The Non-"Contributors" Contributors

Project 2025's hidden authors

Welcome back, KTB readers.

Project 2025, the far-right’s blueprint for MAGA-izing the government, has 30 chapters, most of which end with an “author’s note”: a brief, one paragraph acknowledgement thanking people who helped with the chapter.

I read all of those author’s notes, and I found that most people who get shout outs in them are also duly listed in Project 2025’s “Contributors” section (or are editors, production assistants, or authors of other chapters).

Most of them.

As I noted in last week’s KTB, the names of 37 individuals who are thanked in the author’s notes do not appear anywhere else in Project 2025.

That omission has made them much less famous than Project 2025’s other hands, as most exposés of Project 2025 have called out only the chapter authors and the people listed in the “Contributors” section. Being hidden in the authors’ notes has spared these 37 individuals the condemnation of journalists, bloggers, policy wonks, commentators, and everyone else raking Project 2025’s muck.

Let’s get these individuals the ignominy they deserve. Here are their names:

Some of these individuals are well-known MAGA; others are unfamiliar except in a very niche field of expertise; and some are just plain obscure.

But all of them helped write Project 2025. All of them are just as responsible as all the other scribes of MAGA’s Bible, even if their names didn’t make its “Contributors” list.

Last week, KTB named and shamed one of these 37 individuals. Today, we will name and shame another, and in future posts, we will call out more of the non-“Contributors” contributors.

Holding our breath

Clint Woods “won all his arguments, but lost his immortal soul.”

That is what Clint’s own X/Twitter profile says about him. I guess Clint was trying to be clever with that line, but he ended up being unintentionally ironic because that line is a quote from The Monkey Wrench Gang, a 1970s novel about protecting the environment from, well, people like Clint.

Clint grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and after college, he worked on environment issues at the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing think tank funded by the Koch brothers. Then he got a job as a Republican staffer for the House of Representative’s environment subcommittee.

Full of hot, unregulated air.

In those jobs, Clint helped design legislation to weaken environmental regulations, experience that landed him his next two gigs: executive director of the Association of Air Pollution Control Agencies, a club of state and local air quality agencies that want weaker air pollution laws; and Deputy Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation at the first Trump Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency.

Clint’s screw ups at EPA included misinterpreting air quality data to inflate by a factor of four the number of sites in California not meeting Clean Air Act standards; and publishing the recommendations of an infamous quack scientist who believes that exposing yourself to toxins and radiation is actually healthy.

Clint eventually left EPA for a job at Ohio State University. But days after Clint was hired, the Sierra Club complained, describing his work as “disastrous environmental destruction” which “no respectable institution should want to associate with.”

Student groups also condemned Clint’s hiring. Even the Columbus Dispatch joined in, hoping in an editorial that Clint’s work “will be a departure from his career to date.” Clint’s work wasn’t a departure, he was: he quit three months after being hired.

I guess Clint didn’t win all his arguments (no comment on his immortal soul).

Clint resurfaced at Americans for Prosperity, another right-wing think tank funded by the Koch bros. And after a one year stint there, Clint helped write Project 2025.

As I mentioned up top, Clint’s name is buried in an author’s note; he is thanked at the bottom of page 445, at the end of the chapter on the EPA. Clint is one of the far-right zealots responsible for Project 2025’s plans to MAGA-ize the EPA.

Clint has since left AFP and is now trying to poison the air of only one state: today, Clint is Commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. Sorry, Hoosiers. You hold your breath, literally, and the rest of us will do so figuratively as we await new MAGA assaults on the environment.

Author’s note

A shout out to your weirdo friend, You Have The Right To Remain Mouthy, and Ira Krakow’s Thoughts, all of whom have recommended KTB to their readers. Thanks for getting the word out and building KTB’s readership!

Also, a warm welcome to KTB’s new subscribers, those sent by the three Substacks I mentioned and those who found KTB, themselves. Thanks for reading.

Contact KTB

Got a hot tip? A recommendation? Additional info to add? A correction? Want to help write KTB? Click below or email me at KTB2025@protonmail.com.

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