Political appointees serving under the next Republican president “will have to eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere,” a former Trump administration official said in a leaked conservative training video published Saturday.
Training videos from the Project 2025 conservative presidential transition project include hours of guidance from former Trump administration officials aimed at shaping the next Republican administration. Those videos, obtained and published by ProPublica and Documented, include advice about scrubbing the term “climate change” from the government, tips for pushing back against career employees and guidance for job seekers looking for administration gigs.
The Project 2025 presidential blueprint, a policy agenda organized by the conservative Heritage Foundation, has been a focus for the presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, who has assailed its ideas as extreme and regressive. President Donald Trump has sought to distance himself from the road map, saying in July that he knew “nothing” about Project 2025 or who was behind it, despite the fact that its contributors include many of his former Cabinet members and administration officials.
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Former Trump administration officials offered wide-ranging suggestions in the training videos, including about how to tackle the term “climate change” across the federal government.
“If the American people elect a conservative president, his administration will have to eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere,” Bethany Kozma, who served as deputy chief of staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development in the Trump administration, said in one video.
In that video, titled, “Hidden Meanings: The Monsters in the Attic,” Kozma and former Trump Justice Department official Katie Sullivan offer to teach viewers “how to identify the left’s progressive language, scrutinize career staff compositions for dangerous language, and how to combat the manipulative efforts, ensuring clarity of definition and conservative intention.”
Kozma urges appointees, “Even if you do not work at the Department of Energy — no matter where you work — because of the Biden administration’s executive orders and policy priorities, you will have to look for climate change language and get rid of it.”
The Heritage Foundation did not respond to a request for comment for this story, nor did the think tank respond to ProPublica’s request for comment about the videos, the outlet reported.
During Trump’s administration, there were widespread reports of government officials changing or removing climate change references in documents across federal agencies, including an annual report from USAID, a National Park Service study and on EPA’s website.
Trump has promised on the 2024 campaign trail to reverse President Joe Biden’s climate change policies and to boost domestic energy production after the Biden administration made climate change one of its key priorities.
Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t yet outlined a detailed climate change policy platform, but she’s expected to broadly continue the Biden administration’s climate policy agenda if she’s elected.
Kozma said in the training video that climate change “is an issue to pay attention to.” The federal government has gone “all in on this issue” and that “climate change activists wield a lot of power,” she said.
“When I think of climate change, I immediately think of population control, don’t you?” Kozma said. “I think about the people who don’t want you to have children because of the impact on the environment. Perhaps not everyone will make that connection, but after spending time in the international space trying to protect life, I can tell you that this is part of their ultimate goal to control people.”
In addition to drafting a conservative policy agenda for the next president, one goal of Project 2025 is to boost political appointees’ efficiency in a possible handover of the federal bureaucracy. Some of the training videos involve lengthy explanations about how the federal government operates.
They also include tips about how to push back against career employees, how to staff Cabinet secretaries and how to apply for appointments.
Political appointees should “expect that they are going to be tested by career staff the day they walk in,” said Sullivan from DOJ. A political appointee is “empowered,” Sullivan said, because they are put in a position to “implement the president’s agenda.” That “is the business of a political appointee and should be the business of all federal employees,” she said.
Spencer Chretien, who worked in Trump’s White House to recruit political appointees for the administration, offered guidance to job seekers in a separate Project 2025 video.
“One of the great things about Project 2025 is if we’re successful, we’re going to be in a position to get thousands of people hired into the new administration in the very first days, just like the Biden administration did,” Chretien said.
Project 2025 is compiling a presidential personnel database. “With the right conservative policy recommendations and properly vetted and trained personnel to implement them, we will take back our government,” the website says. It’s unclear whether a Trump administration would use that database of names.
Appointees are “probably going to have to live in D.C., the swamp,” Chretien said in the video. And he urged job seekers to network. “Everything in D.C. is about who you know,” he said.
He urged job candidates to familiarize themselves with the “Plum Book,” a publication that lists political appointments. They should also “obey the law,” he said, “and we will have fewer problems with background checks and paperwork for the hiring process.”
The only thing, Chretien said, “that completely precludes you from serving a president as an appointee is if you don’t agree with the president’s vision. If you’re going to wreck, undermine and take cheap shots at the president or other people in his administration, then you definitely cannot be a political appointee.”
