Now that Trump has returned to office, his appointments provide a picture of which parts of the conservative movement have the most influence in the new administration. To examine this, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) is publishing a special series revealing the far-right individuals, organizations, and networks most involved in the new Trump administration. GPAHE has found three networks to be most influential: the cluster of organizations and individuals involved in Project 2025, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, individuals connected to the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), and those connected to the Council for National Policy (CNP).
Here, GPAHE looks into those tied to Project 2025, the authoritarian, rights-stripping plan, outlined in a 900+ page opus, that is guiding major transformations to the way the U.S. government operates. The policy proposals in Project 2025, such as shutting down USAID, stripping DEI efforts, and politicizing the DOJ and FBI, among others, and which Trump denied planning to enact or even know about while running for office, are now rapidly being put in place (see GPAHE’s full analysis of Project 2025 here).
GPAHE has documented the network of senior officials and members of the boards of directors of organizations tied to Project 2025, and those in their proximity, in order to calculate the extent of their “influence” in the new administration (for more on GPAHE’s research, see the methodological note below). In total, the dataset includes more than 2,200 individuals in these organizations, or in the Trump administration. In addition, a specific node (data point) was created that represents all of the individuals who are listed as contributors to the official Project 2025 manifesto Mandate for Leadership, which outlines the group’s authoritarian plans for governance, and includes more than 300 individuals representing more than 75 different organizations.
As of the date of publishing, the Project 2025 network has at least 40 ties to the new Trump administration.
Number of Project 2025 Ties to the Trump Administration per Organization
| Organization | Number of ties in the Trump Administration |
| Contributors to the Mandate for Leadership manifesto | 17 |
| Heritage Foundation | 8 |
| Center for Renewing America (CRA) | 4 |
| Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) | 3 |
| Turning Point USA (TPUSA) | 2 |
| Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA) | 1 |
| Pacific Research Institute (PRI) | 1 |
| Claremont Institute | 1 |
| Hillsdale College | 1 |
| Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America | 1 |
| American Moment | 1 |
| Council for National Policy (CNP) | 1 |
| Media Research Center (MRC) | 1 |
Contributors to the Project 2025 Manifesto
The node representing individuals involved in drafting the official manifesto for Project 2025 was the most influential in the entire far-right network that GPAHE examined. While contributing to the plan was the primary factor unifying many of the Project 2025 organizations, individuals from non-Project 2025-affiliated organizations participated as well. These included current director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) John Ratcliffe, the former co-chair of the Project 2025 “competitor” organization America First Policy Institute’s (AFPI) Center for American Security, and former U.S. Ambassador to Denmark Carla Sands, AFPI’s current Vice Chair for the Center for Energy & Environment.
Several individuals who have been prominent members of the relatively secretive Council for National Policy, in many ways an important precursor to the Project 2025 coalition, are also listed as contributors to the plan. These include Fellow Emeritus Edwin Meese III and Trustee William L. Walton from the Heritage Foundation, and the Conservative Partnership Institute’s (CPI) Senior Legal Fellow Cleta Mitchell. Aside from her extensive far-right connections, Mitchell is known for founding the CPI’s election denialist group Election Integrity Network, and for being on Trump’s call to Georgia election officials to “find 11,780 votes” after Trump lost the state in the 2020 election. Walton, the vice-president of the CNP, co-wrote the chapter on the Department of the Treasury in the Project 2025 plan and is a prominent advocate of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, while Meese, a former Reagan official and Heritage official from 2001 to 2013, is listed as a contributor to the chapter on the “White House Office.”
Image of Nodes tied to the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 in the second Trump Administration. Note. Each point (node) is an individual, and each line (edge) is a connection.
Project 2025 Principals in the Far-Right Network
Unsurprisingly, the Heritage Foundation, which chaired the Project 2025 effort and brought more than 100 far-right organizations onboard, is by far the most influential organization in the Project 2025 network. While many organizations had only a couple of individuals participate in drafting the plan, more than 50 employees of the Heritage Foundation were either listed as authors or contributors.
Heritage’s influence is also derived from the fact that a significant number of individuals on the far right have worked in some capacity at Heritage during their careers, oftentimes on short-term “fellowships.” While at least 65 individuals in the Project 2025 network have a current affiliation with the Heritage Foundation, an additional 45 individuals had previous work experience at Heritage.
