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Project 2025 Is Here.
With Trump’s return to the presidency, Project 2025, a 920-page plan spearheaded by the powerful and extreme far-right Heritage Foundation, is becoming a reality. More than 100 far-right organizations support this blueprint for autocracy, which now appears to be an important source for Trump’s proposed policies, despite his repeated disavowal of Project 2025 during his campaign. Multiple nominees for the new administration have direct ties to the effort.
Project 2025’s stated goal is to create an “ideal” America that would see women, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, people of color, and others deprived of their hard-won constitutional rights and the erosion of environmental and education protections. It also advocates for a frightening centralization of power in the executive branch, something Trump is keen to achieve. Read GPAHE’s full analysis of Project 2025 and the groups behind it.
GPAHE monitors how Project 2025 is becoming a reality and reports on the ties between the project and the administration, and its impact on the American people and democracy. We track Project 2025 activities at the federal, state, and local level, and their plans for an authoritarian and Christian Nationalist America.
This week we look at how Project 2025’s criticism of the Voice of America is playing out in real life with Trump’s nomination of failed Arizona gubernatorial and senatorial candidate Kari Lake to head up the 82-year-old broadcasting network. We’ll also examine how the Heritage Foundation is attacking conservative funder Leonard Leo’s neighbors, as well as the deep ties between Vivek Ramaswamy, the Council for National Policy and Project 2025 organizations.
From Project 2025 to VOA: Inside Trump’s Broadcasting Shakeup
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the next administration, presents Voice of America as an agency in crisis. The Project’s playbook, Mandate for Leadership, claims VOA has “deteriorated under decades of poor leadership” and lost “its once-prized unbiased reporting,” particularly criticizing what it calls “flagrantly political content” in VOA’s digital presence.
The blueprint’s sharpest criticism targets VOA’s coverage of Trump’s first administration, claiming the “White House correspondent was posting content highly critical of, and personally insulting to, the U.S. President — in contradiction of VOA’s own journalistic standards.” It frames VOA’s editorial independence as a shield for anti-Trump bias, arguing officials wrongly treated critical coverage as “sacrosanct and bravely independent ‘journalistic’ content.”
Enter Kari Lake, Trump’s choice for VOA director. The former Phoenix news anchor’s rhetoric suggests she would drastically reshape the 82-year-old institution first created to counter Nazi propaganda. The VOA is a $267.5 million broadcaster that reaches 326 million people weekly. During her Arizona campaigns, Lake promised to be the media’s “worst fricking nightmare” and vowed to “reform the media” and “make you guys into journalists again.”
Lake’s campaign messaging echoes Project 2025’s complaints about media bias. In one ad, she took a sledgehammer to televisions showing mainstream anchors, claiming the media used “fear-mongering to manipulate a scared and broken population” which she called “right out of a communist playbook.”
The appointment could transform VOA from an independent broadcaster into what critics fear would be a pro-Trump megaphone. However, post-Trump reforms require multiple approvals: a Senate-confirmed U.S. Agency for Global Media CEO must first be installed, and the International Broadcasting Advisory Board must approve the VOA director.
Current VOA director Michael Abramowitz, a former Washington Post correspondent, has pledged to cooperate with the transition. But Lake’s potential appointment suggests VOA’s congressional mandate for editorial independence could face its greatest test yet under a second Trump term.
The Kingmaker Next Door
When Leonard Leo purchased his $3.3 million Tudor-style estate in Northeast Harbor, Maine, in 2018, he likely hoped to find a quiet refuge among the island’s wealthy but unpretentious year-round residents. Instead, the conservative legal strategist and power broker has faced persistent protests from neighbors who view his presence — and his attempts at local philanthropy — as emblematic of how he’s reshaped American society through massive dark money networks.
The protests have grown contentious enough that the Heritage Foundation — a major recipient of Leo’s funding — recently published a forceful defense of their benefactor. In a December 2024 commentary titled “The Uncivil Left Wrecks Domestic Civility at Home,” Heritage scholars Hans A. von Spakovsky and J. Christian Adams characterize the Northeast Harbor protesters as part of “the poisonous incivility that destroys domestic tranquility.” That Heritage would involve themselves in a dispute among neighbors seems odd at first glance, but considering the more than $50 million Leo has directed to Heritage and Project 2025 groups since 2021, protecting their golden goose becomes more understandable.
Von Spakovsky (the author of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership’s chapter on the Federal Elections Commission) and Adams (who also runs the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a Project 2025 supporting organization known for spreading misinformation about voter fraud) draw inflammatory comparisons between the peaceful protests and historical atrocities, writing that while “burning crosses were the tool to convince blacks to leave in the American South in another era,” the Northeast Harbor protesters “use puppets, cowbells, and Fat Bottomed Girls at 120 decibels.” They argue that the protesters’ desire for Leo to leave the community “comes from the same wicked place” as ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.
The hyperbolic defense underscores Leo’s importance to the conservative movement. As “Trump’s Supreme Court Whisperer,” he directed over $216 million to far-right organizations in 2022 alone through his network of nonprofits, according to tax documents. This represents a $34.1 million increase from the previous year.
