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Who’s Behind Project 2025?

Project 2025 is spearheaded by The Heritage Foundation, a radical conservative think-tank. The Project 2025 playbook was authored by a number of prominent Republican spokespeople and politicians – many with close connections to the convicted criminal Donald Trump.

The Heritage Foundation

According to the Heritage Foundation website, “Heritage’s mission is to formulate and promote public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.”

The foundation was established in 1973 and played a leading role in advising President Ronald Reagan. The foundation was influential in developing the Reagan Doctrine, which led to foreign policy that directly supported anti-communist rebel armies, such as the Contras in Nicaragua. President George H.W. Bush looked to the Heritage Foundation as a key advisor during Operation Desert Storm. They were vocal proponents of the War on Terror, and more recently, oppose aid to Ukraine while supporting aid to Israel.

Despite advocating for affordable healthcare in 1989, they opposed affordable healthcare plans during the Clinton and Obama administrations. They reject science on climate change, broadly oppose environmental protection legislation, and oppose the transition away from fossil fuels . The foundation opposes same-sex marriage, abortion, transgender rights, and the teaching of critical race theory. This is all guided in the name of religious freedom, though that does not stop them from claiming that the Constitution does not call for separation of church and state.

The Heritage Foundation was co-founded by Edwin J. Feulner, a conservative author and U.N. ambassador under Reagan that also directs the pro-life Roe Foundation. The Heritage Foundation is currently led by a team of 16 direct leaders and a Board of Trustees, chaired by Barb Van Andel-Gaby, board member of Amway’s parent company. They have accepted funding from the DeVos Family Foundation, ExxonMobil, the Walton Family Foundation, and many other conservative groups and individuals. Collectively, the Heritage Foundation represents the interests of conservative politicians, large corporations, and the Christian right.

The Connections to Trump

Prominent Project 2025 contributors include notable Trump affiliates, such as Stephen Miller, Mark Meadows, and Russel Vought. The project’s director, Paul Dans, served as a former Trump administration official. Project 2025 has received over 50 million dollars in funding from groups linked to Leonard Leo, a key advisor to Trump’s controversial judicial nominees. In Trump’s first term, The Heritage Foundation boasted two-thirds implementation of their 2017 agenda.

Authors of "The Mandate for Leadership"

Bernard McNamee

Bernard L. McNamee is an attorney and former commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). His chapter in the Mandate for Leadership concerns the Department of Energy and related commissions. Those related commissions are FERC and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
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Christopher Miller

According to the bio provided in the Mandate for Leadership, Miller was a part of the Trump Administration, serving in several different positions including Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense, Director of the National Counter-terrorism Center, and Senior Director for Counterterrorism and Trans-national Threats at the National Security Council. Before his time in the Department of Defense, he was in the military as an Army Green Beret in the 5th Special Forces Group. He commanded the special forces group in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Daren Bakst

Daren Bakst’s conservative credentials include roles at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the John Locke Foundation, and the Federalist Society. According to the Heritage Foundation, he “has appeared in or been quoted by a wide range of media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Times, CNN, Fox Business News, Al-Jazeera America, and U.S. News and World Report.” In keeping with the conservative complaint that conservative views are being censored, the oft-cited, well-published Bakst complained before Congress that “the chilling of speech is too often a reality. There are regular ad hominem attacks, such as the inappropriate label, ‘climate deniers,’ for those who do not follow the climate narrative.”
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Dennis D. Kirk

According to the Hill, Dennis D. Kirk has described himself as “the ‘neutral moderate’ nominee” for a position as chair on the Merit Systems Protection Board. The board is tasked with handling appeals of personnel decisions. But as a post on the Indivisible Ventura site points out, Kirk serves as “Associate Director of Personnel Policy with the Heritage Fund’s Project 2025,” and thus is “already completely within the club.”
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Donald Devine

According to the bio provided in the Mandate for Leadership, Devine is Senior Scholar at The Fund for American Studies in Washington, DC. Though the Fund for American Studies claims to be a non-partisan educational nonprofit, its board of trustees has affiliations with the Republican Party.
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Dustin Carmack

According to Carmack’s bio in the Mandate for Leadership, “he served in the Intelligence Community as Chief of Staff to the Director of National Intelligence.” Before that, he worked as “Chief of Staff to Congressman John Ratcliffe…and Congressman Ron DeSantis.” According to the New York Post and other sources, Carmack left a position at the Heritage Foundation to join the presidential campaign of DeSantis, serving as policy director and senior advisor (with an emphasis on national security). His views on national security, cybersecurity, and China have been described as “hawkish.” After DeSantis dropped out of the race, Carmack took a job with Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
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Gene Hamilton

According to the bio provided in the Mandate for Leadership, Hamilton is the Vice-President and General Counsel of America First Legal Foundation. The America First Legal Foundation is a conservative non-profit organization, which according to their own site is “led by senior members of the Trump administration who were at the forefront of the America First movement.” Hamilton is also listed as an executive director on their website.
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Ken Cuccinelli

An attorney and politician by trade, Cuccinelli served as attorney general of Virginia from 2010 to 2014 and served in the Virginia state senate from 2002 to 2010. His appointment by Trump to lead the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) was ruled illegal in March 2020. After Trump’s term ended, Cuccinelli went on to form a super PAC with the goal of electing Florida governor Ron DeSantis to the presidency. Cuccinelli has connections to the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation.
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Kevin D. Roberts

Kevin D. Roberts is president of The Heritage Foundation and the author of the foreword to the Mandate for Leadership. According to his bio on the foundation’s web site, his PhD is in American history. The bio goes on to list Roberts’s conservative credentials. In Heritage usage, “conservative” equals what those outside its sphere might call “far-right,” as Roberts’s foreword implicitly makes a distinction between “conservative” and “the Washington establishment,” which includes Republicans.
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Kiron K. Skinner

Skinner’s conservative credentials are listed in her bio in the Mandate for Leadership. They include her being a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, a visiting fellow and senior advisor at the Heritage Foundation, an academic advisor at the America First Policy Institute, and a professor at Pepperdine University. She has also worked for the government at the State Department during the Trump administration and at the Department of Defense. She has edited books about Ronald Reagan and has worked for George W. Bush, among other Republicans.
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Lindsey M. Burke

In the Mandate for Leadership, Lindsey M. Burke is the author of the chapter devoted to the Department of Education. The chapter begins with the assertion that the Department of Education should be eliminated.
In her bio in the book, Burke is listed as the director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation. She is also credited with serving Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s team on education. Youngkin made school choice (i.e. measures to pull funding from public schools and put it toward private schools) a centerpiece of his campaign. He also vowed to eliminate critical race theory from the classroom (which should not be too hard, given that CRT is taught very rarely if at all in K-12 schools, despite the claims of conservatives to the contrary. What conservatives mean by eliminating CRT in public schools is eliminating discussion of racism, racial inequality, and especially systemic racism in the United States). Burke’s bio also lists her association with the Educational Freedom Institute, which exists to support school choice initiatives.
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Mandy M. Gunasekara

Mandy M. Gunasekara has had roles at the Independent Women’s Forum</a and the Heritage Foundation, two conservative organizations. The Independent Women’s Forum is known for couching anti-trans goals in feminist language and for otherwise opposing women’s rights. The Heritage Foundation, the lead group behind Project 2025, is known for climate denialism and a strong rightward shift since Jim DeMint became president in 2013. She also served as the chief of staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the Trump administration. Previously, she worked for Senator Jim Inhofe and handed him the snowball he used as a prop on the Senate floor when mocking climate change.
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