Project 2025 represents a bold initiative by the Heritage Foundation laying the groundwork for a new conservative administration following the 2024 elections.
As political dynamics continue to shift in the United States, this project provides a comprehensive playbook outlining the principles and policies that conservative leaders intend to pursue.
KEY POINTS
- The Project focuses on various policy areas, including the economy, national security, and education.
- The Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank, is the primary organization behind Project 2025.
- During the 2024 election, Project 2025 served as a strategic blueprint for Republican candidates, helping them articulate a clear and actionable conservative agenda that could resonate with voters.
- Key themes include consolidation of power, an end to anything “woke,” an erasure of climate change as a real issue, economic policies, national security, and government efficiency.
- Project 2025 advocates for securing borders and mass deportations.
The essence of Project 2025 was to create a framework that not only resonates with conservative values but is also actionable and attainable. It seeks to unify various factions within the Republican Party, focusing on clear goals that can be communicated effectively to the American public.
It also seeks to unify the entire federal government by consolidating all of its power in one branch, in one person—President Trump. The plan is based on the Unitary Executive Theory.
The Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank, played a pivotal role in Project 2025. The organization is known for its extensive research and influence in shaping conservative policy.
By leveraging its resources and intellectual members, the Heritage Foundation worked to enhance the Republican Party’s chances in future elections (that included the 2024 presidential election.
With a focus on consolidating power and policy implementation through executive orders, Project 2025 is both a call to action for conservatives and a strategic blueprint for implementing and cementing the party’s agenda in our government..
What is Project 2025?
At its core, Project 2025 is an ambitious plan designed to outline a comprehensive conservative agenda that could be deployed by a Republican administration. It consists of detailed policy recommendations across key areas such as economic growth, national security, and social issues.
The central premise was to provide a clear and actionable policy framework that could be adopted by the next president, enabling a swift transition into governance.
The initiative also aimed to engage grassroots conservatives, policymakers, and thought leaders in developing and refining these strategies. Project 2025 hoped to equip Republicans with the insights and tools necessary to change modern government.
This collaborative effort seeks to bring unity among different conservative factions, ensuring that the party’s agenda aligns with the values and interests of its voters. Read the full digital manual online (opens in a new tab if you want to follow along with this guide).
The Heritage Foundation’s Role
The Heritage Foundation’s involvement in Project 2025 makes sense, as the organization has a long-standing history of championing conservative policies. It’s a hub for research, policy analysis, and advocacy, shaping the discourse around important national issues.
Using their expertise, members of the Heritage Foundation produced a set of recommendations that could drive the Republican agenda forward.
The Heritage Foundation’s network extends beyond just policy-making; it includes collaboration with lawmakers, activists, and various conservative organizations. This multifaceted approach ensures that the strategies proposed in Project 2025 are not only theoretically sound but also practical and implementable in real-world scenarios.
As such, the Heritage Foundation played an important role in mobilizing the party’s base and provided the necessary intellectual ammunition to support the Republican platform.
The executives responsible for the manual even created training videos to prepare people who would be in positions inside the government to hit the ground running and get as much done as possible in the beginning of the new administration.
Training Video: Left-wing “code words”
Why It Mattered in the 2024 Election
As the 2024 presidential election approached, Project 2025 gained increasing significance. In a political landscape of increasing polarization and varied voter interests, having a clearly defined conservative agenda could help distinguish Republican candidates from their Democratic counterparts.
The project aimed to address issues that resonated with voters, from economic stability and job creation to national security and cultural values. However, as the project became more well-known and talked about in the news, the public started to read the digital manual, and they didn’t like the autocratic agenda laid out in the guide.
At one point, actress Taraji P. Jensen looked into the camera during an awards show and warned viewers about the implications of Project 2025. She told the audience to search for it online and “read it.” The negative press the manual was getting lead to candidate Donald Trump’s effort to distance himself from it, claiming not to know anything about it.
Taraji P. Hensen wasn’t the only celebrity to call it out on the air. Kenan Thompson did as well.
The Trump campaign ended up releasing their own agenda, called Agenda 47. Anyone who read the policy proposals in this agenda could see how similar it was to Project 2025.
By offering a well-articulated program, Project 2025 sought to energize the Republican base, attract undecided voters, and effectively counter the narratives put forth by the opposition.
It underscored the importance of having a strategic plan that not only responds to current challenges but also anticipates future needs. In this way, the Project is not just a campaign tool; it is a foundational step toward shaping the future of the Republican Party.
