Last month, in the Presidential suite of a five-star hotel in Georgetown, Washington DC, two men – members of a wealthy family from New Mexico – anxiously awaited an important guest. The family’s patriarch, Joe, had hoped to be at the meeting but he was recuperating from surgery. He sent his brother, Tom, and his son-in-law, Edward, in his absence.
Joe is a deeply religious man, concerned about the direction of America. He’s given some money to political candidates in the past but, in recent months, he’s pored over a controversial 900-page blueprint for a second Donald Trump term published by a coalition of conservative groups, called Project 2025. He wanted to offer his support to the project and, more importantly, his money. Joe had dispatched his relatives to DC to meet one of the project’s key architects and scope out a possible donation.
At least, that’s what their guest thought.
Tom and Edward were not, in fact, relatives of a wealthy conservative donor. They were working undercover for the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR) – one is an investigative journalist, the other a paid actor. In the moments before their guest arrived, they strategically placed cameras around the hotel suite. One went into a bag placed on the dark, wood floor; a second on a side table. Another sat discretely inside a reporter’s suit jacket. As the cameras rolled and the men laid out refreshments, the buzzer sounded. Their guest had arrived.
Russell Vought, with his clipped grey beard and glasses, looks more like an accountant than a MAGA radical. He is the founder and president of the Center for Renewing America, a conservative think tank he described to his hosts as “the Death Star,” which alongside the Heritage Foundation has been at the heart of Project 2025. The head of the Office of Management and Budget in Trump’s White House, he is known for his fierce dedication to the former president’s cause. He’s a frequent guest on War Room, a popular podcast for MAGA diehards hosted by Trump’s former advisor Steve Bannon. He told the undercover reporters he’d had to miss an appearance on the show to be at the meeting.
There are people like me that have his trust
For months, CCR has been investigating powerful populist movements, in the US and Europe, that have set themselves against action to tackle climate change. Trump himself has repeatedly dismissed the threat and sent a clear message to the fossil fuel industry should he win in November: “We’re going to drill, baby, drill,” he said last month. The architects of Project 2025 – which Trump has tried to distance himself from in recent weeks – call for the US to reverse Biden-era green subsidies and “eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere.”
But our conversation with Vought covered far more than climate change. Over the course of nearly two hours, he revealed previously unreported details of the next, secretive phase of Project 2025.
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