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For much of the presidential campaign, former President Donald Trump worked to distance himself from Project 2025, the detailed game plan written by conservative activists for a second Trump term.
Whether or not his allies will try to implement portions of the controversial plan if he wins the 2024 election is still the topic of some debate.
But there is an equally radical and expansive government reformation plan coming out of Trump’s own mouth, in which heterodox figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would be given free rein to “go wild” on the health safety system and Elon Musk would be enabled to, as the tech billionaire said, “start from scratch” with the federal workforce.
Separately, Trump’s transition co-chair appeared on CNN Wednesday night to argue Kennedy and Musk probably wouldn’t be given specific government jobs but that Kennedy would be given data in order to question vaccines.
So without getting bogged down in whether Trump does or does not support Project 2025, here’s a look at what the former president and the people he says he would empower have said they would do if he wins the White House.
Trump has promised to give Kennedy leeway to remake the way the government health apparatus protects Americans.
“I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines,” Trump said during his closing argument rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.
Much of what Kennedy pushes sounds positive. His “Make America Healthy Again” PAC promises to focus on “prioritizing regenerative agriculture, preserving natural habitats, and eliminating toxins from our food, water, and air.”
But those ideas are short on specifics, and there are personal issues that would impede anyone else from government service. Kennedy compared vaccine requirements with the Nazi Germany era, claiming Anne Frank was in a better situation; was once arrested for heroin possession; and has pushed wild conspiracy theories about chemicals in the water making children gay or transgender.
Kennedy’s own health has also been a concern. He once ate so much tuna and perch that he experienced “severe brain fog” from mercury poisoning, he told The New York Times.
In video obtained by CNN, Kennedy told supporters on Monday that Trump had promised to give him sweeping power over multiple agencies if the former president wins the election.
“The key that I think I’m – you know, that President Trump has promised me is – is control of the public health agencies, which are HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) and its sub-agencies, CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), FDA (Food and Drug Administration), NIH (National Institutes of Health) and a few others, and then also the USDA (Department of Agriculture), which is – which, you know, is key to making America healthy. Because we’ve got to get off of seed oils, and we’ve got to get off of pesticide intensive agriculture,” Kennedy said.
In an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Howard Lutnick, co-chair of the Trump-Vance transition team, said Kennedy would not be in charge of HHS but would be given access to data about vaccines in order to check their safety. But vaccines that are currently approved and authorized for use in the US have been proven safe and effective. Lutnick also pushed unproven conspiracy theories that vaccines are behind autism in children. Although it is still unclear what causes autism, the scientific consensus is that vaccines do not.
“He says, ‘If you give me the data, all I want is the data, and I’ll take on the data and show that it’s not safe.’ And then if you pull the product liability (protections), the companies will yank these vaccines right off, off of the market,” Lutnick said.
Meanwhile, “Trump’s plans have been met with alarm in the public health community, not so much for the specific policy proposals Kennedy has communicated as part of his ‘Make America Healthy Again’ platform as much as for the key issue he’s been leaving out: vaccines,” according to CNN’s Meg Tirrell. She wrote an in-depth review of Kennedy’s record on health issues.
Both Trump and Kennedy have expressed vaccine skepticism, and Kennedy has been a longtime activist pushing debunked theories about vaccines. During the campaign, Kennedy has deemphasized his views on vaccines, Tirrell notes. His push for more natural food does find support among some health experts.
Musk, the superrich Trump supporter, would be given a much wider portfolio than Kennedy and be charged with a massive downsizing of the federal government.
It’s an even stickier situation since Musk’s many companies, including SpaceX and Tesla, have a profit-motivated interest in business with the government. The US government currently relies on SpaceX, which also owns the satellite internet provider Starlink.
If there’s any doubt that a Musk government role could be a risk for conflict of interest, simply look at the fact that he has said he could be in charge of the “Department of Government Efficiency.” DOGE is the name of Musk’s cryptocurrency, an area the Trump family is also keen to enter.
Lutnick told Collins that Musk wouldn’t enter the government because he can’t sell SpaceX but would instead be writing software to give to the government.
Musk has been no stranger to making headlines as his support for Trump has been on full display this campaign season. He is currently trying to move a lawsuit over his $1 million giveaway to voters into federal court, potentially averting a hearing Thursday in Philadelphia state court that he was required to attend. At the center of the legal battle is a daily $1 million sweepstakes that Musk’s pro-Trump super PAC, called America PAC, is offering to registered voters in battleground states.
His lawyers filed a “motion of removal” in federal court late Wednesday night. This typically pauses the state case and puts the matter in the hands of a federal judge – unless and until that judge decides to send the case back to state courts.
Musk is also constantly pushing out antisemitic things and has mused about how women shouldn’t vote. Not to mention reports of his meetings with hostile foreign leaders.
In a potential new Trump administration, Musk promises a reinvention of the federal bureaucracy.
“Let’s start from scratch,” Musk said at an event in October in Pittsburgh, suggesting a drastic remaking of the federal bureaucracy.
CNN’s David Goldman looked this month at what Trump and Musk have said about a potential Musk role in government, which would be focused on steep spending cuts – Musk has said he could trim $2 trillion, perhaps with help from artificial intelligence – and rolling back regulations. But he’d do it in a nice way, apparently.
“Musk has promised a gentle touch, offering generous severance packages to laid-off government workers, while at the same time proposing an assessment system that threatens layoffs to wasteful employees,” Goldman wrote.
The problem, according to the former Treasury Secretary Larry Summer, is that there’s not $2 trillion to be gained from massive government layoffs.
“Respectfully, I think it is idiotic,” Summers said on Fox News this week. “These people think it’s like some business. But here’s the problem: Only 15% of the federal budget is for payroll. So even if you took all the employees, every single person working for the federal government out, you couldn’t save anything like $2 trillion.”
Summers has a point about payroll. The government spent about $271 billion to compensate 2.3 million civilian employees in 2022, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Summers said that to achieve trillions in cuts, Musk would have to look at Social Security and Medicare benefits, something Trump has promised not to do.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a top Trump ally, said in Pennsylvania on Monday that if Trump wins and Republicans keep the House, there would be a “massive” overhaul of the health care system. “No Obamacare?” shouted an attendee at the campaign event. “No Obamacare,” Johnson said.
He added: “The ACA is so deeply ingrained; we need massive reform to make this work. And we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.”
During a debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in September, Trump did not give specifics, but he did say he had “concepts” of a plan. These have not been shared publicly.
Trump tried, and failed, during his time in White House to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but retooling the health care system is clearly still a priority for Republicans.
This is a good spot to point out that no matter what Trump is promising Kennedy and Musk, and no matter what Johnson hopes to do about health care, the realities of the US government make drastic change hard to achieve.
A minority in the Senate, assuming it’s larger than 40 senators, could block any attempt to really undo the Affordable Care Act. The Senate is supposed to confirm top officials like Cabinet secretaries, although Trump and other presidents found ways around that rule in the Constitution. It’s not clear if Kennedy could find the votes to be confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services or if Trump would even nominate him. If Kennedy had a role in the White House, his ability to enact sweeping change would be limited.
While presidents have authority over the federal workforce and Trump was working to reclassify many federal employees to make them easier to fire when he was president, a “start from scratch” scenario would theoretically require congressional approval.
Not that we can say with any certainty what would require congressional approval since, unlike with the detailed Project 2025 plan, there are no specifics to match any of these big ideas. At least not yet.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
