| For a candidate who disavowed the MAGA manifesto Project 2025 and said he knew nothing about its creation, Donald Trump sure seems to like the people who wrote it. After calling the document’s ideas “abysmal” on the campaign trail, the president-elect has nominated or appointed to his incoming administration at least five people involved in it. The plan became public more than a year ago as the presidential campaign was intensifying. The project was led by the conservative Heritage Foundation and reflected the views of anti-immigrant, anti-reproductive-rights, small-government conservatives. Project 2025’s ideas include eliminating climate-change rules, weakening worker protections, replacing civil servants with Trump loyalists and dismantling at least parts of the Education, Commerce and Homeland Security departments, among other things.  Representatives of the Heritage Foundation talks to fairgoers in the Project 2025 tent at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines on Aug. 14. Photographer: Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo Its publication gifted Democrats with an easy bulls-eye for attacks on Trump’s “extreme” views, as nominee Kamala Harris described them when she pursued undecided voters in swing states. Campaign-trail Trump appeared to at least partly agree. Over the summer he distanced himself from Project 2025, claiming to know nothing about it and saying he rejected some of its “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal” ideas. His own transition co-chair — and now Commerce Secretary-designate — Howard Lutnick told The Washington Post, “I won’t take a list from them. I won’t take a topic from them. I won’t touch them. They made themselves nuclear.” Yet just two weeks into the transition, at least five people involved in Project 2025 have been tapped for jobs in the second Trump administration — and the number could climb, given that 18 of the document’s 40 authors and editors were part of the first Trump administration. This week Brendan Carr, author of the chapter on the Federal Communications Commission, was nominated to lead the agency that regulates television and the internet. Russ Vought, author of a core chapter arguing for cutting the size of the federal bureaucracy and strengthening the president’s control, is expected to be nominated to lead the Office of Management and Budget, according to CBS News. Contributors Tom Homan, tapped for a “border czar” role; John Ratcliffe, slated to lead the Central Intelligence Agency; and Pete Hoekstra, nominated as the ambassador to Canada, round out the cohort from Project 2025 named to the administration so far. With the transition in its early days, more may yet be joining them. | 
