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Credit:
Illustration by ProPublica. Source images: Project 2025 training
videos obtained by ProPublica and Documented, and The7Dew/Getty Images.
Inside Project 2025’s Secret Training Videos
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Reporting Highlights
- Deep State Battle:
Project 2025’s plan to train an army of political appointees who could
fight the so-called deep state on behalf of a future Trump
administration remains on track.
- New Videos:
Dozens of never-before-published videos created for Project 2025 were
provided to ProPublica and Documented by a person who had access to
them.
- Advice Given:
“If the American people elect a conservative president, his
administration will have to eradicate climate change references from
absolutely everywhere.”
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
Project 2025, the
controversial playbook and policy agenda for a right-wing presidential
administration, has lost its director and faced scathing criticism from
both Democratic groups and former President Donald Trump. But Project
2025’s plan to train an army of political appointees who could battle
against the so-called deep state government bureaucracy on behalf of a
future Trump administration remains on track.
One centerpiece of that
program is dozens of never-before-published videos created for Project
2025’s Presidential Administration Academy. The vast majority of these
videos — 23 in all, totaling more than 14 hours of content — were provided to ProPublica and Documented by a person who had access to them.
The Project 2025 videos
coach future appointees on everything from the nuts and bolts of
governing to how to outwit bureaucrats. There are strategies for
avoiding embarrassing Freedom of Information Act disclosures and
ensuring that conservative policies aren’t struck down by “left-wing
judges.” Some of the content is routine advice that any incoming
political appointee might be told. Other segments of the training offer
guidance on radically changing how the federal government works and what
it does.
In one video, Bethany
Kozma, a conservative activist and former deputy chief of staff at the
U.S. Agency for International Development in the Trump administration,
downplays the seriousness of climate change and says the movement to
combat it is really part of a ploy to “control people.”
“If the American people
elect a conservative president, his administration will have to
eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere,” Kozma
says.
In the same video, Kozma
calls the idea of gender fluidity “evil.” Another speaker, Katie
Sullivan, who was an acting assistant attorney general at the Department
of Justice under Trump, takes aim at executive actions by the
administration of President Joe Biden that created gender adviser
positions throughout the federal government. The goal, Biden wrote in
one order, was to “advance equal rights and opportunities, regardless of
gender or gender identity.”
Sullivan says, “That
position has to be eradicated, as well as all the task forces, the
removal of all the equity plans from all the websites, and a complete
rework of the language in internal and external policy documents and
grant applications.”
Trump has tried to
distance himself from Project 2025, falsely saying that he knew nothing
about it and had “no idea who is behind it.” In fact, he flew on a private jet with Kevin Roberts,
president of the Heritage Foundation, which leads Project 2025. And in a
2022 speech at a Heritage Foundation event, Trump said, “This is a
great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for
exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when
the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”
A review of the training
videos shows that 29 of the 36 speakers have worked for Trump in some
capacity — on his 2016-17 transition team, in the administration or on
his 2024 reelection campaign. The videos appear to have been recorded
before the resignation two weeks ago of Paul Dans, the leader of the 2025 project, and they are referenced on the project’s website. The Heritage Foundation said in a statement
at the time of Dans’ resignation that it would end Project 2025’s
policy-related work, but that its “collective efforts to build a
personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels — federal, state, and
local — will continue.”
The Heritage Foundation
and most of the people who appear in the videos cited in this story did
not respond to ProPublica’s repeated requests for comment. Karoline
Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign who features in one of
the videos, said, “As our campaign leadership and President Trump have
repeatedly stated, Agenda 47 is the only official policy agenda from our campaign.”
Project 2025’s 887-page “Mandate for Leadership” document lays out
a vast array of policy and governance proposals, including eliminating
the Department of Education, slashing Medicaid, reclassifying tens of
thousands of career civil servants so they could be more easily fired
and replaced, giving the president greater power to control the DOJ and
further restricting abortion access.
Democrats and liberal
groups have criticized the project’s policy agenda as “extreme” and
“authoritarian” while pointing out the many connections between Trump
and the hundreds of people who contributed to the project.
“Trump’s attempts to
distance himself from Project 2025 have always been disingenuous,” said
Noah Bookbinder, president of the watchdog group Citizens for
Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “The discovery that the vast
majority of speakers in Project 2025 training videos are alumni of the
Trump administration or have other close ties to Trump’s political
operation is unsurprising further evidence of the close connection
there.”
Several speakers in the
videos acknowledge that the Trump administration was slowed by staffing
challenges and the inexperience of its political appointees, and they
offer lessons learned from their stumbles. Some of the advice appears at
odds with conservative dogma, including a suggestion that the next
administration may need to expand key government agencies to achieve the
larger goal of slashing federal regulations.
