Policy
Mandate for Leadership assembled agency-by-agency recommendations from a large conservative coalition.
Project 2025The Heritage Foundation
Flagship case file · policy + personnel + implementation · reviewed Nov. 2, 2026
Project 2025 → personnel → implementation.
What did Project 2025 actually build, which people moved through that infrastructure, and what later government actions overlap with its published recommendations?
Answer in one sentence
Project 2025 openly built a four-part transition system—policy, personnel recruitment, training and an implementation playbook—and later government personnel and policy choices show significant documented overlap; that overlap is important evidence of prepared governing capacity, but it does not prove that every administration action was caused by Project 2025.
Project design
The implementation chain was described before Election Day.
Heritage launched the 2025 Presidential Transition Project in 2022. Its published materials describe four connected pillars intended to make a future conservative administration ready to govern immediately.
Personnel
The Presidential Personnel Database collected prospective appointees so coalition members could review and recommend people to a president-elect's team.
Project 2025 Presidential Personnel Database
Training
The Presidential Administration Academy used online courses, workshops and seminars to prepare prospective appointees to operate government.
Project 2025 Presidential Administration Academy
Implementation
The 180-day playbook was described as agency-specific transition planning intended to turn policy recommendations into early action.
Project 2025 180-Day Playbook
Chronology
The project built before power changed hands.
Heritage announces the project and hires former OPM chief of staff Paul Dans to direct it, explicitly combining policy recommendations with vetted and trained personnel.
Paul DansProject 2025
Former White House Presidential Personnel Office director John McEntee joins as a senior adviser as the database begins collecting prospective appointees.
John McEnteeProject 2025 Presidential Personnel Database
Project 2025 launches on-demand training for prospective appointees, covering the federal workforce, security clearances and day-one implementation.
Project 2025 Presidential Administration Academy
Former Trump personnel official Troup Hemenway joins as a senior adviser and associate director of personnel placement; Heritage identifies him as president of Personnel Policy Operations.
Troup HemenwayPersonnel Policy Operations
Heritage says the coalition grew to 100 organizations around the shared transition project. Coalition membership establishes participation in the project, not agreement with every recommendation.
Project 2025
Project-linked figures take senior government roles, while several executive actions overlap with recommendations published in the Mandate.
Russ VoughtBrendan CarrDonald Trump
Personnel bridge
This is where advance preparation becomes governing capacity.
Documented Project 2025 personnel
Paul Dans directed the transition project after serving as OPM chief of staff in the first Trump administration.
John McEntee, former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, joined Project 2025 as the personnel database launched.
Troup Hemenway, another former Trump personnel official, joined Project 2025 in personnel placement and also led Personnel Policy Operations.
Russ Vought authored the Mandate chapter on the Executive Office of the President and later returned as OMB director.
Brendan Carr authored the FCC chapter and was designated FCC chairman in January 2025.
Paul DansJohn McEnteeTroup HemenwayRuss VoughtBrendan Carr
Implementation overlap
Compare the earlier recommendation with the later government action.
The Mandate's presidential-personnel chapter says PPO should identify workforce needs early and develop plans, giving Schedule F as an example.
Project 2025Project 2025 Presidential Personnel Database
Trump restored the policy-influencing personnel framework in January 2025; a June 2026 executive order formally implemented Schedule Policy/Career.
Schedule Policy/CareerDonald Trump
The Mandate's OMB chapter recommended requiring OIRA review for regulatory actions of historically independent agencies.
Project 2025
A February 2025 executive order required independent agencies to submit draft regulations for White House review and consult with the White House on priorities and strategic plans.
Independent-agency White House review (2025)Donald Trump
Brendan Carr wrote Project 2025's FCC chapter and was later designated chairman of the FCC. That is a direct personnel overlap; each later FCC action still requires its own evidence before being attributed to Project 2025.
Brendan CarrFederal Communications Commission
When a movement enters government with prewritten policy, a pool of prospective appointees, training, and agency transition planning, it can act faster than one assembling those systems after Election Day.
Important distinction
A matching recommendation and later government action establish policy overlap. They do not, by themselves, establish who drafted the final order, who persuaded the president, or whether the administration would have adopted the policy without Project 2025.
The nonpublic fourth pillar
The public can compare the Mandate. It cannot fully compare the playbook.
What is documented
Heritage publicly described a 180-day transition playbook as the fourth Project 2025 pillar and said it would turn policy ideas into agency implementation plans.
Congressional hearing material in 2026 records that the playbooks had not been made public, limiting independent comparison between those internal transition plans and later executive actions.
Project 2025 180-Day Playbook
Limits and competing explanations
What this case does not establish.
One-to-one authorship
The evidence does not show that Project 2025 authored every executive order or agency action that resembles one of its recommendations.
Every hire came from the database
No complete public placement list shows which administration officials, if any, were recruited directly through the Project 2025 database.
Project and campaign were formally separate
During the 2024 campaign, Trump and his campaign publicly distanced themselves from Project 2025. Later overlap does not erase that documented political separation.
The playbook is not public
The nonpublic 180-day playbooks prevent complete outside auditing of the implementation pillar.
Receipt ledger
The core claims are checkable.
| Claim | Status | Receipt |
|---|---|---|
| Heritage launched Project 2025 in 2022 to combine conservative policy recommendations with vetted and trained personnel. | Documented | Heritage launch ↗ |
| The project publicly described four pillars: policy, personnel, training and a 180-day playbook. | Documented | Heritage four pillars ↗ |
| The Academy trained prospective appointees for day-one government operations. | Documented | Academy launch ↗ |
| The Mandate described PPO as a personnel link between conservative organizations and the executive branch and referenced Schedule F planning. | Documented | Mandate for Leadership ↗ |
| The Mandate recommended OIRA review for historically independent agencies. | Documented | Mandate, OMB chapter ↗ |
| Trump's 2025 order required independent agencies to submit draft regulations for White House review. | Documented | White House order ↗ |
| Schedule Policy/Career was formally implemented by executive order in June 2026. | Documented | White House order ↗ |
| Brendan Carr authored the Project 2025 FCC chapter and was later designated FCC chairman. | Documented | White House designation ↗ |
Why this case matters
It makes the governing pipeline visible.
Project 2025 is unusually revealing because the transition mechanism was described in advance: write policy, recruit people, train them, and prepare implementation plans. The important research question is not whether the project was secretly real. It plainly was. The harder question is which later appointments and actions can be tied to it with evidence—and which cannot.
Continue
Follow the infrastructure around it.
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