Trump Is Done Pretending He Knows Nothing About Project 2025

Donald Trump has nominated a Christian nationalist with ties to Project 2025 to lead the Office of Management and Budget. CBS News reported Wednesday that Trump has chosen Russ Vought to lead the office for a second time. During Trump’s first term, Vought also served as OMB director. Since then, Vought was part of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 team, writing a chapter about the “Executive Office of the President.”

It’s yet another reminder that Trump is extensively involved with the conservative manifesto, despite his repeated denials during the 2024 campaign. Vought bragged on camera to two undercover climate journalists over the summer about his ties to Trump and his love of “Christian nation-ism.”

Vought told the journalists that his organization, the Center for Renewing America, was already drafting executive orders and policy memos for Trump to use immediately after taking office, making the wild claim that the group planned to to create “shadow” agencies to solidify the “Judeo-Christian worldview value system.”

If Vought is confirmed, he’ll be tasked with putting together the president’s proposed government budget, giving him extensive influence to carry out his far-right agenda. Vought was rumored to be considered for a Cabinet position, having already gone through the Trump team’s (very flawed) vetting system. His appointment follows fellow Project 2025 alumnus Brandon Carr’s nomination as chair of the Federal Communications Commission.

The Project 2025 manifesto was frequently attacked by Democrats and other Trump opponents during the 2024 campaign, leading to Trump saying he had nothing to do with it. But Carr’s and Vought’s appointments, plus Trump’s plans to copy many of Project 2025’s proposals, suggest these denials were just for show.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are making it abundantly clear they will stop at nothing to slash the federal budget, even if it means weaponizing the Supreme Court in order to do so.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Wednesday, the nominated co-chairs of the soon-to-be Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) outlined how they intend to downsize the government, as well as the resources it provides. They want to go after the Impoundment Control Act, a law passed in 1974 that served to limit the executive branch’s control over expenditures authorized by Congress.

“Mr. Trump has previously suggested this statute is unconstitutional, and we believe the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this question,” Ramaswamy and Musk wrote.

Per the pair’s vision, their intended sweeping budget reform will largely come by way of executive action, working “closely” with the White House Office of Management and Budget. They believe the large-scale reforms are possible thanks to two recent Supreme Court decisions: West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022) and Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024).

The first case ruled that federal agencies couldn’t impose regulations that would have severe economic effects without the permission of Congress, while Loper Bright overturned a landmark 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, ceasing a mandate that federal courts defer to executive branch agencies’ interpretation of the laws they administer.

If you’re looking for specifics, the billionaires have a couple of immediate targets: They intend to slash more than $500 million a year from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which funds NPR and PBS), nearly $300 million from Planned Parenthood, and “$1.5 billion for grants to international organizations.” They also suggest, in vague terms, that “entitlement programs” such as Medicare and Medicaid are on the line, though they refuse to acknowledge how much they intend to burn from the critical health care programs.

The changes will come fast and hard, according to Ramaswamy and Musk, who believe that they will be able to accomplish their goals of shrinking the federal deficit and slashing $2 trillion in spending by July 4, 2026—the nation’s 250th birthday.

“With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government,” the duo wrote. “We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington. We expect to prevail.”

The House Ethics Committee did not agree Wednesday whether to release its report on former Representative Matt Gaetz.

Committee Chairman Representative Michael Guest said that they had not decided to release the report, according to NOTUS’s Reese Gorman.

“Guest would not say whether or not the committee took a vote on releasing the report just that there was not an agreement by the committee on whether or not to release it,” Gorman posted on X.

The committee was set to vote on whether it would release a report on its yearslong investigation into Gaetz over alleged sexual misconduct, including alleged sexual misconduct with a minor, among a slew of other potential violations. After the meeting adjourned Wednesday afternoon, Punchbowl News’s John Bresnahan and Melanie Zanona reported that there had been several votes on releasing the report, but committee members had been deadlocked along partisan lines. As the report is not yet complete, the committee voted that it be finished and scheduled another vote in December on whether to release it.

