Trump VP finalist says Project 2025 has 'some good ideas in there'

11 July 2024

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) who is confirmed to be one of the top two finalists to be former President Donald Trump's 2024 running mate (North Dakota Governor Republican Doug Burgum is the other), is now praising the far-right Heritage Foundation's authoritarian Project 2025 playbook.

During a recent appearance on pro-Trump network Newsmax, host Rob Schmitt asked Vance about Project 2025. The Ohio Republican downplayed the document's influence on American voters before heaping praise on it.

"Most Americans couldn't care less about Project 2025," Vance said. "I reviewed a lot of it. There are some good ideas in there."

Vance's cheering of the Heritage Foundation's 920-page strategic document is a sharp contrast to the tone Trump has taken when talking about Project 2025. In a post to his Truth Social page on Thursday, Trump once again denied any knowledge of the plan or of the people involved with it.

"I know nothing about Project 2025. I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it," Trump wrote. This is the second time he has attempted to distance himself from the controversial plan to consolidate executive power and pack the federal civil service with political stooges in order to accomplish far-right political objectives.

"I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal," Trump wrote earlier this month, without elaborating on what he disagreed with. "Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them."

Trump's claim that he "knows nothing" about the initiative is less believable when considering that roughly 140 of his former administration's staffers and advisors — including six of his cabinet secretaries — are involved with it. In 2022, Axios reported that outed white nationalist Stephen Miller, who is Trump's top immigration adviser, is one of the key architects of the plan.

At its core, Project 2025 relies on Trump (or any other Republican president) signing an executive order dubbed "Schedule F," which would promptly bulldoze numerous employment protections for the federal workforce. The number of political appointees hand-picked by a president to serve in federal agencies would then drastically rise from roughly 5,000 to more than 54,000.

Those appointees — who Heritage is pre-screening primarily based on their loyalty to Trump and the MAGA movement – would then be strategically placed in decision-making roles throughout multiple agencies. In this way, Trump or any president could then be free to enact numerous policies with minimal resistance from Congress or the courts. Some of Project 2025's more eyebrow-raising proposals include a national abortion and contraception ban, a ban on IVF treatments, an end to marriage equality, the rescinding of civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ individuals, increased oil drilling in federally protected lands, revoking FDA approval of abortion pill Mifepristone, defunding the DOJ and the FBI and eliminating the Department of Education, among others.

Watch video of Vance's comments below, or by clicking this link.

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