Donald Trump’s transition team is reportedly preparing a blacklist of potential officials to be banned from a future administration, with a particular focus on those with links to his radical Project 2025 plan to reform the US government.
The former president’s eldest son, Donald Jr., is leading a campaign to compile a list of banned employees, according to Politico, citing a former official in the first Trump administration.
Another former official told the site: “It is clear that the people working on Project 2025 are blacklisted.”
The Republican candidate publicly disavowed the 922-page document, prepared by the Heritage Foundation think tank, after polls showed that its ideologically motivated prescriptions – including mass firings of civil servants and plans to ban abortion – were an electoral liability.
Many of its leading architects, including its former director Paul Dance, served in the Trump administration. Dance has since criticized some of the Republican nominee’s top campaign aides for their role in influencing his decision to remove himself from the project.
Others excluded include those who resigned in protest of the January 6 insurrection, when a mob attacked the US Capitol in a failed attempt to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Some senior Trump administration officials resigned from the administration in its final days in protest over the incident, which at the time was widely — and wrongly — believed to herald the end of his political career. They included Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; Mick Mulvaney, former White House chief of staff; and Elaine Chao, former transportation secretary and wife of Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate.
Exclusion orders will also be imposed on those seen as disloyal. Trump has repeatedly made clear that he considers loyalty to be the primary quality in selecting senior staff.
The banned list appears to indicate that a future Trump presidency will be different from the first version, which was characterized by record staff turnover compared to previous sitting presidents and staffed by officials who often saw a key part of their roles as reining in Trump. The most extreme instincts.
Howard Lutnick, co-chair of Trump’s transition team, said appointees will need to show “devotion” to the former president and his agenda.
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Lutnick told the New York Post this month that the Heritage Foundation was “radiant” because of its intimate role in the 2025 project, and that no one associated with the project would be included. He added: “This is a clear position.”
Others expressed skepticism, noting that an estimated 18,000 Republicans and 100 think tanks were involved in preparing the document, meaning a blanket ban would complicate recruitment efforts.
Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, has a long-standing relationship with the Heritage Foundation and has written a foreword for a book scheduled to be published by its president, Kevin Roberts.
