Friday, April 28, 2023

Heritage Foundation Making Plans to Staff a Republican Administration in 2025

The Heritage Foundation continues to make plans to staff a potential Republican administration in 2025. 

Here is more from the New York Times:

Think of it as a right-wing LinkedIn. This so-called Project 2025 — part of a $22 million presidential transition operation at a scale never attempted before in conservative politics — is being led by the Heritage Foundation, a group that has been staffing Republican administrations since the Reagan era.

Heritage usually compiles its own personnel lists, and spends far less doing so. But for this election, after conservatives and Mr. Trump himself decried what they viewed as terrible staffing decisions made during his administration, more than 50 conservative groups have temporarily set aside rivalries to team up with Heritage on the project, set to start Friday.

They have already identified several thousand potential recruits and have set a goal of having up to 20,000 potential administration officials in their database by the end of 2024, according to Kevin Roberts, the president of Heritage. Heritage has contracted the technology company Oracle to build a secure personnel database, Dr. Roberts said.

The key people involved with the Heritage-led database served in the former president’s administration. They include James Bacon, a Trump loyalist who worked in the White House Office of Presidential Personnel under one of Mr. Trump’s most trusted aides, John McEntee. In the final year of the Trump administration, Mr. Bacon helped Mr. McEntee overhaul the government’s hiring process. They developed a questionnaire to vet government employees’ loyalty to Mr. Trump and his “America First” agenda.

 

The newspaper says that the Heritage Foundation and its partners have already briefed former President Donald Trump as well as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other potential 2024 Republican presidential candidates on their efforts.

It also notes that the Dennis Kirk, a former Trump Administration lawyer who was involved with the adoption of "Schedule F," a plan that would give the president the power to terminate and replace as many as 50,000 career government officials who served in roles that influenced federal policies, is now employed at Heritage and working on Project 2025.

Here is more from Government Executive.

Update: Mr. John McEntee, who was director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office in the Trump Administration, has joined the Heritage Foundation's 2025 Presidential Transition Project as a senior adviser.