Project 2025
Project 2025 is a political initiative published in April 2023 by the Heritage Foundation with the goal of reshaping the U.S. federal government by consolidating executive power in favor of right-wing policies. It constitutes a policy document that suggests specific changes to the federal government, a personnel database for recommending vetting loyal staff in the federal government, and a set of proposed executive orders for the U.S. president to implement those policies.
The project's policy document Mandate for Leadership calls for the replacement of federal civil service workers by people loyal to "the next conservative president" and for taking partisan control of the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Commerce, and the Federal Trade Commission. Other agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Education, would be dismantled. It calls for reducing environmental regulations and realigning the National Institutes of Health with conservative priorities. The blueprint seeks to reduce taxes on corporations, institute a flat income tax on individuals, cut Medicare and Medicaid, and reverse as many of President Joe Biden's policies as possible. It proposes banning pornography, removing legal protections against anti-LGBT discrimination, and ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs while having the DOJ prosecute anti-white racism. The project recommends mass deportation of illegal immigrants. The plan also proposes enacting laws supported by the Christian right, such as criminalizing the sending and receiving of abortion and birth control medications and eliminating coverage of emergency contraception.
Project 2025 is based on a controversial interpretation of unitary executive theory according to which the executive branch is under the president's complete control. Analysts note that the approach would further reduce agency independence and centralize presidential control. PBS News Hour reporting has linked these ambitions to discussions of domestic military involvement, pointing to Trump's deployment of the National Guard to Washington, D.C., as a potential precedent. The project's proponents say it would dismantle a bureaucracy that is unaccountable and mostly liberal. Critics have called it an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan that would steer the U.S. toward autocracy. Some legal experts say it would undermine the rule of law, separation of powers, separation of church and state, and civil liberties.
Most of Project 2025's contributors worked in either Trump's first administration or his campaign for the 2024 presidential election. Several Trump campaign officials maintained contact with Project 2025, seeing its goals as aligned with their Agenda 47 program. Trump later attempted to distance himself from the plan. After he won the 2024 election, he nominated several of the plan's architects and supporters to positions in his second administration. Four days into his second term, analysis by Time found that nearly two-thirds of Trump's executive actions "mirror or partially mirror" proposals from Project 2025.
Background
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank founded in 1973, has had significant influence in U.S. public policy making. In 2019, it ranked among the most influential public policy organizations in the United States. It coordinates with many conservative groups to build a network of allies.The Heritage Foundation is closely aligned with Trump. The project's president, Kevin Roberts, sees the organization's current role as "institutionalizing Trumpism". At a 2022 Heritage Foundation dinner, Trump endorsed the organization, saying it was "going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do... when the American people give us a colossal mandate." Roberts said in April 2024 that he had talked to Trump about Project 2025; the Trump campaign denied this.
Vice President JD Vance wrote the foreword to Roberts's book Dawn's Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America. Some have claimed that Vance is connected to Project 2025 through shared views on policy matters.
Project 2025 was established in 2022 with Paul Dans as director to provide the 2024 Republican presidential nominee with a personnel database and ideological framework. According to the Johnson Amendment, 501 organizations like Heritage cannot explicitly promote a particular election candidate. The Heritage Foundation spent $22 million preparing staffing recommendations for a conservative government in 2025. This was much more than what the group typically does for its staffing recommendations because President Trump said he had terrible staff during his first term. Citing the Reagan-era maxim that "personnel is policy", some political commentators have argued that personnel is the most important aspect of Project 2025.
File:Former President Donald Trump Holds Campaign Rally In Rochester, New Hampshire.jpg|thumb|Many contributors of the Project have close ties to Donald Trump and his 2024 presidential campaign.|alt=Donald Trump at a campaign event in New Hampshire in January 2024
The Mandate for Leadership series has had new volumes released in parallel with United States presidential elections since 1981. Heritage calls its Mandate a "policy bible", claiming that the implementation of almost two-thirds of the policies in its 1981 Mandate was attempted by Ronald Reagan, and similarly, the implementation of nearly two-thirds of the policies of its 2015 Mandate was attempted by Trump.