Illinois Democrat Sean Casten pledged earlier Wednesday that if the House Ethics Committee failed to vote for the release of the report, he would force a vote on the House floor, according to Politico.

“The allegations against Matt Gaetz are serious. They are credible. The House Ethics Committee has spent years conducting a thorough investigation to get to the bottom of it,” Casten said in a statement. “This information must be made available for the Senate to provide its constitutionally required advice and consent.”

Over the course of the last week, a slew of new information about the committee investigation had already come out. Two women testified before the committee alleging that Gaetz had paid them for sex, and one testified that he’d also had sex with her underage friend. ABC reported Wednesday that the House Ethics Committee reportedly holds records of Gaetz paying those two women more than $10,000 between July 2017 and January 2019.

There is some hope that the contents of the report, even those details that have already been publicly reported, might tank Gaetz’s nomination to be attorney general. However, it seems that allegations of sexual misconduct, even statutory rape, are no longer disqualifying for the potential head of the Justice Department.

“I just don’t think you can deal with allegations in the past as though they’re fact,” North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer told Politico. He added that Gaetz, and Trump’s other Senate nominees facing allegations of sexual misconduct, haven’t been convicted of anything.

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump’s lame obsession with Elon Musk is actually helping Senate Democrats get stuff done.

As the current Senate majority races to approve all of President Joe Biden’s pending judicial nominations during what remains of the lame-duck session, five GOP senators missed confirmation votes on Tuesday—including Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty who had been invited to watch a SpaceX starship launch with Trump in Texas.

Even though he’d so obviously gotten in his own way, Trump jumped on Truth Social Tuesday to demand that more senators show up to “hold the line” against Biden’s judicial nominees.

Tensions among Senate Republicans have been at an all-time high as they find themselves momentarily helpless against the Democrats’ lame-duck blitz. Without a majority, playing a numbers game on who shows up is their only hope. Cruz, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and Ohio Senator JD Vance were among the several Republicans who missed Senate votes that stretched late into Monday evening.

“I’m a bit frustrated,” West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito told reporters Tuesday. “After last night’s voting extravaganza, I wonder what we are doing.”

“If we don’t show up, we lose,” said North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis at a GOP policy luncheon Tuesday. “I don’t care what the reasons were. We have fewer than 15 scheduled legislative days. You have to show up. Period. End of story. There’s nothing more important.”

After the luncheon, North Dakota Senator John Hoeven stressed that it was important that as many Republicans as possible were present for these votes. “Because, you know, we could win possibly some of those votes if we have all our folks here. Particularly in the circuit court,” he said.

Not everyone is open to that kind of criticism. When a right-wing pundit tried to call out Vance for missing the votes Tuesday, he had a complete meltdown, claiming he was way too busy to bother showing up and that it wouldn’t make a difference if he did. Within an hour, he had deleted the temper tantrum, as it was explicitly at odds with what Trump had demanded.

Vance has since returned to Capitol Hill to drum up support for Trump’s unfavorable Cabinet nominees Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth, who are both facing allegations of sexual misconduct. Cruz, however, has remained MIA. He and Indiana Senator Mike Braun were the only two Republican senators absent Wednesday, while their Democratic colleagues confirmed two more judges on Wednesday by 50–48. So it’s plausible that if Cruz and Braun had actually been in attendance, they might’ve been able to block those confirmations, seeing as Vice President Kamala Harris is on vacation and not available to break a tie.

There are currently 45 judicial vacancies and 17 pending nominees.

JD Vance arrived on Capitol Hill Wednesday with the bleak task of drumming up support for Trump’s would-be attorney general, Matt Gaetz.

“Donald J. Trump just won a major electoral victory. His coattails turned a 49-51 senate to a 53-47 senate,” the vice president–elect wrote on X. “He deserves a cabinet that is loyal to the agenda he was elected to implement.”