Many individuals from the leadership of Heritage demonstrate themselves to be highly influential in the pro-Trump network by being well-placed to connect with individuals from other organizations. These include Senior Fellow Mike Gonzalez, Election Law Reform Initiative manager Hans A. von Spakovsky, a prominent election denier (see GPAHE’s previous reporting on Spakovsky here), and Senior Counselor to the President James Jay Carafano, the former director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies and former vice president of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies. In addition to their ties to Heritage, all three were contributors to Project 2025, writing the chapters on “Media Agencies: Corporation for Public Broadcasting” (Gonzalez) and the Federal Election Commission (Spakovsky), while a Heritage report written by Carafano was cited in the chapter on the Department of State. Gonzalez is also close to far-right groups close to the authoritarian government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Hungary (see GPAHE’s reporting on Gonzalez’s ties here, here and here).
Aside from the Heritage Foundation, other influential organizations within the network that produced Project 2025 include the “Stop the Steal” advocacy group Turning Point USA, the organization that pushed the Kamala Harris birther conspiracy theory Claremont Institute, the American Cornerstone Institute (ACI), the anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), the Christian nationalist Center for Renewing America (CRA), the rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ Family Research Council (FRC), the Alabama Policy Institute (API), and the anti-LGBTQ+, anti-woman Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).
Project 2025 Principals in the Trump Administration
The data clearly shows the extent to which Heritage principals, contributors to the Project 2025 manifesto, and individuals in the senior leadership from affiliated organizations have been given key roles in the new administration. At least 20 individuals from Project 2025 organizations have been given positions in the senior leadership, as well as at least 17 individuals who contributed to the plan.
Stacey Feinberg, an advisory council member of Charlie Kirk’s far-right organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA), and co-founder of the JLF Asset Management hedge fund, was nominated to be the Ambassador to Luxembourg. Another individual chosen for an ambassadorial position was Monica Crowley, a former Fox News contributor who was nominated to be Chief of Protocol, with the status of “Ambassador” according to Trump, and would be the representative for the administration to major events hosted by the U.S. such as America’s 250th Birthday in 2026, the FIFA World Cup in 2026, and the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 2028. Crowley previously served as assistant secretary of the Treasury for public affairs in the first Trump administration and contributed to the Project 2025 section on the Department of Treasury. Pete Hoekstra, the former U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands with ties to Heritage and the anti-Muslim think tanks Gatestone Institute and Investigative Project on Terrorism, was chosen for the position of U.S. ambassador to Canada (see GPAHE’s profile of Hoekstra here). His ties to these think tanks, both Trump administrations, and Project 2025, where he is cited as a contributor, led to him being identified as a particularly influential individual in the network.
Staffers at Project 2025 affiliate organization Center for Renewing America (CRA) were given at least four major appointments in the Trump administration. The first two, Russell (Russ) T. Vought for the director of the Office of Management and Budget (see GPAHE’s profile of Vought here), and Kash Patel as FBI head who formerly served as senior director of the Counterterrorism Directorate (CT) at the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) during the first Trump administration, (see GPAHE’s profile on Patel here), have been widely reported on. A longtime Republican activist with previous ties to Heritage Action, Vought previously served as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the first Trump administration, and now runs the OMB again in the second Trump administration. Vought, a core mastermind of Project 2025, is known for his explicit advocacy for a government based on Christian Nationalist values as well as expanded executive powers to “solve the woke in the weaponized bureaucracy.” Patel, Trump’s new director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), has a past indicating his support for QAnon conspiracy theories and desire to seek political retribution against opponents and the “deep state.”