Before going chapter by chapter, let’s look at some of the major actions the guide is urging PresidentTrump to take this term by executive order (and in some cases, he has already implemented them:
Policy Agenda
✔️ Cut overtime protections for 4.3 million workers
✔️ Stop efforts to lower prescription drug prices
✔️ Limit access to food assistance, which an average of more than 40 million people in 21.6 million households rely on monthly
✔️ Eliminate the Head Start early education program, which serves over 1 million children annually
✔️ Cut American Rescue Plan (ARP) programs that have created or saved 220,000 jobs
✔️ Restrict access to medication abortion
✔️ Push more of the 33 million people enrolled in Medicare towards Medicare Advantage and other worse, private options
✔️ Expose the 368,000 children in foster care to risk of increased discrimination
✔️ Deny students in 25 states and Washington, D.C. access to student loans because their state provides in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants
✔️ Roll back civil rights protections across multiple fronts, including cutting diversity, equity, and inclusion-related (DEI) programs and LGBTQ+ rights in health care, education, and workplaces
Specific Projects and Their Directives
Erase all LGBTQ, Transgender, and Climate Change Terminology
Any mention of “climate change” removed from federal government
LGBTQ or what they call the “Trans agenda” terminology removed
By “removed,”they mean erased from documents, policy, websites, etc.
If employee caught using “pronouns” in their government email signature, they were fired
Mentions of DEI scrubbed (but it didn’t stop at the government President Trump threatened private businesses, forcing them to end DEI programs. He threatened to withhold funding from universities that didn’t end their programs).
Secretary of State Pete Hegseth searched the Defense Department database to find and remove anything “woke.”
They ended up removing books from libraries on military bases, deleting a photo of the first bomber because the pilot named it after his mother, Enola Gay, and it was flagged.
Any award or photographs honoring the achievements of women or people of color in the military were removed.
The government had a “wall of words” like “integrity,” “honor,” etc., that someone had to paint over because one of the words was “diversity.”
Shut Down NOAA
The authors didn’t believe climate change was an issue
Remove every mention of it and shut down NOAA because “they are drivers of environmental regulation”
Not sure why they believed that, but the National Weather Service is part of NOAA and kind of important.
Overturn or cancel everything Biden accomplished to help the environment, slow climate change, or move the country forward with renewable energy projects
Increase the use of fossil fuels
Gut Abortion Access
Revive a 19th century law, the Comstock Act, to ban any abortion medications and materials preventing materials from being sent through the U.S. Postal Service
Reversal of the FDA’s approval of mifepristone
Mass Deportations
Target immigrant communities through mass deportations and raids
Separate families
Dismantle the asylum system
Abuse Warrantless Surveillance
Exploit the executive branch’s vast and unprecedented power to spy on Americans
Dismantle guardrails that prevent the president from abusing the executive branch’s power
Use Force Against Protesters
Violate the First Amendment to target journalists and protesters
Dismantle guardrails that prevent the president from abusing executive power
Linit Access to Voting
Abuse executive power to interfere in our elections by criminalizing the voting process and damaging fair representation
Censor Classroom Discussions
Censor academic discussions about race, gender, and systemic oppression
Roll Back Trans Rights
Remove federal nondiscrimination protections
Mandate discrimination against LGBTQ people by the federal government
Exclude trans people from serving in the military
Permit faith-based, taxpayer-funded contracts to exclude trans people from disaster assistance and care for unaccompanied refugee
What is in Project 2025? A Chapter-by-Chapter Breakdown
Chapter 1: A new administration
The first chapter of Project 2025 emphasizes the importance of readiness for a potential new administration. The problem with the government in its current state, the authors claim, is that it has been taken over by a “woke” ideology. This chapter discusses the necessity of an organized, efficient transition team that can hit the ground running on day one.
It argues for the president to fill his government with political appointees, arguing that Trump failed to fill enough appointees in his first term. “Empowering political appointees across the Administration is crucial to a President’s success,” state the authors. So is removal of any persons not loyal to the conservative cause.
“The next Administration must not cede such authority to non-partisan ‘experts,’ who pursue their own ends while engaging in groupthink, insulated from American voters,” states Project 2025.
The Heritage Foundation compiled a list of potential employees that the administration could trust and included it as a resource. Everyone on the list was vetted to ensure sufficient loyalty to President Trump and the conservative agenda.
Chapter 2: The Conservative Agenda for America
The author of this chapter is Russ Voght, the man Trump appointed head of the OMB ( Office of Management and Budget).
From Stop The Coup 2025:
Vought focuses on “the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power, by focusing on the untapped statutory powers of the OMB, within the Executive Office of the President (EOP).
The OMB controls “many statutory and executive procedural levers to bring the bureaucracy in line with all budgetary, regulatory, and management decisions,” Vought writes.
The OMB develops and enforces the president’s budget, manages agency personnel and performance, develops and oversees regulatory agenda, actions and federal information policy, and coordinates communication with Congress of testimonies and views on draft legislation.
Most importantly, Vought argues, “it has the only statutory tools in the White House that are powerful enough to override implementing agencies’ bureaucracies.”Among actions, Vought calls for putting OMB Program Associate Directors (PADs) who manage six vast Resource Management Offices (RMOs) personally in charge of apportionments’ – installments of allotted budgets for offices of National Security;
Natural Resources, Energy, and Science; Health; Education, Income Maintenance, and Labor; Transportation, Justice, and Homeland Security; Treasury, Commerce, and Housing.
