Project 2025: The radical blueprint that forecast Trump's biggest moves

Yahoo

22-03-2025

Project 2025, a radical plan for conservative government produced by the Heritage Foundation, was one of the most controversial topics during Donald Trump's campaign for re-election last year.
Critics claimed the prominent Washington think tank's 922-page document, whose authors included many of Trump's closest allies, was being used as a 'blueprint' by his campaign.
It presented a drastic change of ideological direction for America, in which executive power was centralised, regulation was slashed and government agencies were brought into line through the appointment of loyalists in key positions.
Among its more extreme positions were banning pornography, excluding the morning-after pill from the Affordable Care Act, and preventing same-sex couples from marrying or adopting. Trump's Democratic opponent Kamala Harris called it an 'assault on democracy'. Polls indicated that 63 per cent of voters 'strongly opposed' the document's contents.
By July, Project 2025 was perceived as enough of an electoral liability that Trump distanced himself from it. He called its contents 'ridiculous and abysmal' and repeatedly disavowed it. 'I know nothing about Project 2025,' Trump posted on Truth Social, his social media site. 'I have no idea who is behind it.'
During the presidential debate with Harris in September, Trump said: 'I haven't read it – I don't want to read it purposely. I'm not going to read it.'
Since Trump retook office, however, Project 2025 appears to have had a significant impact on his administration. He has appointed many of the key personnel involved with it to government positions. And from immigration to healthcare to tariffs, great swathes of Project 2025's suggestions are becoming policy, in some cases almost verbatim. On Thursday, Trump announced he was abolishing the Department of Education by executive order, a key reform called for by the document, formally entitled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.
For supporters, it is evidence of a renewed focus on bringing about meaningful change during his second term. 'It's actually way beyond my wildest dreams,' said Paul Dans, the former director of Project 2025 who resigned at the height of the political backlash last year, in an interview with Politico this week. 'It's not going to be the easiest road to hoe going forward. The deep state is going to get its breath back. But the way [Trump's team] have been able to move and upset the orthodoxy, and at the same time really capture the imagination of the people, I think portends a great four years.'
Although Project 2025 was one of several conservative policy platforms, which also included the America First Policy Institute, it attracted the most controversy. For some on the Right, this was because it dared to express what the Maga base was really thinking.
'[M]uch of Project 2025 is the backbone of what the movement believes, and so will continue to have impact whether [opponents] like it or not,' says Raheem Kassam, a former Nigel Farage staffer and Trump insider.
But critics fear that the changes are so drastic as to be unconstitutional, and might portend even more alarming developments down the line. Adrienne Cobb, an independent journalist, started Keep Track, a social media account, primarily on Reddit, to keep a running tally of how many Project 2025 ideas have been implemented. Already, more than a third of the proposals have been put into motion, she says.
'I started the tracker to help people understand what the Trump administration plans to do,' she says. 'My hope is that it will help us organise to oppose the administration's anti-democratic actions as well. We know what they're going to do next, they told us plain as day in Project 2025.'
Fears of possible overreach were heightened earlier this week when Steve Bannon, a key Trump ally, said he was 'a firm believer that President Trump will run again in 2028', and that people were 'working on' a solution to the problem that the constitution forbids anyone to serve more than two terms. His intervention came as a federal judge in Maryland ruled against Trump's cuts to USAid – a core component of Project 2025 – finding that they were probably unconstitutional.
Looking sector by sector, it is clear how influential the document has been.
Project 2025 advocated two possible paths to economic success: one advocated free trade, another protectionism. The latter, a pro-tariff policy to redress America's trade deficits, was written by Peter Navarro, a longtime loyalist who served four months in prison last year in connection to the January 6 2021 attacks on the capital.
'Trade policy can and must play an essential role in an American manufacturing and defense industrial base renaissance,' Navarro writes, but two forces 'are pushing America in the opposite direction.' The World Trade Organisation's (WTO) 'most favoured nation' rules encourage America's trade partners to adopt high tariffs, which have caused America's 'chronic' trade deficits and made it 'the globe's biggest trade loser and victim of unfair, unbalanced, and non-reciprocal trade.' Of particular concern was economic aggression from China.
