Newly surfaced training videos on Project 2025 raise concerns

A cache of previously unreleased training videos has surfaced for Project 2025, a controversial initiative to prepare right-wing politicians for a possible conservative presidential administration, raising concerns among government watchdogs and democratic groups.

The revelation comes amid increasing efforts by former President Donald Trump to distance himself from the project and recent leadership changes at the Heritage Foundation, which is leading the 2025 Project.

The videos, which total more than 14 hours of content in 23 separate recordings, were obtained by ProPublica on Saturday and documented by a person with access to the materials. They offer an unprecedented look into how conservative groups are preparing to quickly implement sweeping policy changes should a Republican candidate win this year’s election.

“Want to know what’s in PROJECT 2025’s never-before-released training videos to get future Trump nominees ‘ready from day one’? We have them. 23 different videos. 14 hours of tape,” ProPublica reporter Andy Kroll wrote Sunday morning on X, formerly Twitter.

Project 2025 has come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks following the resignation of its director, Paul Dans, and Trump’s attempts to deny any connection to the initiative.

In an earlier statement to NewsweekTrump’s campaign team said it “very much welcomed” reports of the end of Project 2025, stressing that the project had nothing to do with the campaign and should not be associated with the former president in any way.

Newsweek Trump’s campaign team asked for further comment via email on Sunday.

Despite these public distancing efforts, the newly released videos suggest that preparations to train a cadre of conservative political candidates are still underway. The recordings train potential candidates on a wide range of topics, from basic government operations to more controversial strategies for promoting conservative policies and combating perceived resistance from career officials.

Climate change scepticism and political setbacks

In one video, Bethany Kozma, a former Trump administration official, downplays the severity of climate change and describes efforts to combat it as a means of population control. In the same video, Katie Sullivan, who served as deputy attorney general under Trump, is seen calling for the elimination of gender counsel positions in all federal agencies created by the Biden administration.

These statements are consistent with the broader policy goals outlined in Project 2025’s comprehensive Mandate for Leadership document, which proposes sweeping changes such as eliminating the Department of Education, cutting Medicaid, and making it easier to fire and replace officials.

The plan also calls for reversing many of the Biden administration’s climate policies, restricting abortion and LGBTQ rights, and making changes to education standards.

Former members of the Trump administration are in the spotlight

Despite Trump’s recent attempts to create distance between himself and Project 2025, the training videos continue to feature people with ties to his administration.

Twenty-nine of the 36 speakers heard in the recordings have worked for Trump in some capacity – either on his transition team, in his administration or in his current re-election campaign.

Lessons learned and strategies shared

Many speakers in the videos acknowledge that there were missteps in the early days of the Trump administration, particularly with regard to staffing and the inexperience of some political appointees, and they describe Project 2025’s efforts as crucial preparation to avoid similar pitfalls in a future conservative administration.

Rick Dearborn, who co-led Trump’s transition team in 2016, stresses the importance of having a database of potential candidates, which he reportedly described as “a luxury we didn’t have” during the previous inauguration.

Some of the advice given in the videos appears to deviate from traditional conservative positions. David Burton, an economic policy expert at the Heritage Foundation, advocates increasing staff at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) to better scrutinize and potentially limit regulations issued by other federal agencies.

Navigating a perceived hostile environment

A recurring theme throughout the videos is the idea that conservative appointees face hostility within the federal government and mainstream media. Speakers frequently characterize Washington, DC, as an environment hostile to conservative values ​​and warn of potential persecution.

To counteract this hostility, speakers offer several strategies, including giving political staff more power than officials, purging personal social media accounts of potentially controversial content and focusing media outreach on conservative outlets rather than mainstream news outlets.

Public opinion and Project Future

According to a survey by the research institute Navigator Research, Project 2025 is extremely unpopular among voters: only 11 percent of respondents are positive about the project.

Following Dan’s resignation, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts will now lead Project 2025’s efforts. Roberts reportedly said the project has achieved its goals of bringing conservative organizations together to develop a unified vision. He noted that the project’s policy development is expected to be completed after this year’s party conventions, which is consistent with the original timeline of April 2022.

With the 2024 presidential election looming, the release of these Project 2025 training videos is likely to heighten debate about the possible policy directions and governing approaches of a future Republican administration. While supporters argue that the initiative represents necessary preparation, critics see it as a blueprint for radical changes to federal government operations and policies.

The Heritage Foundation and most of the people featured in the videos reportedly did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment for this story. Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokeswoman who appears in one of the videos, said Agenda 47 is the campaign’s only official policy agenda.