Rick Dearborn, who helped
lead Trump’s 2016 transition team and later served in the Trump White
House as deputy chief of staff, recalled in one video how “tough” it was
to find people to fill all of the key positions in the early days of
the administration.
The personnel part of
Project 2025 is “so important to the next president,” Dearborn says.
“Establishing all of this, providing the expertise, looking at a
database of folks that can be part of the administration, talking to you
like we are right now about what is a transition about, why do I want
to be engaged in it, what would my role be — that’s a luxury that we
didn’t have,” referring to a database of potential political appointees.
Dan Huff, a former legal
adviser in the White House Presidential Personnel Office under Trump,
says in another video that future appointees should be prepared to enact
significant changes in American government and be ready to face
blowback when they do.
“If you’re not on board
with helping implement a dramatic course correction because you’re
afraid it’ll damage your future employment prospects, it’ll harm you
socially — look, I get it,” Huff says. “That’s a real danger. It’s a
real thing. But please: Do us all a favor and sit this one out.”
Credit:
Obtained by ProPublica and Documented
“Eradicate Climate Change References”
The project’s experts
outline regulatory and policy changes that future political appointees
should prepare for in a Republican administration.
One video, titled “Hidden
Meanings: The Monsters in the Attic,” is a 50-minute discussion of
supposed left-wing code words and biased language that future appointees
should be aware of and root out. In that video, Kozma says that U.S.
intelligence agencies have named climate change as an increasingly dire threat to global stability, which, she says, illustrates how the issue “has infiltrated every part of the federal government.”
Credit:
Obtained by ProPublica and Documented
She then tells viewers
that she sees climate change as merely a cover to engage in population
control. “I think about the people who don’t want you to have children
because of the” — here she makes air-quotes — “impact on the
environment.” She adds, “This is part of their ultimate goal to control
people.”
Later in the video, Katie
Sullivan, the former acting assistant attorney general under Trump,
advocates for removing so-called critical race theory from public
education without saying how the federal government would accomplish
that. (Elementary and secondary education curricula are typically set at
the state and local level, not by the federal government.)
“The noxious tenets of
critical race theory and gender ideology should be excised from
curriculum in every single public school in this country,” Sullivan
says. (Reached by phone, Sullivan told ProPublica to contact her press
representative and hung up. A representative did not respond.)
Credit:
Obtained by ProPublica and Documented
In a different video,
David Burton, an economic policy expert at the Heritage Foundation,
discusses the importance of an obscure yet influential agency called the
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The Trump administration used OIRA to help roll back regulations on economic, fiscal and environmental issues. Under Biden, OIRA took a more aggressive stance in helping review and shape new regulations,
which included efforts to combat housing discrimination, ban the sale
of so-called ghost guns and set new renewable fuel targets.
Burton, in the Project
2025 video, urges future political appointees to work in OIRA and argues
that the office should “increase its staffing levels considerably” in
service of the conservative goal of reining in the so-called
administrative state, namely the federal agencies that craft and issue
new regulations.
“Fifty people are not
enough to adequately police the regulatory actions of the entire federal
government,” Burton says. “OIRA is one of the few government agencies
that limits the regulatory ambitions of other agencies.” (Burton
confirmed in a brief interview that he appeared in the video and
endorsed expanding OIRA’s staffing levels.)
Credit:
Obtained by ProPublica and Documented
Expanding the federal
workforce — even an office tasked with scrutinizing regulations — would
seem to cut against the conservative movement’s long-standing goal of
shrinking government. For anyone confused by Project 2025’s insistence
that a conservative president should fill all appointee slots and
potentially grow certain functions, Spencer Chretien, a former Trump
White House aide who is now Project 2025’s associate director, addresses
the tension in one video.
“Some on the right even
say that we, because we believe in small government, should just lead by
example and not fill certain political positions,” Chretien says. “I
suggest that it would be almost impossible to bring any conservative
change to America if the president did that.”
A Trump Government-in-Waiting
The speakers in the
Project 2025 videos are careful not to explicitly side with Trump or
talk about what a future Trump administration might do. They instead
refer to a future “conservative president” or “conservative
administration.”
But the links between the
speakers in the videos and Trump are many. Most of those served Trump
during his administration, working at the White House, the National
Security Council, NASA, the Office of Management and Budget, USAID and
the departments of Justice, Interior, State, Homeland Security,
Transportation and Health and Human Services. Another speaker has worked
in the Senate office of J.D. Vance, Trump’s 2024 running mate.
