Confusion, frustration: Inside Trump team’s preparation for second term
The swift backlash to Project 2025 has left hundreds of conservative policy wonks on the sidelines as the election nears.
As Donald Trump’s allies began staffing up the transition team that will lay the groundwork for his potential second term, they drew a line in the sand.
Anyone associated with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which Trump and his advisers denounced after it became a political target for Democrats, would be barred from working on the team.
Transition staff used “Control+F,” a keyboard shortcut, to search through Project 2025’s 900-plus-page policy blueprint for the names of potential hires.
Even a brief mention of a name in an author’s note at the end of a chapter was enough to prevent that person from getting a job on the team. In several cases in recent weeks, informal discussions about working on the team came to an abrupt halt after a name was spotted in the document, according to people familiar with the matter.
The swift backlash to Project 2025 has left hundreds of conservative policy wonks on the sidelines as the election nears – and paved the way for the project’s biggest competitor, a non-profit run by former Trump administration officials, to play a formative role in the official presidential transition operation that launched late this summer.
The establishment of the transition team, which is meant to operate as a clearinghouse for Trump’s policy plans and personnel picks, hasn’t stopped outside groups and Trump associates from jockeying for influence, prompting confusion and frustration from some of the former president’s allies.
Trump’s friends regularly approach him directly with suggestions about who he should pick for top jobs if he wins, bypassing the transition team entirely. Several Trump economic advisers are developing their own lists of candidates for jobs such as Treasury secretary, people familiar with the discussions said.
The number of groups and people that purport to be preparing for a potential second Trump term has left some prospective staffers unsure about where to turn. One former Trump campaign official has been fielding calls from former aides and others interested in a government job asking whom they should prioritise contacting.
What’s more, Trump’s transition team began its work months later than his 2016 transition team did, prompting some of the president’s allies and good-government groups to raise concerns about how well-prepared Trump will be to take office should he defeat Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump’s 2016 transition team was plagued by disorganisation, firings and backbiting.
“We’re all wondering if it’s going to be 2016 all over again,” said a person working on Trump’s transition team. A spokesperson for the transition didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Top officials at the America First Policy Institute, which had competed with Project 2025 for influence and donor cash, are hoping things will be different this time.
The chairwoman of the group’s board, former Small Business Administration chief Linda McMahon, is now a co-chair of Trump’s transition team, allowing her to tap the policy expertise AFPI has been quietly amassing for years.
Several Republicans have described AFPI as the shadow transition operation, and McMahon has brought on AFPI staff to fill roles for the official transition. The group’s president, Brooke Rollins, a former Trump administration policy adviser, is widely seen as a leading contender for White House chief of staff if Trump wins the election.
For more than a year, the group has been churning out policy papers and building lists of potential political appointees, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
“The America First Policy Institute does not speak on behalf of any candidate, campaign or transition,” AFPI spokesman Marc Lotter said, describing the group as an independent policy organisation.
According to people familiar with the plans, Trump’s allies have drafted more than 300 executive orders in line with Trump’s policy views that will be ready for him to approve as soon as the first day of his presidency. Among them are orders to eliminate programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as to crack down on illegal border crossings and withdraw from the Paris climate accord.
In recent months, several Trump-supporting outside groups have held secretive planning sessions to discuss issues the former president might face in a second term. Participants included potential nominees for top jobs in a Trump administration, according to people briefed on the meetings. Those who attended signed nondisclosure agreements, those people said.
Staffers working on Trump’s formal transition team – as well as people who are being vetted for top jobs in the administration – have also been instructed to sign nondisclosure agreements, a practice that the former president used liberally during his time in the White House and earlier in his career.
Trump’s allies hope the agreements, which threaten legal consequences for the unauthorised disclosure of information, will help stem the flurry of leaks that infuriated him during his 2016 presidential campaign and while he was in office.
In addition to McMahon, the transition is overseen by Howard Lutnick, the billionaire chairman and chief executive of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald. Trump also named as transition co-chairs Sen. JD Vance, his running mate, and his two adult sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. But Lutnick and McMahon are taking the lead at this stage of the election, with Vance and Trump’s sons focused more on campaigning. McMahon is working on policy issues and Lutnick is focusing on personnel.
So far, Trump’s team has declined to sign agreements with the Biden administration that would give his transition team access to government office space and pave the way for co-ordination with White House and agency officials if Trump wins the election.
Without those agreements, Trump’s transition team can’t take advantage of the government’s cybersecurity protections.
The former president’s campaign has faced serious cyber breaches, and the Justice Department this past month charged three Iranian operatives suspected of hacking Trump’s campaign and disseminating stolen information to the media.
“No one is immune from cyberattacks, but government assets have better protections than pretty much anything out there,” said Max Stier, the president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that has advised past transition teams.
As part of any agreement with the government, Trump’s transition team would be required to consent to ethics rules, disclose its donors and limit contributions to $US5000. Since it is currently run outside of government channels, Trump’s team isn’t obligated to adhere to those restrictions. Harris’s transition team, in contrast, has signed agreements with the federal government and accepted limits on donors and ethics rules.
McMahon and Lutnick have said they are still engaged in negotiations with the government, and they have imposed their own ethics rules on transition staff.
One person familiar with the operation said several dozen people are working for the team, many of whom are doing so in a volunteer capacity, but the details of the plans for personnel and federal agencies are being closely held.
Recently, a form has been circulating around Trump’s campaign office asking aides what jobs they would want in a second term, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Not every department has received the form, raising fears among some aides that they are being left out.
Several Trump allies said they think it will be largely impossible to keep every Project 2025-linked Republican from serving in a second Trump term or even from working on the transition, which is expected to balloon in size after the election, if Trump wins.
Harris’s transition team so far appears to be smaller than Trump’s. Hers is being led by Yohannes Abraham, a former diplomat and national security official who served as executive director of Biden’s 2020 transition team.
Other senior staff include Dana Remus, Biden’s former White House counsel, and Josh Hsu, the former top lawyer in Harris’s vice presidential office. Harris’s transition staff have also signed nondisclosure agreements, people familiar with the matter said.
Trump, for his part, has paid little attention to his transition team’s work, according to his advisers. Superstitious by nature, he prefers to focus on the campaign, people who know him said.
– Emily Glazer contributed to this article.
Dow Jones Newswires
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