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Established | April 21, 2022[1] |
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Location |
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Services | Recruitment and training of government workers loyal to Donald Trump |
Director | Paul Dans (until August 2024) |
President | Kevin Roberts |
Publication | Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (2023) |
Parent organization | The Heritage Foundation |
Budget | $22 million[2] |
Website | www |
This article is part of a series on |
Conservatism in the United States |
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Project 2025 (also known as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project)[3] is a political initiative to reshape the federal government of the United States and consolidate executive power in favor of right-wing policies. The plan was published in April 2023 by The Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think tank, in anticipation of Donald Trump winning the 2024 presidential election.[4][5]
The ninth iteration of the Heritage Foundation's Mandate for Leadership series, Project 2025 is based on a controversial interpretation of the unitary executive theory that states that the entire executive branch is under the complete control of the president.[6][7] The project's proponents say it would dismantle a government bureaucracy they say is unaccountable and mostly liberal.[8] Critics have called it an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan[9][10][11] that would steer the U.S. toward autocracy.[12] Legal experts say it would undermine the rule of law,[13] separation of powers,[5] separation of church and state,[12] and civil liberties.[5][13][14]
The project calls for merit-based federal civil service workers to be replaced by people loyal to Trump and to take partisan control of key government agencies, including the Department of Justice (DOJ), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Commerce (DOC), and Federal Trade Commission (FTC).[15] Other agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Education (ED), would be dismantled or abolished.[16] It calls for reducing environmental regulations to favor fossil fuels and proposes making the National Institutes of Health (NIH) less independent while defunding its stem cell research.[17] The blueprint seeks to reduce taxes on corporations, institute a flat income tax on individuals,[18] cut Medicare and Medicaid,[19][20] and reverse as many of President Joe Biden's policies as possible.[21][22] It proposes criminalizing pornography,[23] removing legal protections against anti-LGBT discrimination,[24][25] and ending diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs[5][25] while having the DOJ prosecute anti-white racism instead.[26] The project recommends the arrest, detention, and mass deportation of illegal immigrants,[27][28] and deploying the U.S. Armed Forces for domestic law enforcement.[29] The plan also proposes enacting laws supported by the Christian right,[9][30] such as criminalizing those who send and receive abortion and birth control medications[31][32][33] and eliminating coverage of emergency contraception.[19]
Most of Project 2025's writers and contributors worked in either Trump's first administration (2017−2021) or his 2024 election campaign.[a] Several Trump campaign officials maintained contact with Project 2025, seeing its goals as aligned with their Agenda 47 program.[8][39][40][41] Trump later attempted to distance himself from the plan.[b] After he won the 2024 election, he nominated several of the plan's architects and supporters to positions in his second administration.[49][50] 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.[51]
The project—which started in April 2022...
While many of the Project 2025 proposals are inspired by Trump, they are being echoed by GOP rivals Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy and are gaining prominence among other Republicans.
'And constitutional scholars that I have spoken to have said that the decision, that Supreme Court decision, could strengthen the basis of Project 2025, which is known as the unitary executive theory, which essentially says that the president has total control over the executive branch, over all the federal agencies.'...'Professor Moynihan added, Amna, that ultimately the Supreme Court decision could help any future president justify getting rid of longstanding independence of the Justice Department or other agencies that are known to be independent, that it could allow them to justify totally doing away with that.'
For Trump personally, of course, this is a live-or-die agenda, and Trump campaign officials acknowledge that it aligns well with their own 'Agenda 47' program.
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Project 2025's blueprint envisions dismantling the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI; disarming the Environmental Protection Agency by loosening or eliminating emissions and climate-change regulations; eliminating the Departments of Education and Commerce in their entirety.
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The Heritage Foundation, the influential group behind Project 2025, has laid out sweeping reforms of virtually every aspect of government, including a plan that critics warn will line the public service with employees loyal to a Republican commander-in-chief, as well as providing an ultra-conservative framework for policies. Its stated goal is to undo most everything implemented in the previous four years of U.S. President Joe Biden's administration.
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The news reports prompted Trump campaign senior adviser Susie Wiles to complain to the project's director, Paul Dans of the Heritage Foundation, saying that the stories were unhelpful and that the organization should stop promoting its work to reporters, according to a person familiar with the call.
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Of the 38 people involved in the writing and editing of Project 2025, 31 of them were nominated to positions in Trump's administration or transition team – meaning 81% of the document's creators held formal roles in Trump's presidency.
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Officials from PPO and Project 2025 are in regular contact with Trump campaign advisers, though the groups' activities are officially separate and unsanctioned.
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Campaign officials once told Politico Project 2025's goals to restructure government ... indeed align with Trump's campaign promises. But in a November 2023 statement, the Trump campaign said: "The efforts by various non-profit groups are certainly appreciated and can be enormously helpful. However, none of these groups or individuals speak for President Trump or his campaign." Without naming Project 2025, they said all policy statements from "external allies" are just "recommendations".
Former President Donald Trump distanced himself on Friday from Project 2025—a controversial package of conservative policy ideas by the Heritage Foundation
While Donald Trump has publicly distanced himself from it
Trump, meanwhile, has publicly distanced himself from the plan.
Of the 37 authors of the project's core agenda, 27 came from Trump's orbit...'It's totally false he doesn't know what P25 is,' one former senior adviser said of Trump's remarks. 'Privately, he is of course talking to Heritage, and [Heritage president] Kevin Roberts has reportedly even met with Trump on P25.'...There is a good chance, though, that he will use at least the project's list of loyalists to staff a second administration.
The most detailed articulation of what a second Trump term would look like was cobbled together by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. Called 'Project 2025,' it is a book-length presentation of a sweeping overhaul of government and governance. It is also, in the current view of the Trump campaign, an annoyance: It gives Trump's opponents something to point to and elevate to voters as unacceptable, even though it isn't actually offered by Trump himself.
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