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Donald Trump Jr is leading an effort to compile a list of people who would be banned from serving in a second Trump administration, according to a report.
On the list are people connected to Project 2025, first-term staffers who resigned in protest after the Capitol riot on January 6, and those seen as lacking loyalty to former President Donald Trump, two ex-Trump officials told Politico.
The list is akin to the “enemies list” compiled by staffers in the administration of President Richard Nixon. It was a rundown of the Republican’s top political opponents put together by White House Counsel Charles Colson and written by special assistant to the president George Bell.
The list being compiled by the Trump transition team indicates that a second Trump administration is likely to eschew the establishment Republicans who, at times, thwarted Trump’s agenda during his first term. The Trump team appears to be aiming to sidestep the turnover and leaking that occurred during the first stint.
Trump Jr, the honorary chair of the transition team, is in charge of putting together the list, an ex-Trump official told Politico.
“Clearly people working on Project 2025 are blacklisted,” another former official told the outlet.
But the project has the backing of more than 100 conservative organizations and it remains unclear if a possible Trump administration in the event of an election victory would be able to sustain the ban.
Myron Ebell was in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency transition for Trump in 2016. He told Politico that keeping such a list was a “good idea.”
“During the first Trump transition, I had a typewritten sheet, which I did not have electronically, which I gave to people in the personnel shop called, ‘Over my dead body,’” he added. “The list kept getting longer as I thought of more people.”
Some who worked in the George W Bush administration were included on the list, with Ebell calling them “soft green Republicans.” He said that others on the list were against Trump, even if they didn’t say so in public.
Ebell told Politico that banning people connected to Project 2025 is a “political tactic” and not a “permanent ban.”
He noted that such a ban could remove “many highly qualified pro-Trump people” from contention. Each new administration has to appoint about 4,000 people to fill federal roles.
Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung told the outlet that the former president announced a transition “leadership group” to “initiate the process of preparing for what comes after the election and will choose the best people for his Cabinet.”
Previously this month, the Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick told the New York Post that a second Trump White House wouldn’t be appointing individuals from the conservative policy platform Project 2025, calling it “radioactive.”
Trump himself has been trying to distance himself from the project as Democrats have been using to argue that his policies are more extreme than some may think.
Lutnick also told the Financial Times that possible appointees would have to display “fidelity” and “loyalty” to the former president and his agenda.
Trump Jr told The Wall Street Journal that the transition team was attempting to prevent “the bad actors from getting in.”
“There’s a lot of people that put the R next to their name, but then they do whatever the swamp wants, because they’re looking for the next consulting gig or something like that,” he added. “We’re doing a lot with vetting. My job is to prevent those guys, more so than actually picking people,” Trump Jr claimed.
One person who worked on the 2016 Trump transition told Politico, “It’s not uncommon in DC to have a naughty and nice list.”
