(NewsNation) — Like his running mate former President Donald Trump, Ohio Sen. JD Vance has tried to steer clear of the controversial Project 2025 while hitting the campaign trail.
While he doesn’t appear to have had a hand in writing the conservative policy playbook, he does appear to have close ties with the people who did.
Vance wrote a foreword for a forthcoming book by the leader of The Heritage Foundation, the group behind Project 2025, which has sparked speculation on the degree of separation the vice presidential nominee has with the plan.
What is Project 2025?
Project 2025 is a nearly 1,000-page document that lays out a multiprong blueprint to overhaul the federal government for the next Republican administration.
Democrats have called the plan extremist, “authoritarian” and even dystopian.
Among several initiatives, Project 2025 calls for the firing of as many as 50,000 federal workers who conservative groups say will impede the president’s agenda.
Under Project 2025, agencies such as the U.S. Department of Education would be “eliminated,” and others, like the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department, would be put under the president’s control.
On abortion, Project 2025 calls for restricting the procedure through a limit on mail-order pills and penalizing providers. Other health care services and social services like Medicare and Social Security would be scaled back and privatized as well, and any of the Biden administration’s climate change policies would be reversed.
It also calls for a top-to-bottom “overhaul” of the Department of Justice that would end FBI efforts to stop misinformation.
What Vance has said about Project 2025
Vance appeared to have endorsed some parts of Project 2025, saying “there are some good ideas in there,” while rejecting other parts, saying “there are some things I disagree with,” in an interview with the conservative outlet Newsmax.
He also said “most Americans couldn’t care less about Project 2025.”
A spokesperson for Vance has also said that the senator has no involvement and “plenty of disagreements with what they’re calling for” in a statement.
Vance’s ties to Project 2025
Vance has ties to the Heritage Foundation and even more closely to the group’s President Kevin Roberts, one of the architects of Project 2025.
In June, Vance announced he wrote the foreword to Roberts’ upcoming book, “Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America.”
“I was thrilled to write the foreword for this incredible book, which contains a bold new vision for the future of conservatism in America,” Vance said.
In his introduction for the book, Vance says Roberts provided a “fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics,” and that the book is “an essential weapon” for “the fights that lay (sic) ahead,” reported The Guardian.
“We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets,” he wrote. “America is on the brink of destruction” and needs to have a “promising path for the American people to take back their country,” the foreword states, as reported by Axios.
Some have pointed to the similarities of Vance’s language with what’s written in Project 2025.
“With the right conservative policy recommendations and properly vetted and trained personnel to implement them, we will take back our government,” Project 2025 reads.
Vance has also applauded Roberts for helping to turn The Heritage Foundation “into the de facto institutional home of Trumpism,” Politico reported.
Roberts has returned the affection back to Vance.
“He is absolutely going to be one of the leaders — if not the leader — of our movement,” Roberts said, according to the outlet. “Senators are anticipating a new leader, and the ideological and philosophical shift is moving” toward Vance’s faction.
The Heritage Foundation told NewsNation in a statement that Vance is “not involved” in Project 2025.
Roberts’ book release has been postponed until after the November election.
Trump and Project 2025
Trump has disavowed the plan, posting on his social media site that he has “no idea” who is behind Project 2025 and knows “nothing” about it, but dozens of people who worked closely with him and helped shape his administration are involved in the plan.
He’s gotten more hostile to the document and the group behind it in recent weeks, even going as far as issuing a warning to anyone linking him to the plan.
“It will not end well for you,” his campaign said in a statement last week.
But, like Vance, Trump has also previously praised The Heritage Foundation and its “movement.”
“This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America, and that’s coming,” he said in a 2022 speech to the group.
Roberts said he had briefed Trump on Project 2025, saying he “personally (has) talked to President Trump about Project 2025 … because my role in the project has been to make sure that all of the candidates who have responded to our offer for a briefing on Project 2025 get one from me,” in an April interview with the Washington Post.
Trump Vance campaign and Project 2025
At least six of Trump’s former Cabinet secretaries have either authored or advised on Project 2025.
Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, former deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn, former Justice Department senior counsel Gene Hamilton and former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller have also all worked on Project 2025.
At least 140 other people who worked in the Trump administration have also had a hand in Project 2025, CNN reported.
The plan’s authors have said in a statement to NewsNation they are “not affiliated with any candidate” and that they “do not speak for President Trump, who was not involved with the creation of the Mandate for Leadership.”