A third, lesser-known appointee, was Kingsley R. Wilson, the CRA’s associate director for strategic communications and digital media, chosen to be Trump’s press secretary for the Department of Defense. She previously served as director of operations at the pro-Trump social media platform GETTR and as a senior official on Trump’s 2020 reelection team. She has a long history of making racist and antisemitic comments online, including conspiratorial posts that place doubt on the historical narrative surrounding the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was wrongly convicted of the rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl in the early 1900s. Wilson has promoted posts that support the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which argues that political elites (often portrayed as Jewish people) are purposefully “replacing” the “native” white American population with immigrants from predominantly non-white countries. She has also argued in favor of Christian Nationalism, referred to Confederate General Robert E. Lee as “one of the greatest Americans to ever live,” has posted in support of the German far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, AfD) while using the German neo-Nazi slogan “Ausländer Raus” (Foreigner Out), argued that women should not be police officers, and compared abortions to the October 8, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), another major participant in Project 2025, has ties to at least three individuals in the new administration. This includes “Border Czar” Tom Homan, responsible for “all deportation of illegal aliens back to their country of origin” according to Trump, who was previously a part of the first Trump administration and contributed to Project 2025 (see GPAHE’s profile of Homan here). Homan is the president and CEO of his border enforcement group Border 911 and has ties to the anti-immigrant legal group Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), that provide support to Trump’s harsh anti-immigrant agenda. Due to these ties, and those with other groups such as the Heritage Foundation where he was a visiting fellow from 2023 to 2024, Homan appears as the most influential individual in the entire network of pro-Trump organizations in GPAHE’s analysis, due to being one of the most well-connected individuals in the administration.
Another significant nomination from TPPF is Brooke Rollins, Trump’s nominee for the Secretary of Agriculture, who is the former president and CEO of TPPF, and President and CEO of the oft-described “White House in waiting,” America First Policy Institute (AFPI) (see GPAHE’s profile of Rollins here). During the first Trump administration, Rollins was a member of the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission. The 1776 commission was a short-lived commission (it was dismantled after Joe Biden became president) that sought to promote a “patriotic education” in U.S. schools by way of introducing an ideological, revisionist history on topics related to slavery, progressivism, and the Civil Rights Movement, and conspiratorial notions about a “deep state” in the U.S. bureaucracy. Testifying to the further influence of TPPF, Rollins’ vacant position at AFPI has since been filled by Greg Sindelar, the chief executive officer of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF).
The third former TPPF individual, Rodney Scott, was chosen to be the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a position he held during the first Trump administration and several months during the Biden administration. Like Homan, Scott was a member of the Border 911 initiative and served as a senior distinguished fellow for border security at TPPF, and is an influential node in the network of Trump administration officials.
Of all of the Project 2025-affiliated organizations that succeeded in placing principals in the new Trump administration, the Heritage Foundation came out on top. In addition to former visiting fellow Homan, who worked in the “Border Security and Immigration Center” from around March 2022 to June 2024 and Canadian Ambassador Hoekstra, at least five other Heritage principals were nominated to senior positions in the administration. There is Mark Meador, an “anti-trust expert” chosen for the position of Federal Trade Commissioner, a post he held during the first Trump administration, James Sherk, chosen to work in the White House Domestic Policy Council and on the administration’s efforts to gut the bureaucracy and fire federal employees, and Harrison Fields, a 2024 Trump surrogate chosen to work as a press secretary for Trump, a position that he held during the first administration. Fields also has experience working as a communications coordinator under the AFPI’s Pam Bondi, the current U.S. Attorney General, when she served as the Attorney General for Florida in 2018.
Other Heritage principals include Steven G. Bradbury, a longtime Republican official who more recently worked in Trump’s Department of Transportation from November 2017 until January 2021, and is returning as Deputy Secretary of Transportation. Bradbury contributed to the Project 2025 chapter on the Department of Transportation, which argues that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) should be “required to operate more like a business.” Finally, there is Sebastian Gorka, the far-right anti-Muslim activist who previously served a short stint in the first Trump administration before being forced out because of his radical views, and who has now been chosen to be deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism (see GPAHE’s profile of Gorka here). Due to his ties to the Heritage Foundation, Turning Point USA, and the Gatestone Institute, Gorka is an influential node in the network analyzed by GPAHE.