Trump has now named multiple people accused of sexual misconduct or consciously allowing sexual misconduct to his future Cabinet. Gaetz, a former Florida representative and MAGA hard-liner, has been the subject of ongoing investigations from the House Ethics Committee and the Justice Department regarding allegations of sex trafficking and having sex with a minor at a sex party in 2017. Gaetz attempted to end the probe by resigning from Congress last week just before the House Ethics Committee was set to release its finding. Many people now want that report released, and Senate Democrats on Wednesday requested records from the FBI’s own Gaetz investigation so that these could be considered during confirmation hearings if need be.

“This is what the Radical Left Lunatics do to people. They dirty them up, they destroy them, and then they spit them out,” Trump wrote Wednesday on Truth Social. “They are trying that right now with some great American Patriots who are only trying to fix the mess that the Democrats have made of our Country. WE WILL WIN!!! MAGA.”

This defense comes as evidence continues to mount against Gaetz. ABC News is reporting that the House Ethics Committee has documents that show Gaetz paying over $10,000 to two women between July 2017 and January 2019—women who later served as witnesses in the House and Justice Department probes against Gaetz.

The House Ethics Committee is spending Wednesday debating and voting on whether or not to release the report.

Donald Trump’s plan for using the military to carry out mass deportations is already drawing opposition from the Pentagon and even from at least one Republican senator. Several officials in the Department of Defense spoke to The Intercept anonymously, with one calling Trump’s proposal “absolutely insane.”

“I never thought I’d see the day when this was a ‘serious’—put that in scare quotes—policy,” the official said, adding that there were significant logistical and legal obstacles to the “unrealistic and unserious” plan. Another official called the idea “insanity.”

Senator Rand Paul told Newsmax Tuesday that such a military deployment would be a “huge mistake.”

“I’m not in favor of sending the Army in uniforms into our cities to collect people,” Paul said in a possible nod to his libertarian roots. “I think it’s a terrible image, and that’s not what we use our military for, we never have, and it’s actually been illegal for over 100 years to bring the Army into our cities.” (The Brennan Center for Justice recently published a recap of the legal problems with what Trump is proposing.)

Paul stressed that he wasn’t opposed to mass deportations but believed they should be carried out by government agencies or local law enforcement instead of the military. “I will not support an emergency [declaration] to put the Army into our cities—I think that’s a huge mistake,” Paul said, later adding that “I really think us, as conservatives who are supportive of Trump, need to caution him about sending the Army into our cities.”

Trump’s plan involves declaring a national emergency to use members of the military to carry out his ruthless deportation effort, unprecedented in its scale. Some of his senior advisers, such as Stephen Miller, have said that even some immigrants in the country legally, such as those under DACA and temporary protected status, would also be deported.

Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” has proposed that immigrants get a “grace period” in which they can self-deport, but still expects military support. At the very least, it seems that Trump is going to get significant pushback from military and defense circles. He may also encounter some resistance from fellow Republicans—although his critics there have a tendency to fall in line sooner or later.

House Speaker Mike Johnson believes in equality and justice for all—but that purported belief is seemingly not getting in the way of an effort to ban Representative-elect Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender person to be elected to Congress, from using the bathroom that aligns with her gender.

“We welcome all members with open arms who are newly elected representatives of the people. I believe it’s a—it’s a command. We treat all persons with dignity and respect,” Johnson said at a press conference Tuesday.

“And I’m not going to engage in silly debates about this,” the speaker continued. “There’s a concern about the uses of restroom facilities and locker rooms and all that. This is an issue that Congress has never had to address before. We’re going to do that in a deliberate fashion with members’ consensus on it, and we will accommodate the needs of every single person.”

On Tuesday, South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace introduced a resolution that would formally ban trans women from using the restroom that corresponds with their gender identity in the U.S. Capitol. The attention-seeking South Carolina representative openly acknowledged that the stunt was a direct attack on McBride—again, who will be the lone transgender elected official in Congress—telling reporters on Monday that it was “that and more.”

“Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say. I mean, this is a biological man,” Mace said, adding that the newly elected Delaware congresswoman “does not belong in women’s spaces, women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, period, full stop.”

In another interview, Mace claimed that the mere thought of a trans woman walking into a women’s locker room “feels like assault.”

Johnson is reportedly looking for a way to enforce the legislation, though one unidentified member told CNN that the caucus is “having trouble with how you legislate” such a ban. In the same presser on Tuesday, Johnson clarified his belief that “man is a man and a woman is a woman,” citing the Bible as the foundation for his reasoning.

McBride had her own response to the resolution, describing it in a statement as a “blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing.

“We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars,” McBride said. “Delawareans sent me here to make the American dream more affordable and accessible and that’s what I’m focused on.”

Lindsey Graham is trying to rally support among his fellow Senate Republicans for Donald Trump’s attorney general nominee, Matt Gaetz.

The South Carolina senator said in a statement Wednesday that he had “a very good meeting” with Gaetz and Vice President–elect JD Vance, adding that he didn’t want Gaetz’s nomination process “turning into an angry mob, and unverified allegations are being treated as if they are true.

“I would urge all of my Senate colleagues, particularly Republicans, not to join the lynch mob, and give the process a chance to move forward,” Graham said.

Graham defended Gaetz a day earlier on CNN, telling Manu Raju that “nobody should be disqualified from a media report.”

But the allegations against Gaetz are more substantive than any single news story. The House Ethics Committee has been investigating the former Florida congressman for years over sexual misconduct allegations. On Monday, it was revealed that Gaetz allegedly paid two women for sex through Venmo, according to the women’s attorney. One of the women also alleged seeing Gaetz having sex with her 17-year-old friend.

In his statement, Graham said his fellow senators should take into account that Gaetz never faced any criminal charges despite “years of being investigated by the Department of Justice,” and promised that Gaetz’s confirmation process “will not be a rubber stamp nor will it be driven by a lynch mob.”

The allegations against Gaetz apparently haven’t convinced Graham, one of Trump’s staunchest supporters in the Senate (after being one of his strongest critics in 2016). The Florida congressman reportedly appealed to Graham to help gain support in the Senate, but many Republican senators have privately told the president-elect that Gaetz doesn’t have much of a chance. Between opposition to Gaetz and multiple strikes against secretary of defense pick Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominees are off to a rocky start.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. apparently refused to believe the evidence of his eyes and ears during the Covid-19 pandemic, ignoring the freezer trucks full of bodies in favor of baseless conspiracies.

Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of health and human services toyed with the “plan-demic” conspiracy, according to an unearthed clip from a speech Kennedy gave in August 2020 obtained by The Bulwark. In the clip, Kennedy says that he felt the Covid pandemic—which killed 1.2 million Americans—was “very planned.”

“Many people argue that this pandemic was a ‘plandemic,’ that it was planned from the outset, it’s part of a sinister scheme,” Kennedy said. “I can’t tell you the answer to that. I don’t have enough evidence. A lot of it feels very planned to me. I don’t know. I will tell you this: If you create these mechanisms for control, they become weapons of obedience for authoritarian regimes no matter how beneficial or innocent the people who created them.”

In the same speech, Kennedy likened 2020 vaccination efforts to Nazi testing on “Gypsies and Jews,” referring to the jab as “a pharmaceutical-driven, biosecurity agenda that will enslave the entire human race and plunge us into a dystopian nightmare.”

Kennedy has promised, under Trump’s helm, to remove fluoride from all public water systems—a 1945 public health decision that has reduced cavities and tooth decay in adults and children by as much as 25 percent, according to the American Dental Association. The vaccine conspiracy theorist also reportedly has plans to strip not just the Covid vaccine but older, irrefutably effective vaccines from the market, as well.

Vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The medical shots are so effective at preventing illness that they have practically eradicated some of the worst diseases from our collective culture, from rabies to polio and smallpox—a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual.

In two months, Joe Biden will leave office and, soon after, nearly everything he and his administration have accomplished will be undone. One legacy, however, will remain: the administration’s continued backing of Israel in its brutal war in Gaza, which will continue—and likely increase—with Donald Trump in office. Nevertheless, the administration has shown little appetite for changing direction: On Wednesday, the United States vetoed a United Nations cease-fire resolution. A bill sponsored by Bernie Sanders to block arms sales to Israel that is scheduled to go to a vote Wednesday is highly unlikely to pass.

There are, however, people within the administration who are working to change its policy. On Monday, nearly two dozen White House officials released an open letter excoriating the Biden administration for its continued support of Israel’s brutal war in Gaza and the Middle East and demanding that, in his final days in office, the president take “concrete measures” to end the war and save civilian lives. The letter calls on the Biden administration to end U.S. military aid to Israel, demand a cease-fire, provide humanitarian aid to people in Gaza, and offer full transparency explaining its continued support for a military campaign that has resulted in thousands of civilian deaths and violated “U.S. and international laws.”

The signees, all senior members of the Executive Office of the President, chose to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. The New Republic spoke to three of them—two current officials and one who recently left the administration—about why they chose to sign the letter, what they think the administration can accomplish in its final weeks, and how continued American support for Israel has affected their day-to-day work.

“Ongoing U.S. support for Israeli military actions in Gaza and the West Bank, in violation of international and human rights law, goes against our moral and professional duties as civil servants,” the letter reads. “It wastes funds on a brutal assault on civilians without benefiting public welfare, either at home or abroad. We implore you to take simple and immediate action to drastically mitigate the humanitarian crisis.”

The group had been working on the letter for several months, the signees told me, but Trump’s election victory made the matter far more urgent. The Biden administration now only has until late January to act.

For the signees, this was a deeply personal decision. “At this point, watching the genocide unfold, you realize that this is a moment where you will look back on where you were when it started to happen and ask if you did something about it,” one signee, a current administration official, said. “Looking back at other analogous moments in time, it’s important to take action now, even if it can be undone. We need to arc towards peace.”

The former administration official concurred. “When you look at history, whether it was the treatment of the Native Americans, civil rights for Black Americans, apartheid in South Africa—these weren’t solved in a year or two or a hundred or sometimes 400,” they said. “But if at any point, even after 200 years, someone [decided progress wasn’t being made and] gave up, we wouldn’t be here.”

For the signees, Trump’s victory also crystallized another important factor in their decision to release the letter. When he takes office on January 20, he will quickly undo most of the current administration’s policies. The president’s domestic legacy—one of full employment and strong economic growth with an emphasis on building manufacturing and strengthening the working and middle classes—will be ripped up more or less immediately. Gaza is what will remain.

“As the war has expanded, this is increasingly becoming the Biden administration’s legacy,” the current administration official told The New Republic. “We have to think about how the Biden administration began. Its legacy could have been entirely focused on coming out of Covid and fixing the wreckage of the economy. Instead, most likely, this crisis, this war, will be that legacy.”

“There is a small but significant opportunity to change that,” they continued. “Will it be a legacy of horror or something else?”

The signees said that America’s ongoing support for Israel has made coming to work difficult and jarring. “It is a continual fatigue, this cognitive dissonance,” a second current administration official told The New Republic. “I watch the news and then walk into work where that news happens. It is taxing and demoralizing. It is a constant struggle.”

For the first administration official, that support has also made them question the work that they do in the government. “A lot of the reason people end up in the federal government is because it’s mission-driven: It’s meant to help serve the public,” they said. “The less that happens, even outside of our own borders, the less that holds water.”

As we ended our call, I asked all three if they would keep working in government if their calls went unheeded. All three said they weren’t sure anymore.