Project 2025 thinktank behind lists naming ‘woke’ federal workers

A rightwing group that has created a series of blacklists to target federal workers it believes the Trump administration should fire has received funding for the project by the thinktank behind Project 2025.

A recent list created by the American Accountability Foundation called the “DEI Watch List” includes mostly people of color with roles in government health roles alleged to have some tie to diversity initiatives. Another targets education department employees in career roles who “cannot be trusted to faithfully execute the agenda of the elected President of the United States”. One calls out the “most subversive immigration bureaucrats”.

Tom Jones, the president of the American Accountability Foundation, said the organization had plans to add to its existing lists and create more. The group was designed to go after the “DC bureaucrats and leftist organizations” that had been allowed “to subvert, obstruct, and sabotage the America First agenda”, according to its website.

Founded in 2020, the group received $100,000 in funding for its first watchlist – focused on the Department of Homeland Security – from the Heritage Foundation, the rightwing thinktank behind the conservative blueprint Project 2025. The foundation called its list initiative “Project Sovereignty 2025” and said it was aimed at exposing the people behind the scenes who were advancing Biden’s border policies.

“We are extremely grateful to the Heritage Foundation for this great honor and opportunity,” Jones said at the time the prize was announced. “The scourge of woke open-borders-loving bureaucrats obstructing border security and facilitating the invasion of our country is something that needs to be brought to the attention of the American people.”

The subsequent lists on education and DEI were not funded by Heritage, the foundation said.

On its X page, the American Accountability Foundation frequently posts about specific federal staffers, sharing their photos and social media pages. In a post on Wednesday, the group pointed to an article in Politico in which a former federal prosecutor detailed how he and others had worked to push back against Trump’s so-called Muslim ban in 2017 because they believed it was illegal. “This is exactly why we are putting together lists of bureaucrats who will do the same,” the foundation wrote on X. “This is a threat to democracy.”

The direct naming and shaming of employees has federal workers on edge. After the project was announced, but before the lists were made public, the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, said the move was an “intimidation tactic to try to menace federal workers and sow fear”.

Project 2025, the Heritage guide for a second Trump presidency, also included a pillar dedicated to staffing an incoming Trump administration, though it was focused on building a database of potential hires who would advance the conservative agenda should Trump win and training people on how to serve in government jobs. That database was not made public, and Trump’s team tried to distance itself from Project 2025 during the campaign by saying it would not hire from it. In practice, Trump has staffed up the government with a host of people tied to the project, including big names like Russ Vought, the nominee to lead the budget office who was a key figure behind Project 2025.

The exact criteria for inclusion on the public blacklists isn’t clear. Jones said the group culls public information to decide whether a person should be included. For the DEI watchlist, Jones said, he wanted to include people beyond those who had specific diversity work in their job titles and instead those who somehow advanced DEI agendas. The DHS list includes immigration judges, lawyers, policy advisers and analysts. On the education list, people who worked in student financial aid enforcement were targeted because the group believes the Biden administration went after colleges for ideological reasons, specifically Christian and career colleges.