Other Project 2025 organizations with ties to the administration include the Pacific Research Institute (PRI), Claremont Institute, Hillsdale College, American Moment, and Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA). Christopher (Chris) Wright, a fossil fuel executive for Liberty Energy who sits on the board of the PRI, was nominated and confirmed to the position of Secretary of Energy. The position of the director of policy planning in the State Department was given to Michael Anton, an employee of the Claremont Institute and Hillsdale College, who previously served as a speechwriter for Republican officials and served as a national security official in the first Trump administration (see GPAHE’s profile of Anton here). Anton contributed to the chapter on the Executive Branch, which calls for centralizing authority in the presidency, and has written books and opinion pieces arguing in favor of authoritarian “Red Caesarism,” a term Anton describes as a form of “one-man rule.” He is against birthright citizenship and the “ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners” (see GPAHE’s profile of Anton here). Like Heritage’s Gonzalez, Anton is highly connected to far-right groups in both the United States and abroad, and is an influential figure in terms of his various connections in the Trump administration (see GPAHE’s reporting on these ties here and here).
The American Cornerstone Institute (ACI) gained a principal in the new administration with the nomination of Matthew Schuck, ACI’s former senior major gifts officer and a longtime communications director for a number of congressional Republicans, to be the director of communications and senior governmental affairs officer for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Schuck is listed as a contributor to Project 2025.
The CPA received a position in the new administration when CEO Michael Stumo was chosen for the position of associate director for economic policy and Buy America at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), while the organization American Moment found a tie to the administration with the election of their board member J.D. Vance as vice-president. Stephen Billy, the vice president of state affairs at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, will be returning to the Trump administration to serve as a senior advisor at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Brent Bozell, the founder and president of the Project 2025-affiliated organization Media Research Center (MRC), listed as a CNP member in the 2014 and 2020 membership lists, was nominated to be the US ambassador to South Africa in the second Trump administration.
Finally, there are the many individuals who have no formal ties to Project 2025 supporting and contributing organizations, but still contributed to the plan. These individuals include, for example, Kathleen Sgamma, the longtime president of the pro-oil Western Energy Alliance, who “wrote the section on energy in its entirety” in the chapter on the Department of the Interior and was nominated for the position of the director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). In this section of Project 2025, the authors call for efforts to revamp the production of fossil fuels and undo efforts intended to shift towards renewable energy and conservation efforts.
Other Project 2025 authors include Paul Lawrence of Lawrence Consulting, chosen to be deputy secretary of Veterans Affairs, Patomak Global Partners’ Paul Atkins, chosen to be a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Marathon Institute’s Elbridge Colby, nominated to be under secretary of defense for policy. Atkins contributed to the chapter on “Financial Regulatory Agencies,” which called for deregulation of finance capital, while Lawrence and Colby are simply listed as contributors to the document without specifically mentioning their roles.
Finally, there is Darin S. Selnick, chosen to be senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense, Troy Edgar, nominated to the position of deputy secretary of Homeland Security, and Brendan Carr who was elevated to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as its chairman. Selnick is listed as having contributed to the chapter on the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which advocates for its dismantling, Carr is listed as the author of the chapter on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), where a significant transformation of the Commission from an independent agency to one that influences public discourse is envisioned (see GPAHE’s profile of Carr here), and Edgar is simply listed as a contributor.
John Ratcliffe, a former Trump official who was nominated to be CIA director, appeared as an influential node in the network as he was listed as a contributor to Project 2025, and held previous positions at the AFPI and American Global Strategies (AGS). His AGS colleague, Brian J. Cavanaugh, who was chosen to serve as associate director for Homeland Security, is also listed as a contributor to the document. Karoline Leavitt, a former assistant press secretary during the first administration and now the current White House press secretary, appeared in an official film put out by the creators of Project 2025 on “The Art of Professionalism.”
Methodological Note: For this report, two datasets were created according to traditional network analysis conventions, one for the most Trump-aligned organizations and individuals, which includes every group but excludes ties to the Trump administration, and an “ego-centric” network, which includes a node for the Trump administration (2025-) and excludes organizations and individuals with no ties to the administration. “Influence” is calculated using eigenvector centrality measures to measure both the quantity and “quality” of their ties, which provide higher scores for both the number of edges (ties) a node has and the number of edges that a node linked to them has as well. Individuals were included in the dataset if they belonged to the senior leadership of an organization GPAHE analyzed or were on the board of directors/trustees, and any previous experience with other organizations was coded as a link as well. Due to the focus on senior leadership, and not all employees of these organizations, the estimated number of principals from these networks in the Trump administration is likely an undercount.
