But the man who led the effort to produce "Project 2025," Paul Dans, lamented that Trump "needs an influx of new attorneys to fight for his policies in court." He told NBC News that getting those lawyers would shape the next 100 days.
The Justice Department has suffered an exodus of staff, either as part of its purge of the "deep state" or staff who abandoned the administration after being asked to compromise their ethics.
Some of the internal legal battles arose after the public resignation of Justice Department lawyers. One of those included an acting U.S. attorney brought in by the Trump administration. Danielle Sassoon quit in an angry letter that accused the DOJ of a quid pro quo with New York City Mayor Eric Adams. She said in the letter that she refused to compromise her principles. Others in her office followed, as did some in the main DOJ office over the matter.
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The reduction in lawyers is a top concern for Dans, he said.
Trump "needs additional reinforcements on his team,” Dans said, “as this kind of slows down into a war of attrition with the deep state, particularly on the legal front.”
Dans added: “As much as he can continue to get his team on the field, that’s imperative.”
“If Roosevelt had the New Deal, this is what I would think of as Trump’s real deal,” Dans told NBC News. “This is deconstructing the administrative state and walking back a lot of this progressive architecture that had been built up by FDR.”
“What’s coming next is really a squaring off with the courts,” Dans continued. “This is going to reach, certainly, a boiling point, and so look to that getting resolved.”
“It’s with great excitement that I read what’s going on every day and see a new step that they’re taking,” Dans said. “But to be sure, this has to get implemented. At this point, a lot of the executive orders and the like are policy pronouncements, and the real rubber is going to meet the road when it comes to implementing all these directives.”
"Project 2025" was part of an effort by the Heritage Foundation before the 2024 election, showcasing what the plan would be if Trump won in November. Once it became clear that the document was unpopular, Trump distanced himself from the guide.
Still, "Project 2025" became the blueprint for the new administration, the report characterized.
"After Trump won, however, he hired multiple authors of the report to key positions, including Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, immigration czar Tom Homan, top trade adviser Peter Navarro, and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, among others," the report said.
NBC News reported during the Trump transition that "the transition team was utilizing the Project 2025 database of potential hires, too."
It "ultimately foreshadowed plenty of what Trump has enacted or attempted once in power. An independent tracker found that the administration has completed or taken action on roughly 40% of the material in 'Project 2025.'"
Read the full report here.
