Heritage Foundation vets 20,000 appointees before 2025 election

🏛️Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 created a personnel database targeting 20,000 federal appointees—five times more than the traditional 4,000 political appointments. This unprecedented expansion replaces competitive merit-based hiring with ideological screening, ensuring donor-aligned loyalists control policy implementation.

Paul Dans (former OPM Chief of Staff) directed Project 2025 with Spencer Chretien (former Special Assistant to President) as associate director until Dans stepped down July 2024. Former White House personnel officials now run private vetting operations that bypass traditional government hiring.

John McEntee and James Bacon developed loyalty questionnaires in 2020 asking "What part of Candidate Trump's campaign message most appealed to you?" to screen government employees. Personnel vetting shifted from expertise-based evaluation to political loyalty tests.

Project 2025 operates with a $22 million budget and published a 920-page "Mandate for Leadership" policy playbook in April 2023. Conservative donors funded comprehensive government takeover plans years before elections.

Schedule FSchedule FA federal employment classification that strips civil service protections from career government employees in policy-influencing roles.Key ConceptSchedule FA federal employment classification that strips civil service protections from career government employees in policy-influencing roles.Open conceptBookmark executive order (October 2020) attempted to reclassify 50,000 civil servants as at-will employees removable without cause, but Biden revoked it January 2021. Stripping civil service protectionsCivil Service ProtectionsLegal protections preventing career federal employees from being fired for political reasons.Key ConceptCivil Service ProtectionsLegal protections preventing career federal employees from being fired for political reasons.Open conceptBookmark would let presidents fire career experts and replace them with political loyalists.

Presidential Transition Act (amended December 2022) requires pre-election transition planning, but does not mandate ideological vetting by private organizations. Project 2025 exploits this framework to insert ideological screening.

Candidates for Heritage Foundation's database answer questions like "Do you agree life has a right to legal protection from conception to natural death?" to test ideological purity. Policy positions on abortion and presidential authority determine hiring eligibility.