Leo’s influence extends beyond just money. His ties to Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic organization known for its secretive nature and influence in right-wing politics, add another layer to his network. Leo sits on the board of directors of Washington D.C.’s Catholic Information Center, operated by Opus Dei, melding his staunch Catholicism with his work advancing conservative causes.
On Mount Desert Island, Leo has attempted to integrate into the community through substantial charitable giving. Leo and his wife have donated over $50,000 annually to the Island Housing Trust, consistently ranking among its top donors. They’ve also made regular contributions to the Island’s Northeast Harbor Library and Mount Desert Island Hospital.
But many residents view these donations with deep suspicion. “He is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” island resident Susan Covino Buell told the AP. “We can’t just act like he is a regular person in our community.” Buell resigned from the housing trust’s campaign committee when Leo got involved, citing concerns about the “tainted” nature of his money.
The pushback against Leo reflects growing scrutiny of his byzantine financial network. His nonprofits have made payments totaling at least $69.77 million since 2020 to CRC Advisors, Leo’s public relations firm. This circular payment structure prompted Washington D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb to launch an investigation in August 2023 into possible violations of nonprofit tax laws.
Leo’s rare public statements reveal the stark worldview driving his activism. At Benedictine College’s 2023 commencement ceremony, he warned graduates about “modern-day barbarians, secularists and bigots” who are “determined to threaten and delegitimize individuals and institutions who refuse to pledge fealty to the woke idols of our age.”
This combative rhetoric stands in contrast to his attempts at maintaining a low profile in Maine. When questioned about local opposition, Leo told the AP he “had never really thought about” whether his move to the island would spur resistance, adding that protesters are “people created by God with dignity and worth and their presence has been an invitation to pray for them.”
The Heritage Foundation’s aggressive defense of Leo suggests his critics have struck a nerve. As von Spakovsky and Adams write, “To the Leftists in Northeast Harbor, if you disagree with them, you should not be allowed to live in their neighborhood or attend their church.” But for Leo’s neighbors, the issue isn’t about political disagreement — it’s about the corrupting influence of dark money on American democracy, playing out in their own backyard.
“We are making people on the island aware of who he is, and they might question taking his money,” protester Mary Jane Schepers told the AP. “They are taking dirty money.” It’s a sentiment that echoes far beyond Maine’s rocky coastline, as Leo continues expanding his influence across American institutions.
Project 2025’s Deep Roots: The Ramaswamy, Trump, Council for National Policy Connection
Recently uncovered tax filings reveal a complex web of connections between Trump’s inner circle, the secretive Council for National Policy (CNP), and Project 2025, the controversial blueprint for transforming federal agencies, Accountable.us reports. At the center of this network stands Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump’s newly appointed co-director of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), who emerged as CNP’s top individual donor in 2023 with a $100,000 contribution.
The revelation gains significance as eleven current CNP board members hold influential positions in organizations serving on Project 2025’s advisory board. These connections include CNP’s top leadership:
- Vice President J. Kenneth Blackwell (senior fellow at the Family Research Council)
- Secretary Jenny Beth Martin (co-founder of Tea Party Patriots)
- Treasurer Jerry A. Johnson (former president of National Religious Broadcasters).
Additional CNP directors with Project 2025 ties include:
- William Boykin (Family Research Council executive VP)
- Michael Farris (former Alliance Defending Freedom president)
- Colby May (American Center for Law and Justice senior counsel)
- Penny Y. Nance (Concerned Women for America CEO)
- Alan Sears (Dr. James Dobson Family Institute director)
- T. Kenneth Cribb Jr. (Young America’s Foundation treasurer)
- Tony Perkins (Family Research Council president)
- William Walton (Heritage Foundation trustee)
The connections run even deeper. CNP director Edwin Meese III was a contributor to Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, while director William Walton co-authored the chapter on U.S. Treasury. In his new role at DOGE, Ramaswamy will work directly with Russ Vought, a key architect of Project 2025 and Trump’s choice for Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Their collaboration signals a potential alignment between DOGE’s initiatives and Project 2025’s vision for federal government reform.
Ramaswamy’s plans for DOGE, detailed in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed with co-director Elon Musk, mirror Project 2025’s objectives in several key areas. Both advocate for substantial reductions in the federal workforce, support reinstating Trump’s Schedule F executive order (which would make it easier to fire federal employees and install loyalists), and propose cutting funding to specific organizations like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Planned Parenthood.
During a January 2023 speech to CNP, Ramaswamy previewed themes that would later emerge in both his presidential campaign and his vision for DOGE. He called for dramatic changes to federal agencies, including controversial proposals like shutting down the FBI and “replacing it with something new.”
The extensive overlap between CNP’s leadership, Project 2025’s advisory organizations, and Trump’s recent appointments suggests that Project 2025’s influence extends far beyond its public profile. While Trump has publicly distanced himself from Project 2025, his administration’s staffing choices and policy directions increasingly align with its recommendations.