In April 2023, the Heritage Foundation published the 920-page Mandate, written by hundreds of conservatives. Nearly half of the project's collaborating organizations have received dark money contributions from a network of fundraising groups linked to Leonard Leo, a major conservative donor and key figure in guiding the selection of Trump's federal judicial nominees.
Some of the authors worked for Amazon, Meta, and bitcoin companies directly or as lobbyists. One expert claimed inconsistencies in the plan are designed for fund-raising from certain industries or donors that would benefit.
The 2024 Trump campaign said no outside group speaks for Trump and that Agenda 47 is the only official plan for a second Trump presidency. Policy suggestions from groups in Project 2025 reflected Trump's own words. His campaign said it appreciated these groups' policy suggestions. On July 5, 2024, Trump denied any knowledge of Project 2025. Political commentators including Robert Reich, Michael Steele, and Olivia Troye dismissed Trump's denial.
Heritage briefed other Republican candidates on the project, but focused on policies Trump could implement.
Project 2025 is not the only conservative program with a database of prospective recruits for a potential Republican administration, though these initiatives' leaders all have connections to Trump. In general, these initiatives seek to help Trump avoid the mistakes of his first term, when he arrived at the White House unprepared. By reclassifying tens of thousands of merit-based federal civil service workers as political appointees in order to replace them with Trump loyalists, some fear they would be willing to bend or break protocol, or in some cases violate laws, to achieve his goals.
Advisory board and leadership
Partner network
By February 2024, Project 2025 had over 100 partner organizations. The Southern Poverty Law Center identified seven of these as hate or extremist groups.In May 2024, Russell Vought was named policy director of the Republican National Committee platform committee. The Center for Renewing America, founded by Vought, is on Project 2025's advisory board. CRA drafted executive orders, regulations, and memos that could have laid the groundwork for rapid action on Trump's plans when he won. The CRA identified Christian Nationalism as one of the top priorities for the second Trump term. Vought claimed that Trump blessed the CRA, and that his effort to distance himself from Project 2025 was just politics. Vought was Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget during his first term and was reappointed to the position for the second term.
In July 2024, Stephen Miller, a former Trump advisor, sought to remove his organization, America First Legal, from the Project 2025 list of advisory board members. Before leaving Project 2025, he appeared in a promotional video for it. In November 2024, he was appointed as an advisor to the White House for Trump's second term.
Connections to Trump
Project 2025 partners employ over 200 former Trump administration officials. Trump was not personally involved in drafting or approving the plan. Six of his cabinet secretaries are authors or contributors to the 2025 Mandate, and about 20 pages are credited to his first deputy chief of staff. By summer 2023, the project was seen as a fitting organization for Trump's young and loyal advisors.Project 2025 released a statement on July 5 saying the project "does not speak for any candidate or campaign" and that it is up to "the next conservative president" to decide which of its recommendations to implement. In July 2024, Trump reiterated his disavowal of Project 2025, but in the same month Project 2025 Director Paul Dans confirmed that his team had ongoing connections with Trump's campaign.
John McEntee, a senior advisor for Project 2025 and former Trump aide, said the project was doing valuable work in anticipation of Trump's second term. Christopher Miller, who was secretary of defense for the last month of Trump's first term, wrote the Mandate's chapter on the Department of Defense. Associate project director Spencer Chretien, served as associate director of presidential personnel during Trump's first term. He said it was "past time to lay the groundwork for a White House more friendly to the right".
Before his second term, many Project 2025 contributors were expected to have positions in the second Trump administration, and the administration was expected to use the database of potential federal employees the project recruited and trained. Peter Navarro, one of Mandate's authors, was appointed Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing.