New reporting from ABC News explains why Donald Trump’s Republican Party passed one of the most extreme party platforms ever in the history of modern presidential elections: it was written by extremists with deep ties to Project 2025.
The Republican National Committee’s policy recommendations were led by Project 2025’s policy chief, Russell Vought, and president of Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund (a group on Project 2025’s advisory board), Ed Martin.
The platform calls for mass deportations, a federal task force to investigate non-Christians, banning people from non-Christian nations from entering the country, eliminating the Department of Education, and assuming the 14th Amendment grants Congress the power to further restrict reproductive rights for millions of people.
Learn more about Trump letting Project 2025’s policy architects write one of the most extreme party platforms ever in the history of modern presidential elections:
- In May, the Trump campaign and the RNC announced their Platform Committee leadership team, the senior officials tasked with drafting the Republican platform, and named Russ Vought as the platform committee’s policy director and Ed Martin as deputy policy director. Both have ties to Project 2025.
- Vought, who previously served Trump as the director of the Office of Management and Budget, authored a chapter on “Executive Office of the President” for Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” which Project 2025 describes as “a comprehensive policy guide for the next conservative U.S. president.”
- Vought’s Center For Renewing America is also listed as a member of Project 2025’s advisory board, according to the plan’s website.
- Martin, who the Trump campaign and RNC named as the party’s deputy platform policy director, is the president of the Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund; Eagle Forum is also listed as a part of Project 2025’s advisory board.
- Other members on the RNC platform committee with ties to Project 2025 include Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, who has been vocal in his efforts to ensure the Republican platform does not soften its language on abortion. Perkins has said he is involved in the crafting of the 2024 platform, and Family Research Council is also an advisory board member to Project 2025.
- As recently as April, Project 2025’s senior adviser John McEntee — who was previously a Trump White House adviser — said he was working to integrate Project 2025 with the Trump campaign while also attempting to create a distinction between the two entities.
- By the end of Trump’s first term, McEntee was tasked with scouring federal agencies for people who were not fully behind Trump’s agenda. In October 2020, he drafted a memo arguing that Trump should fire then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper three weeks before Esper was terminated, as first reported by ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl in his book “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.”
- A major part of Project 2025’s agenda is to expand presidential power and drastically cut federal agencies like the Education Department — moves that Trump, on the campaign trail, has supported. The proposal also calls for a reversal of the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of abortion pill mifepristone. Trump earlier this month said he does not support blocking access to mifepristone.
- Despite Trump’s attempts to distance himself from Project 2025, the two worlds remain deeply intertwined. Several key former members of the Trump administration are involved with the project, including Stephen Miller, who recently helped Trump with debate prep and acted as a surrogate in the spin room following the CNN presidential debate in Atlanta — and who appears in Project 2025’s educational “presidential administration academy” video and whose organization, America First Legal, is listed as among its advisory members.
- Members of Trump’s PAC-funded groups also sit on the project’s advisory board, including Conservative Partnership Institute, an organization led by Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, which received a $1 million donation from Trump’s Save America PAC in 2021.
- The Trump campaign’s now-national press secretary Karoline Leavitt is also prominently featured in Project 2025’s “presidential administration academy” video, which the group says is designed to train the next generation of conservative politicians.
- Other policy groups and think tanks with ties to Trump and his former administration have also proposed policy outlines for a potential second term, including the America First Policy Institute, which houses hundreds of former Trump administration officials. Save America PAC also donated $1 million to America First Policy Institute.
Published: Jul 9, 2024 | Last Modified: Jul 16, 2024