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Established | April 2022[1] |
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Purpose | Reshape the U.S. federal government to support the agenda of Donald Trump |
Location |
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Services | Recruiting + training loyalists |
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 published by the Heritage Foundation that aims to promote conservative and right-wing policies to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power if Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election.[4][5]
The Project asserts a highly controversial interpretation of the unitary executive theory, according to which the entire executive branch is under the president's exclusive control.[6][7][8][9][10] It proposes reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers as political appointees in order to replace them with people loyal to the president.[11] Proponents of the project argue it would dismantle what they view as a vast, unaccountable, and mostly liberal government bureaucracy.[12] The project also seeks to infuse the government and society with conservative Christian values.[13][14] Critics have characterized Project 2025 as an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan to steer the U.S. toward autocracy.[13][15][16][17] Legal experts have said it would undermine the rule of law,[18] separation of powers,[5] separation of church and state,[19] and civil liberties.[5][18][20]
Project 2025 envisions widespread changes to economic and social policies and the federal government and its agencies. The plan proposes taking partisan control of the Department of Justice (DOJ), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Commerce, Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and Federal Trade Commission (FTC), dismantling the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and reducing environmental and climate change regulations to favor fossil fuels.[18][21] The blueprint seeks to institute tax cuts,[22] but its writers disagree on protectionism.[23] It recommends abolishing the Department of Education, whose programs would be transferred or terminated.[24][25] Funding for climate research would be cut,[26] and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would be made less independent, stopped from funding research with embryonic stem cells or using quotas to promote equal participation by women.[27][28] The project seeks to cut Medicare and Medicaid,[29][30] and urges the government to explicitly reject abortion as health care.[31][32] The project seeks to eliminate coverage of emergency contraception[29] and enforce the Comstock Act to prosecute those who send and receive contraceptives and abortion pills.[32][33] It proposes criminalizing pornography,[34][35] removing legal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,[35][36] and terminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs[5][36] and affirmative action[37] by having the DOJ prosecute "anti-white racism".[38] The Project recommends the arrest, detention, and deportation of illegal immigrants.[39][40][41] It proposes deploying the military for domestic law enforcement.[42] It promotes capital punishment and the speedy "finality" of those sentences.[43][44] It hopes to undo "[al]most everything implemented" by the Biden Administration.[45]
Although Project 2025 cannot legally promote a presidential candidate without endangering its 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, many contributors are associated with Trump and his campaign.[46][47][48][49] The Heritage Foundation employs many people closely aligned with Trump,[50][51][52] including members of his 2017–2021 administration,[53] and coordinates the initiative with conservative groups run by Trump allies.[13] Trump campaign officials have had regular contact with Project 2025, and told Politico in 2023 that the project aligned well with their Agenda 47 program, though they have said that the project does not speak for Trump or his campaign.[12][54][55][56] The project's controversial proposals led Trump and his campaign to distance themselves from the project in 2024—saying he knows "nothing about it" and calling unspecified parts of it "ridiculous and abysmal".[50][57][58][59] Some critics have dismissed Trump's claims, pointing to various people close to Trump who helped draft the project, his endorsement of the effort in 2022, the many contributors who are expected to get leadership roles in a future Trump administration, and the 300 times Trump is mentioned in the plans.[60][61][62][63]
The project—which started in April 2022
about2025
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Haberman, Savage & Swan 2023
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Mascaro-2023
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Most provocatively, Vance has suggested in a series of interviews this year that Trump should defy the Supreme Court if the justices invalidated the effort....Despite the objectively dubious legal merits of Schedule F, this Supreme Court might very well sign off on it if Trump is elected and pushes some version of it again in a second administration.
'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.'
The unitary executive theory gained steam through the initiative of conservative presidential administrations (Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush) and a systematic effort to articulate and defend the theory in legal scholarship. Chief Justice Roberts's straightforward, briefly reasoned opinion in Seila reflects the success of the conservative legal movement in making the theory plausible. Justice Kagan's piercing dissent lays bare how contested this reasoning is. Taken together, the conservative push for a unitary executive and the battle between Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kagan should leave readers with the sense that the case is 'political' in a different sense.
biden assails
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).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.
Washington Post July 12, 2024
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Larson-2024
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).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.
Cranston-2024
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).The Economist-2023
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Stone-2024
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Schofield-2025
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Skibell-2024
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Barron-Lopez-2024
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Park-2024
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Yang-Zahn-March242024
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Dans & Groves 2023
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Thompson-May142024
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).heritage.org-2024
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Brownstein
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Savage-Haberman-Swan-Nov112023
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).plot revenge
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Sarat-2024
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).[Jeffrey] Clark also helped draft portions of the Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump term, including outlining the use of the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement, as first reported by the Washington Post.
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.
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.
CNN review
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Treene-2024
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Last week, former President Donald Trump attempted to distance himself from "Project 2025," a sweeping plan to overhaul the federal government proposed by a closely aligned conservative group.
Given Heritage's influence – the organization is full of the former president's staff, and the person leading Project 2025, Paul Dans, is a former Trump administration official who told a recent gathering of religious broadcasters that he expects to return to the White House if Republicans are victorious this fall...
Arnsdorf-20240516
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Willacy-2024
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Snopes
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).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.
Smith-2024
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).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.
Durkee
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).© MMXXIII Rich X Search. We shall prevail. All rights reserved. Rich X Search