Donald Trump He said he had no idea who was behind it. The man he chose to be the presidential transition chairman and commerce secretary said he wouldn’t touch it. “They nuclearized themselves,” he said.

But the writers Project 2025 -A 900 page playbook from a right-wing think tank for the next step. Republican president’s agenda – it’s all over Trump’s new administration.

Trump’s appointment is expected Russell Vought As director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, he is a key role overseeing spending across the administration. Vought is also among the architects of the project. Heritage FoundationHe wrote the part of his plan regarding the transformation of the executive branch.

He co-wrote the plan’s playbook for the first 180 days of the administration and is on the advisory board of the Center for Renewing America, Project 2025.

Trump repeatedly He tried to push himself away. Of the Heritage Foundation’s wide-ranging suggestions on the campaign trail, he both claims he knows “nothing” about it and has “no idea who is behind it,” while also saying he disagrees with some of the “absolutely ridiculous and awful” suggestions.

“I wish them luck in whatever they do, but I have nothing to do with them,” he added.

Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, told CNBC in September that there was “absolutely zero” connection between Trump’s campaign and Project 2025.

“I’m not going to get a list from them,” Lutnick said, referring to policy recommendations from the Heritage Foundation and hires being vetted for the Trump administration. “I won’t take any issue from them. I won’t touch them. “They have nuclearized themselves.”

Trump has since nominated several of the authors to key roles in his administration.

Brendan Carr, whom Trump nominated to head the Federal Communications Commission, wrote the chapter of Project 2025 on the agency that regulates television, radio, internet and communications.

Trump’s ‘border czar’ Tom Homan – former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to serve Trump’s mass deportation plan – is also a contributor to Project 2025 and has been a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation Center for Border Security and Immigration, where he produced a series of articles on immigration policy for the group.

Former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe has been nominated to be the next CIA director. It is included in the US intelligence section of Project 2025.

Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s anti-immigration agenda during his first term in office, will return to the Trump White House as deputy chief of staff for policy to oversee Trump’s agenda.

His organization, America First Legal, was initially among Project 2025 contributors, but the group’s name was removed from its website after Trump and his allies began criticizing the proposal.

Project 2025 — the name of the mammoth’s content Leadership Authority: Conservative Promise — was a major focus of Democratic campaigns leading up to Election Day, with Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz routinely amplifying their agendas to highlight the risks of Trump’s return to office.

A series of chapters throughout the Democratic National Convention highlighted excerpts from the plan using oversized, hardcover versions.

The plan calls for mass layoffs across the federal workforce, abolishing the Department of Education, cutting funding for federal law enforcement, and using agencies that regulate broadcasting and campaign finance to silence dissent. It also proposes mass deportations and a ban on commonly used abortion drugs, with the aim of banning abortion nationwide, among many other suggestions.

“Some on the right, the far right, have come up with this Project ’25,” Trump said during a rally in September. “I don’t even know, I know who some of them are but they’re very, very conservative. “They are kind of the opposite of the radical left.”

Trump campaign director Chris LaCivita said in the summer that Project 2025 had become a “nuisance.”

But shortly after Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, the Heritage Foundation signaled that it was done hiding in the shadows and was preparing to re-enter Trump’s orbit, while right-wing media figures also publicly praised Project 2025’s content.

“Now that the elections are over, we can say that yes, Project 2025 is actually on the agenda. Hahaha,” far-right extremist Matt Walsh wrote after the election. “It is my honor to inform you all that Project 2025 is always real,” podcaster Benny Johnson said.

“We are so back” A Heritage official said.

In a statement Wednesday, Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s campaign press secretary and new White House press secretary, continued to deny that Trump had any involvement with the 2025 Project.

“After months of lying to the American people, Donald Trump is taking off the mask: He is planning a Project 2025 Cabinet to implement his dangerous vision from day one,” Democratic National Committee spokesman Alex Floyd said in a statement Wednesday.