The dean of Brigham Young University’s law school, David Moore, was listed as a contributor on Project 2025 until earlier this summer, when Moore asked to have his name removed from the controversial blueprint created in the event former President Donald Trump is elected to a second term.
Lynnett Rands, dean of communications at BYU’s J. Reuben Clark Law School, said Moore was asked in 2022 to share his insights with The Heritage Foundation, which created Project 2025, because of his experience working for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Moore was the acting deputy administrator and general counsel at USAID from 2017 to 2019.
“He did not do so on behalf of Brigham Young University,” Rands said of the dean. “As such, Moore, after becoming dean of the law school, asked that his name not be included, in accordance with BYU’s political neutrality policy.”
To avoid having faculty support for political candidates “imputed” to the university, BYU’s political neutrality policy says that officials at the university, including deans, “may not participate in activities on behalf of or in opposition to a candidate for public office, publicly endorse partisan political candidates, donate money to or for the benefit of partisan political candidates, or hold partisan political office at the city, county, state, or national level.”
BYU is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has its own neutrality policy regarding political parties and issues.
(PR Newswire) David Moore, dean at the J. Reuben Clark Law School, was a contributor to Project 2025.
The Heritage Foundation published Project 2025 in April 2023, and it included Moore — along with his affiliation with the BYU law school — among the list of contributors. Moore was named dean of the law school two months later.
His name was removed as a contributor to the document on July 17, 2024, more than a year after becoming dean of the law school and during a time when controversy over the document was spiking.
Democrats have criticized the document, warning voters that it would serve as a road map for a second Trump term. They focus on portions that lay out plans for replacing government workers with Trump loyalists, call the FBI a “bloated, arrogant, increasingly lawless organization,” eliminating the Department of Education, pulling the abortion pill mifepristone from the market, and cutting diversity programs and environmental policies.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump has said.
“I have no idea who is behind it,” he posted on social media. “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”
A slew of Trump administration officials helped write the document — as did another Utahn, Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan, who is listed as a contributor. Trump has said none of the former officials speaks for his campaign.
Moore is one of a handful of contributors who have had their names removed from Project 2025. And Paul Dans, who spearheaded the entire project for The Heritage Foundation, left the think tank amid Trump’s outrage at having to answer for the contents of the blueprint.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) The J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University in Provo on Monday, Sept. 30, 2024.
The section on the U.S. Agency for International Development was written by Max Primorac, the director of The Heritage Foundation’s center on foreign policy studies, who was previously the acting chief operating officer and assistant to the administrator of USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance. Before that, he was deputy director of the State Department’s Iraq reconstruction program.
The document recommends that, if elected, Trump use foreign aid as leverage to combat Chinese expansion into strategically important areas and withholding aid from nations that engage directly or indirectly with China.
It also says a new Trump administration should “end the climate policy fanaticism that advantages Beijing,” dismantling the agency’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs “including the bullying LGBTQ+ agenda,” and ensure the U.S. assistance is going to organizations that don’t support abortion and do support religious freedom.
When it comes to staffing at the agency, the passage on USAID employees echoes the suggestions in many other portions of the document — suggesting the agency’s mission was hampered by “recalcitrant career personnel”
A footnote states that the content of the section represents the opinion of the author and not the contributors.
Kael Weston, a former Democratic congressional candidate who served 11 years in the U.S. State Department, seven of them in Iraq and Afghanistan, said America needs to be engaged across the globe and the policy proposals in Project 2025 put a political agenda ahead of America’s best interests.
“This is kind of saying we’re going to take the culture war from the domestic political front and try to move it into the international arena,” he said. “I just think that is unwise and counterproductive and will take us away from the issues we really need to be focused on, regardless of who wins in November.”
The United States can be influential beyond its military might, Weston said, but refusing to engage in shaping international policy “undercuts our interest and this seems to be part of ‘America First’ — which really is America Isolated.”
Attempts to fill the diplomatic corps with Trump loyalists is “partly an attack on — quote — ‘the Deep State,’” Weston said. “I think the majority of Americans would rather have professionals working on their behalf … than having loyalty tests to one candidate.”
Update, 9:00 a.m.: This story was updated to include that Brigham Young University is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
