The recent leak of the Project 2025 executive branch applicant database, now hosted by nonprofit whistleblower site DDoSecrets, has allowed APR to further identify the organizations and individuals in Alabama that helped prepare to carry out Project 2025 in the event Trump was re-elected.
APR reported last year that the Alabama Policy Institute, Eagle Forum and Moms for Liberty were all Project 2025 coalition partners. Spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 was a wide-ranging effort by conservative think tanks and pressure groups to prepare for a Republican presidency. It included both an attempt to identify potential staffers with the proper ideological bona fides and the preparation of the controversial Project 2025 handbook, an over 900-page policy document.
During the campaign, candidate Trump and other Republican politicians repeatedly claimed that Project 2025 had no ties to the Trump campaign and would not affect how Trump governed if elected.
However, Russell Vought, a major contributor to Project 2025, was quickly nominated by Trump to lead the important Office of Management and Budget. Other Project 2025 contributors have also assumed key positions in the executive branch. And, when asked by Politico in March whether Trump had fallen short of the Project 2025 vision, one-time director of the project Paul Dans said it had been “actually way beyond my wildest dreams.”
The leaked database additionally reveals that prominent Alabama conservatives were actively telling people in their networks about Project 2025, which led at least several people to fill out a Heritage Foundation questionnaire in hopes of getting a position in the executive branch.
“As a Leader of Eagle Forum Alabama, our Executive Director Becky Gerritson sent it out to our leadership,” one such applicant stated. Gerritson and Eagle Forum of Alabama did not respond to APR’s inquiries. The individual whose personal information was included in the application declined to comment.
Another jobseeker wrote that they “heard about Project 2025 through my time interning in Senator Tuberville’s office.” They noted that “many staffers and contacts in the area suggested that I look into Heritage and this program.”
APR was able to successfully verify that someone with the name and phone number tied to that application had interned with Tuberville’s office through the University of Alabama’s Capital Scholars Program.
Mallory Jaspers, Tuberville’s communications director, called APR’s questions a “ridiculous and totally fabricated inquiry” in a message Sunday night. She added that “the only thing Sen. Tuberville is concerned about is how much of President Trump’s agenda we can ram through Congress in the next 17 months before he becomes the next Governor of Alabama.” The former intern did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
A third applicant wrote that they “heard about [Project] 2025 in a meeting with Stephanie Smith, President and CEO of the Alabama Policy Institute.” One of a couple think tanks focused on public policy in Alabama, API describes itself as a “nonprofit, nonpartisan educational and research organization committed to free markets, limited government, and strong families.”
And a fourth Alabama applicant stated that they found out about Project 2025 through the “Alliance Defending Freedom’s Allied Attorney program–of which I am a member.”
A national organization, ADF is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “legal advocacy and training group that has supported the recriminalization of sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ adults in the U.S. and criminalization abroad.” In the page for potential members of ADF’s Attorney Network, the organization says it wants to “deploy you strategically and effectively on mission with ADF in an increasingly hostile culture and against an ever-encroaching state.”
Other applicants, while they didn’t mention specific Alabama politicians or groups as their reason for filling out the form, still have significant ties to Alabama politics.
Christian Gentile, who was the national security advisor for Alabama Congressman Barry Moore between March 2024 and May 2025 according to his public LinkedIn page as well as LegiScan, the Congressional monitoring website, appears to be one of this type of applicant. He was recently hired as a special assistant to the assistant secretary of the Army for financial management and comptroller.
In the application filed under Gentile’s name, it’s reported that he found out about Project 2025 through “Mr. Rick Dearborn, a mentor of mine.”
Dearborn was President Trump’s deputy chief of staff early during Trump’s first term and wrote the Project 2025 handbook’s chapter on the White House Office. Before his time in the White House though, Dearborn served as Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions’ chief of staff for over a decade.
Another Alabama native who has since been appointed to a position in the new Trump administration, David Matthews, also seems to have filled out the Project 2025 questionnaire. The application under Matthews’ name said he was told about Project 2025 by “a former White House [Presidential Personnel Office] staff member, Matt Buckham.” Buckham is currently the acting chief of staff for the Department of Health and Human Services.
Matthews is now the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s director of state operations for rural development. The answers connected to his name tout Donald Trump as both the “one person, past or present, who has most influenced the development of your political philosophy” and “one living public policy figure whom you greatly admire.”
For a question asking about a book that “significantly shaped” applicants’ personal political philosophy, the given response was “The Art of the Deal.”
The personal information connected to the applications under Gentile and Matthews’ names matched publicly available information about the two. Neither replied to APR’s requests for comment.
