan dubbed the “Green Bay Sweep.” In his recently published memoir, Peter Navarro, then-President Trump's trade adviser, details how he stayed in close contact with Bannon as they put the Green Bay Sweep in motion with help from members of Congress loyal to the cause."

• I've known (Navarro) for a long time," said Dan Ikenson, director of the Cato Institute's Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies. "He's a charlatan. He is absolutely saying things that 99.9 per cent of respectable economists would eschew [ …] I don't know how he got his PhD at Harvard." See: “The purge of April: Trump's new advisers pour on the gas,” CBC, 2018.

26. Kent Lassman

Co-author: Chapter 26, Trade. The Case for Fair Trade (in two parts; with Peter Navarro).

Bio highlights: BA, Catholic University of America; MPA, North Carolina State University.

• Researcher at Citizens for a Sound Economy, founded by Charles and David Koch brothers to help grassroots activists fight for free markets and limited government. Later split into FreedomWorks (a Project 2025 advisory group) and Americans for Prosperity. 25

• President and CEO at the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute since 2016, overseeing strategy and operations, providing analysis, commentary on regulatory law and economic. CEI is a Project 2025 advisory group.

• Board member of TriEqual since 2015, an organization promoting women triathletes.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Lassman did not serve in the Trump administration. He was a proponent of Trump administration's deregulatory policies.

Choice quotes:

• "[regulations are] the primary way most Americans interact with the government," (See: “Examining Trump's Deregulation with Kent Lassman,” via YouTube, 2018).

• "For the Biden administration, it apparently doesn’t matter that these rules would have a disproportionate impact on the poor, increase prices for consumer goods, and undermine the electricity grid. Nor do they apparently care that these policies would erode Americans’ basic freedoms. Everything is about addressing climate change, no matter the cost to the American people. What does all this pain get us? Virtually nothing.”

Learn more: Lummis, Cynthia and Lassman, Kent. “We must reject our elites' failed, topdown environmentalism,” The National Review, 2024.

27. David R. Burton

Author, Chapter 27: Financial Regulatory Agencies - Securities and Exchange Commission and Related Agencies; Co-author, Chapter 22, Department of the Treasury, with Stephen Moore and William L. Walton.

Bio highlights: BA, University of Chicago; JD, University of Maryland School of Law.

• Senior fellow in Economic Policy at the Heritage Foundation; Senior fellow in Economic Policy, Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies. Former general counsel at the National Small Business Association for two years before joining Heritage’s Roe Institute in 2013. Former Chief Financial Officer and general counsel of the start-up Alliance for Retirement Prosperity, a conservative alternative to AARP. Was a 15-year partner in the Argus Group, a Virginia-based law, public policy, and government relations firm.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Did not serve in the Trump administration; supports Trump policy.

Choice quotes:

• Burton opposes any DEI strategies. In Chapter 27, he writes: “Discrimination based on immutable characteristics has no place in financial regulation. Offices at financial regulators that promote racist policies (usually in the name of “diversity, equity, and inclusion”) should be abolished, and regulations that require appointments on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, or sexual orientation should be eliminated. Equal protection of the law, equal opportunity, and individual merit should govern regulatory decisions.”

28. Robert Bowes

Author, Chapter 27: Financial Regulatory Agencies - Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Bio highlights: BS, Indiana University. Vice-President of Chase Manhattan Bank; Director of Counterparty Risk at Fannie Mae.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Did not serve in the Trump administration; supports Trump policy.

Choice quotes:

• Field Director, 2016 Trump presidential campaign; 2017 Housing and Urban Development political appointee.

• After joining HUD in 2027, Bowes was called out for trading stocks and options, raising concerns about insider trading. He denied the charge. What was unusual, ethics experts said, was the frequency of his transactions, the high-stakes bets and exotic securities traded. In 2018 and 2020, he bought and sold thousands of dollars of options on the same day. “It is literally day trading,” said Robert Rizzi, a partner at law firm Steptoe & Johnson LLP, who advises government officials and nominees on financial disclosure, after reviewing the transactions. (26)

29. Brendan Carr

Author, Chapter 28: Federal Communications Commission.

