WASHINGTON—John McEntee, former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office in the Trump administration, is joining the 2025 Presidential Transition Project (Project 2025) as a senior advisor. The Heritage Foundation announced McEntee’s new role Tuesday as it unveiled the Presidential Personnel Database, a coalition effort to staff the next conservative presidential administration.
McEntee will play a vital role supporting the personnel pillar of Project 2025. Embracing the motto that “personnel is policy,” Project 2025 is launching the database to collect résumés and vet thousands of potential applicants in advance of Jan. 20, 2025, when the next president takes office.
Organized by Heritage, Project 2025 is more than 50 of the nation’s leading conservative groups joining forces to make sure the next conservative president is ready on Day One.
“I’m tremendously excited to join Project 2025, the flagship transition effort to take back our country,” McEntee said. “The Presidential Personnel Database will be of extraordinary value for the 47th president because we are doing a lot of the incoming administration’s most important work ahead of time. From the most junior to the most senior, every prospective political appointee should sign up at Project2025.org NOW. Together, we are going to bring thousands of vetted, trained conservatives from across the country to Washington. The Project 2025 team has put together the right ingredients for the next presidential transition and I look forward to contributing to this effort. Let’s assemble the A-Team!”
McEntee will work with the Project 2025 team to facilitate outreach to presidential candidates, promote the database to prospective applicants, and advise the coalition on matters related to presidential personnel.
As director of the Presidential Personnel Office, McEntee and his team were responsible for vetting new appointees to work at the White House and throughout the Trump administration. The Presidential Personnel Office oversees about 4,000 positions that require political appointments.
“It’s an honor to work alongside John McEntee again. There are few people as talented as John when it comes to personnel operations. There are even fewer who strike fear in the heart of the bureaucracy, the political establishment, and the media as he does. He knows how to build a high-performing team that is loyal and committed to advancing conservative values. A new generation of conservatives from outside the Beltway is coming to Washington, inspired by his leadership,” said Paul Dans, director of Project 2025 and former chief of staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. “The 47th president must and will confront the Deep State and will turn to John McEntee to do so. We’re thrilled that he’s joining Project 2025’s broad coalition of conservatives to ensure the next presidential administration is ready in January 2025.”
McEntee joins a team that includes Project 2025 Associate Director Spencer Chretien, who was a special assistant to President Trump and associate director of presidential personnel, and James Bacon, a Project 2025 advisor and former special assistant to the president who served as PPO’s director of operations under Trump. Both worked for McEntee at the White House.
Project 2025 brings together conservatives to work collaboratively on policy recommendations and properly vet and train personnel to implement them. The coalition recently released “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” a 900-page policy bible for the next administration.
Americans interested in serving the next conservative presidential administration can visit Project2025.org and click APPLY NOW.
“Project 2025 is the portal for conservatives aspiring to serve in our federal government,” Dans said. “Each applicant will develop his or her profile and upload a résumé for review. Our coalition will then review applicants and match them to agencies and offer such suggestions to an eventual transition team. Our goal is to bring conservative warriors from across the entire United States to Washington to ensure that the next administration serves the interests of the American people.”