Trump has chosen the way of the tariff, and appointed Navarro to be his senior counsel on trade and engineering. He immediately introduced a 25 per cent tariff on all steel and aluminium imports, as well as 25 per cent tariffs on other imports from Mexico and Canada and a 20 per cent tariff on Chinese imports. He has also threatened 200 per cent tariffs on alcohol from the EU. 'Tariffs are easy, they're fast, they're efficient, and they bring fairness,' Trump has said, adding that other presidents, including Republican hero Ronald Reagan, had not used this 'powerful weapon' because they were 'dishonest, stupid or paid off in some other form.'
Project 2025 said that the government's role in education should be limited to 'that of a statistics-gathering agency that disseminates information to the states'. The author of the chapter on education, Lindsey Burke, writes that 'families and students should be free to choose from a diverse set of school options and learning environments' and that the Department of Education should be eliminated.
Trump shut the Department of Education by executive order on Thursday evening. 'My administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department,' he said. 'We're going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible. It's doing us no good.' His government had already taken measures to halve the department's workforce and cancel dozens of programmes.
In the blueprint, Russell Vought, a former director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), wrote: 'The next conservative Administration will have a unique opportunity to realign U.S. foreign assistance with American national interests,' and lamented the 'gross misuse of foreign aid by the current Administration to promote a radical ideology that is politically divisive at home and harms our global standing.'
One of Trump's first acts in government was to freeze all USAid. Earlier this week Vought, whom Trump has reinstated as the director of the OMB, masterminded a questionnaire sent to several of the world's largest aid organisations, including those at the UN and the International Red Cross. Questions included some apparently designed to make it impossible for a large aid organisation to answer in the negative.
'Does this project reinforce U.S. sovereignty by limiting reliance on international organisations or global governance structures (e.g. UN, WHO)?' read one. Another asked aid agencies to confirm that no project included any elements of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion).
There have been challenges to the aid cuts. On Tuesday, Maryland federal Judge Theodore D. Chuang ruled that they were unconstitutional. But it seems the 'America first' tone set out by Project 2025 will continue to inform policy.
China is one of Project 2025's key strategic focuses, with recommended measures on defence, the economy, aid and social media all intended to weaken Chinese competition.
It argues that the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) needs to 'address TikTok's threat to national security'. It also advocates reforming the 'vast, intricate bureaucracy' of intelligence agencies, and argues the government 'needs to use these intelligence authorities aggressively to anticipate and thwart our adversaries, including Russia, Iran, North Korea, and especially China, while maintaining counterterrorism tools that have demonstrated their effectiveness'.
Trump was quick with his tariffs on China. One of the questions sent to aid agencies was 'Can you confirm that your organisation has not received any funding from the People's Republic of China?' He appointed Brendan Carr, another Project 2025 contributor and TikTok hawk, to run the FCC. But he paused the TikTok ban with an executive order on his first day in office, pending a possible agreed sale to an American entity. Despite his belligerent rhetoric, there were reports this week that Trump is seeking a meeting with China's president Xi Jinping, who he said will visit Washington in the 'not too distant future.'
The blueprint argued that 'the United States must be prepared to take appropriate steps in response, up to and including withdrawal,' from organisations that were not serving the US interest. It singled out the World Health Organisation (WHO), stating that the 'manifest failure and corruption of the World Health Organization during the COVID-19 pandemic is an example of the danger that international organizations pose to U.S. citizens and interests.'
One of Trump's first acts on day one of his presidency was to withdraw the US from the WHO. 'The United States intends to withdraw from the WHO,' said the White House's official statement, citing the 'organization's mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states'.
Project 2025 argued that any incoming government must work to 'eliminate Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs and abolish newly established diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff'. It also called for only the US flag to be flown at embassies and consulates and barred the display of Black Lives Matter and Pride flags.
On January 27, Trump issued an order reiterating his commitment to 'meritocracy and to the elimination of race-based and sex-based discrimination'. As part of this, 'the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall abolish every DEI office'. He also followed the Project 2025 policy on flags. 'Starting immediately, only the United States of America flag is authorized to be flown or displayed at US facilities, both domestic and abroad, and featured in US government content,' a US Department of State memo ordained. Big tech firms, including Meta, Google and Amazon, have responded to Trump's crusade against DEI by following suit, watering down or abandoning their own policies.