Sullivan, the former DOJ acting assistant attorney general in charge of the department’s Office of Justice Programs, which oversees billions
in grant funding, appears in three different videos. Leavitt, who is in
a training video titled “The Art of Professionalism,” worked in the
White House press office during Trump’s first presidency and is now the
national press secretary for his reelection campaign.
A consistent theme in the
advice and testimonials offered by these Trump alums is that Project
2025 trainees should expect a hostile reception if they go to work in
the federal government. Kozma, the former USAID deputy chief of staff,
says in one video that “many” of her fellow Trump appointees experienced
“persecution” during their time in government.
In a video titled “The
Political Appointee’s Survival Guide,” Max Primorac, a former deputy
administrator at USAID during the Trump administration, warns viewers
that Washington is a place that “does not share your conservative
values,” and that new hires will find that “there’s so much hostility to
basic traditional values.”
Credit:
Obtained by ProPublica and Documented
In the same video, Kristen
Eichamer, a former deputy press secretary at the Trump-era NASA, says
that the media pushed false narratives about then-President Trump and
people who worked in his administration. “Being defamed on Twitter is
almost a badge of honor in the Trump administration,” she says.
Outthinking “the Left”
The videos also offer less
overtly political tutorials for future appointees, covering everything
from how a regulation gets made to working with the media, the mechanics
of a presidential transition process to obtaining a security clearance,
and best practices for time management.
One recurring theme in the
videos is how the next Republican administration can avoid the mistakes
of the first Trump presidency. In one video, Roger Severino, the former
director of the Office of Civil Rights in the Trump-era Department of
Health and Human Services, explains that failure to meticulously follow
federal procedure led to courts delaying or throwing out certain
regulatory efforts on technical grounds.
Severino, who is also a longtime leader in the anti-abortion movement,
goes on to walk viewers through the ins and outs of procedural law and
says that they should prepare for “the left” to use every tool possible
to derail the next conservative president. “This is a game of 3D chess,”
Severino says. “You have to be always anticipating what the left is
going to do to try to throw sand in the gears and trip you up and block
your rule.” (In an email, Severino said he would forward ProPublica’s
interview request to Heritage’s spokespeople, who did not respond.)
Operating under the
assumption that some career employees might seek to thwart a future
conservative president’s agenda, some of the advice pertains to how
political appointees can avoid being derailed or bogged down by the
government bureaucrats who work with them.
Sullivan urges viewers to
“empower your political staff,” limit access to appointees’ calendars
and leave out career staff from early meetings with more senior agency
officials. “You are making it clear to career staff that your political
appointees are in charge,” Sullivan says.
Other tips from the videos
include scrubbing personal social media accounts of any content that’s
“damaging, vulgar or contradict the policies you are there to implement”
well before the new administration begins, as Kozma put it.
Alexei Woltornist, a
former assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of
Homeland Security, encourages future appointees to bypass mainstream
news outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post. Instead,
they should focus on conservative media outlets because those are the
only outlets conservative voters trust.
“The American people who
vote for a conservative presidential administration, they’re not reading
The New York Times, they’re not reading The Washington Post,”
Woltornist says. “To the contrary, if those outlets publish something,
they’re going to assume it’s false. So the only way to reach them with
any voice of credibility is through working with conservative media
outlets.”
Credit:
Obtained by ProPublica and Documented
And in a video about
oversight and investigations, a group of conservative investigators
advise future appointees on how to avoid creating a paper trail of
sensitive communications that could be obtained by congressional
committees or outside groups under the Freedom of Information Act.
“If you need to resolve
something, if you can do it, it’s probably better to walk down the hall,
buttonhole a guy and say, ‘Hey, what are we going to do here?’ Talk
through the decision,” says Tom Jones, a former Senate investigator who
now runs the American Accountability Foundation.
Credit:
Obtained by ProPublica and Documented
Jones adds that it’s
possible that agency lawyers could cite exemptions in the public-records
law to prevent the release of certain documents. But appointees are
best served, he argues, if they don’t put important communications in
writing in the first place.
“You’re probably better
off,” Jones says, “going down to the canteen, getting a cup of coffee,
talking it through and making the decision, as opposed to sending him an
email and creating a thread that Accountable.US or one of those other
groups is going to come back and seek.”
Watch: 14 Hours of Never-Before-Published Videos From Project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy
Do you have any information about Project 2025 that we should know? Andy Kroll can be reached by email at andy.kroll@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 202-215-6203.
Videos prepared by Lisa Riordan Seville and Chris Morran. Mariam Elba contributed research.