Bio highlights: BA Georgetown University, 2001; Catholic University of America School of Law, Columbus.

• Senior Republican currently on Federal Communications Commission. Attorney at Wiley Rein LLP. Former clerk, Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit for Judge Dennis W. Shedd. Has over 20 years private and public sector experience in communications and tech policy. Staunch vocal opponent of net neutrality provisions; seeks total ban of TikTok on national security grounds.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Former FCC General Counsel. (Before that, worked as an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai when he was a commissioner during the Obama years. He first joined the FCC as a staffer in 2012 and worked on spectrum policy and competition matters.)

Choice quotes:

• “Since the 2016 election, the far left has worked to weaponize social media platforms.” (Fox News, May 2024); "Since the 2016 election, the far left has hopped from hoax to hoax to hoax to explain how it lost to President Trump at the ballot box." (27i) (Lou Dobbs Tonight, Fox Business)

• While in office, Carr accused House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff of overseeing a “secret and partisan surveillance machine.” (ii)

• In 2020, Carr argued that the WHO was “beclowned” in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Learn more:

• Carr opposes net neutrality provisions: Spectrum News, 2024.

• “FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr supports a total ban on TikTok,” National Public Radio, 2022.

• “Meet the man who could lead the GOP’s war on platform moderation,” The Verge, 2020.

30. Hans A. von Spakovsky

Author, Chapter 29: Federal Election Commission.

Bio highlights: BA, MIT; JD, Vanderbilt University School of Law.

• Nominated to the Federal Election Commission by President George W. Bush on December 15, 2005 and was appointed on January 4, 2006. Viewed as one of the architects of the Bush Administration’s voter suppression efforts targeting minority voters.

• Official at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division from 2001 to 2005. While there, von Spakovsky helped steer the federal government toward voting rights policies not seen before, imposing sweeping restrictions that would make it harder for poor and minority voters to cast ballots.

• The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights opposed his nomination to be Chair of the Committee on Rules and Administration in 2007.

• Several long-term career staff in the DOJ’s Voting Section under von Spakovsky were involuntarily reassigned or left their position after voicing criticism of his leadership, according to watchdog Public Citizen in 2007. 28 See: Statement of Laura MacCleery, Director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch Division.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Appointed to Trump's presidential advisory Commission on Election Integrity in 2017.

Choice quotes:

• “He probably is the single most important advocate, over a long period of time, persuading people to take this claim of (voter) fraud seriously,” said Paul Smith, the senior vice-president of the non-partisan voting rights group Campaign Legal Center on von Spakovsky’s dogged efforts to champion election security fears. (29)

31. Adam Candeub

Author, Chapter 30: Federal Trade Commission.

Bio highlights: Yale University, and the University of Pennsylvania Law School degrees. Michigan State University College of Law professor since fall 2004.

• Fellow with MSU’s Institute of Public Utilities. His research focuses on telecommunication, antitrust, and Internet issues. Also: Senior fellow at the D.C.- based Center of Renewing America, a Project 2025 Advisory Group.

Trump admin bonafides:

• Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Telecommunications and Information; later assumed the role of Acting Assistant Secretary.

• Candeub played a leading role in carrying out Trump’s 2020 Executive Order targeting social media companies like Twitter and Facebook over allegations they censor conservative viewpoints, according to Politico. (30) That got him a DOJ job.

• Deputy Associate Attorney General at the Department of Justice.

• Advisor at the FCC before joing MSU law faculty. (iii)

Choice quotes:

• Articles by Adam Candeub: “The Left Wants Your Kids Online” (2023); “Climate Litigation Chills Speech and Debate' (2023). Source: The American Conservative website.

• Candeub as a Fullbright law fellow in Croatia Practising Law Institute.