Former Carnegie Mellon Professor Helped Write State Department Chapter of Project 2025

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's proposed agenda for a second Trump administration, has drawn unusual attention for a think tank document in recent weeks. Democrats, including Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, have pointed to it as a guide to what Donald Trump might do if voters return him to office. One of its authors has ties to Pittsburgh.

Kiron Skinner wrote the project's chapter on the U.S. State Department. She previously led a strategic planning office for Trump's secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and now works at Pepperdine University. Earlier in her career she taught at Carnegie Mellon University, where she founded the Institute for Politics and Strategy.

At Carnegie Mellon, Skinner stirred controversy on campus by appointing Ric Grenell, a polarizing Trump administration official known for trolling, to the institute. Her 29-page proposal for Project 2025 favors a similarly bold approach to personnel. "No one in a leadership position on the morning of [inauguration day] should hold that position at the end of the day," she writes, adding that large parts of the State Department workforce are left-wing and inclined to oppose a conservative president's agenda.

That view echoes Trump's hostility toward what he calls the "Deep State," the government workers he accuses of undermining his initiatives. The 900-page project contains numerous proposals to bring such employees more firmly under presidential control. Tom Yazdgerdi, who leads the American Foreign Service Association, which represents State Department workers, warned that politicizing any part of the workforce would weaken its ability to give objective, expert advice.

Asked on the podcast "In the Room" to name a case in which State Department staff undermined Trump, Skinner said the opposition was "so broad-based it's hard to point out one." Her paper also sets out policy shifts, including a forceful stance toward China, a hallmark of Trump's outlook. On Russia's invasion of Ukraine she is more ambivalent, calling it "unjust" but offering few recommendations. She proposes fully defunding the Palestinian Authority of U.S. aid, scaling back support for LGBT rights in countries where the issue is divisive, and stepping up efforts to protect Christians abroad.

Trump has distanced himself from parts of the project, calling some recommendations "abysmal" and claiming he has "no idea who is behind" them, even though several authors served in his previous administration. WESA's Chris Potter contacted Skinner about her proposal and Trump's attempts at distance. She asked for his earlier articles on the project and stopped responding after he said he had written none.

Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, a University of Pittsburgh professor who has worked in foreign service and teaches governance and foreign policy, urged calm. She sees the document as people telling Trump what they think he wants to hear, and as many people competing for jobs if he wins. She believes American institutions are durable and that the forces that restrained Trump's first-term agenda would do so again. Efforts to purge government workers, for example, would prompt lawsuits from groups like Yazdgerdi's, and Skinner herself acknowledged on the podcast that no one would expect a treaty to be declared dead at 12:05 on January 20.

Murtazashvili said conservative distrust of rank-and-file government workers is understandable, noting that Biden also faced defiance from State employees over his Gaza policy. She attributed the problem to public service becoming more partisan, partly because political leanings increasingly shape where people live, shop and work. Even so, she cautioned that a politicized civil service is worrying. Foreign policy often swings sharply between administrations, she said, but that should not happen in areas such as drug regulation that affect daily life.

She also said Skinner's paper was more open to supporting Ukraine than she had expected, though Trump may not follow it, and some fear he could abandon Ukraine through a peace deal that rewards Russian aggression. "The things that worry me most," she said of a possible Trump return, "aren't what is in this report."