One of the key tenets of Project 2025 was the necessity of slashing the size of the federal workforce, reducing the 'agencies' budgets to the low end of the historical average' and 'maximising hiring of political appointees'. It also said that the 'logical place to begin would be to identify and eliminate functions and programs that are duplicated across Cabinet departments or spread across multiple agencies.'
With Elon Musk running the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Trump's administration has gone above and beyond the hopes of Project 2025 in terms of cutting the federal workforce. On January 20, the White House announced plans 'to reduce the size of the Federal Government's workforce through efficiency improvements'. Since Trump took office more than 30,000 federal employees have been fired, across different departments, although more than 25,000 were reinstated this week following the judicial ruling in Maryland. A budget proposal that passed the House of Representatives last month proposed $1.5-2 trillion (£1.2-1.5 trillion) in spending cuts over the next decade.
The blueprint argues for far stricter border controls, urging the government to 'adjust personnel and priorities to participate actively in the defense of America's borders, including using military personnel and hardware to prevent illegal crossings between ports of entry'. It also recommended repealing temporary protected status for some immigrants, giving more immigration authority to state and local government, pausing refugee resettlement and sanctioning countries who refused to receive deportees.
Trump appointed Tom Homan, a Project 2025 contributor, to be his 'border czar'. On day one of his presidency he directed authorities to 'take all appropriate and lawful action to deploy sufficient personnel along the southern border' with Mexico. Homan and Trump have promised vast increases in deportations, providing military aircraft to facilitate this. Days after his initial pledges, Trump used the threat of tariffs to force Colombia to back down over receiving deportees. He has changed the rules to allow undocumented migrants to be deported from anywhere in the US, rather than within 100 miles of a border. He has also suspended the entry of all undocumented migrants and reinstated a controversial 'Wait in Mexico' policy from his first term, under which non-Mexican migrants have to reside in Mexico while waiting for their asylum cases to be heard.
Project 2025 contains a range of measures designed to ramp up US energy production and row back on environmental regulation, including withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, blocking the enforcement of environmental justice laws, eliminating energy standards for appliances, ending subsidies for electric vehicles, and revoking Biden-era orders to put the climate at the centre of US foreign policy and use science to tackle it. 'A new Administration must immediately roll back Biden's orders, reinstate the Trump-era Energy Dominance Agenda', it says, adding it must also 'end the war on fossil fuels and domestically available minerals and facilitate their development on lands owned by Indians and Indian nations'.
Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement on day one of his presidency, and issued dozens of executive orders to facilitate Project 2025 goals. One called for the US to 'fully avail itself of Alaska's vast lands and resources for the benefit of the Nation and the American citizens who call Alaska home', others revoked Biden-era subsidies for electric vehicles. Trump also put hundreds of 'environmental justice' workers on leave from the Environmental Protection Agency, echoing another Project 2025 goal, although some have since been reinstated.
Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 during the campaign after vociferous opposition to its contents, particularly on abortion, tariffs and executive authority. The document did not enjoy unanimous support even within the Republican party.
Polling on his blitzkrieg first months is mixed, too. According to a recent Ipsos survey, 45 per cent approve of the job he is doing, but only one in four (26 per cent) approves of Musk shutting down federal government programmes that he decides are unnecessary. There is widespread support for deporting immigrants accused of crime.
For all Project 2025's apparent influence to date, many of its suggestions remain unfulfilled. They could yet become policy. These include dismantling the Department of Homeland Security, banning pornography and shutting down tech and telecoms companies that allow access to adult material. Slashing corporate and income taxes, abolishing the Federal Reserve and returning to the gold standard are also called for by the plan.
It advocates more walls along the southern border too, while Trump's focus has been on deportations. Trump has so far been more moderate on family issues than Project 2025 – which argued the government should 'maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family' and argued for the withdrawal of Mifepristone, an abortion drug, from the market.
Despite growing judicial rumbles, Trump still has a large mandate, with Republican majorities in the popular vote, the Senate, the House and the Supreme Court. He can pass as many of Project 2025's proposals as he wants. Judging by his first two months, there may be many more to come.
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