President Donald Trump acknowledged the influence of Project 2025 in his presidency yesterday, despite having denied any knowledge of or connection to the project repeatedly throughout the election.

“I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame,” Trump announced on his Truth Social platform on Thursday. Vought is the head of the Office of Management and Budget and was one of the authors of Project 2025, penning a section on consolidating power within the Executive Branch.

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Project 2025 is an agenda that was released by the conservative Heritage Foundation prior to the election and spans over 900 pages. As well as pushing for dismantling the Department of Education, ending abortion access, and terminating the DACA program, Project 2025 heavily targets LGBTQ+ people. The agenda in Project 2025 suggested removing support and protections for LGBTQ+ people, preventing federal funding from supporting gender-affirming care, removing inclusive language, and defining trans people out of existence.

“Project 2025 isn’t some future threat—it’s already shaping government policy,” LGBTQ Program Director for Media Matters Ari Drennen said in February. “These executive orders prove that the right’s plan to dismantle LGBTQ rights is well underway.”

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As of August, the Project 2025 Tracker estimated that 69% of the plans anti-LGBTQ+ proposals had been enacted already.

Trump’s 2024 campaign, after polling showed mass dissatisfaction with Project 2025 and its plan to remake the government, worked hard to distance itself from the document. In a post from July last year, Trump claimed to “know nothing about Project 2025,” saying that he didn’t know who was behind it and that he disagreed with some of what was said, calling the ideas “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” Several months later, during his September debate with Kamala Harris, he claimed “I haven’t read it.”

Those claims were challenged by reports that as many as 60% of the writers for Project 2025 were former Trump associates. The credibility of his comments was further stretched with the news that Trump had visited the Heritage Foundation Conference in 2022 as he had prepared for his third serious presidential run and told an audience, “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”

While supporters of Trump often agreed with his denial of a connection to Project 2025 during the campaign, after the election, they changed their tune. Right-wing podcaster Matt Walsh posted “Now that the election is over I think we can finally say that yeah actually Project 2025 is the agenda. Lol.”

Although Trump himself continued to distance himself from Project 2025, his actions in his second term have lined up with the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint. As he filled out positions in his new administration, many of the authors of Project 2025 found new jobs for themselves, including Brendan Carr, who is now the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) who pressured ABC to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air.

Trump’s acknowledgement of Vought’s role in Project 2025 is a small but important moment, especially as he is using it as a way to identify Vought to his supporters. As they are now working together to take advantage of the federal shutdown to do further damage to the government, it’s clear that Trump is embracing the agenda that he for so long, at least publicly, claimed was a mystery to him.

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