Vought suggests creating a new layer of deputy PADS to replace career professionals who help manage the money within the big RMOs.Vought also calls for a strong and creative legal White House Counsel ready to battle other government departments who may disagree with the president’s actions “based on the mere assertion (and not proof) that the law disallows it or that, conversely, attempt to disregard the clear statutory commands of Congress.”
He also discusses myriad steps to bring regulatory agencies and actions in line with conservative goals, including creation of “regulatory advance teams” primed to consult with agencies. For specific agencies like the National Security Council, Vought calls for replacing directors/directorates not deemed sufficiently in line with the conservative agenda, and, on day one of 2025, sending home all non-essential NSA employees.
He also wants the NSC to have its own lawyer, and be fully incorporated into the White House, not answerable to other offices. At the National Economic Council, he would put the NEC in charge of coordinating all internal policy, working closely with the Council of Economic Advisers.
At the Office of the US Trade Representative, Vought focuses on an empowered USTA that can battle China and globalization to assure US trade policies reflect conservative goals.
Vought calls for an Executive Order to reshape the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and related climate change research, as well as sweeping changes to reduce the “litigation risk.” States Vought: “…the Biden Administration’s climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding.”
Vought devotes special attention to the Gender Policy Council, calling for its elimination, along with any guidance documents it promoted.
States Vought: “Abolishing the Gender Policy Council would eliminate central promotion of abortion (“health services”); comprehensive sexuality education (“education”); and the new woke gender ideology, which has as a principal tenet “gender affirming care” and “sex-change” surgeries on minors.”
He suggests naming a Special Assistant to the President to lead promotion of domestic policy on life and family in line with conservative values, working with the Domestic Policy Council.
Chapter 3: Restructuring Government Agencies
Chapter 3 contains a ton of information. Rather than describing all of it, we’ll use Stop The Coup’s breakdown of key points by topic:
PERSONNEL
Only political appointees from Office of Legislative Affairs should speak to Congressional staffers; all requests to pass to OLA
Support merit-based performance evaluations of federal workers
Reward managers and employees who implement conservative policies
Make MSBP main arbiter of federal personnel dispute cases, not EEOC
Use Schedule F to remove career employees and prior administration holdovers
Restore Trump-era Executive Orders to boost management rights vs. union power
Give president the power to fast-track personnel appointees, with empowered OMB
In Coast Guard, and military posts, “re-vet” promotions and hirings during Biden Administration; rehire personnel let go for refusing Covid vaccination, offer back pay
Reduce US Secret Service budget; reassign USSS personnel to ICE, Justice, emphasize protection roles
Eliminate the Office of Intelligence and Analysis
Hire more Schedule C/political legal appointees to Office of General Counsel to assure consistency of legal viewpoints in response to Congressional requests
CIVIL RIGHTS
Reduce size, authority of Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties; o put it and Privacy Office under Office of General Counsel, eliminate their access to review, advise on intelligence products
INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
Cooperate in the shrinking or elimination of the I&A (Intel, Advisory) role in the intelligence community
IMMIGRATION
Eliminate both Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman (OIDO) and Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman (CISOMB);
Issue policy to stop assisting illegal aliens and DACA applicants to obtain benefits
Move Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and Dept of Justice Executive Office for Immigration Review and the Office of Immigration Litigation to DHS control
Aggressively help to build US southern border wall
HOUSING, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND TREASURY
Only US citizens, ‘lawful’ permanent residents can use or live in federally subsidized housing
Deny US loans to non-US citizens, lawful permanent residents, students at schools that provide in-state tuition to illegal aliens Labor
Eliminate the two (of four) lowest wage levels for foreign workers Treasury
Equalize taxes between American citizens and working visa holders and quickly provide DHS with all tax information of illegal aliens
Chapter 4: Department of Defense and National Security
The author of this chapter is Chris Miller, from Trump’s first administration. People weren’t lying when they claimed Project 2025 was written by Trump allies and former staffers.
Key Proposals from Chris Miller
- Against Russia, US NATO allies should shoulder the burden of conventional warfare, limiting the US to a “nuclear deterrent” role
- Taiwan and Asian regional allies, with Australia, should create a collective defense model
- In the Middle East, the US should continue supporting Israel while pushing Gulf allies to patrol their own airspace and control their own missile defenses
- Importantly, the US must heavily invest to modernize its nuclear military capacity, since China and Russia are doing that. The US must avoid any threat of nuclear coercion, he argues
Key Points:
- Refocus the DOD on war fighting, chain of command accountability
- Adopt “irregular warfare” as a cornerstone of US military strategy abroad
- Design a system to purchase new or experimental weapons systems without breaking the law but avoiding DOD regulatory red tape; boost U.S. military sales
- Increase DOD support to DHS for domestic border security
- Limit China and its nuclear military capability by supporting a Taiwan “denial defense”
- In a major step, reverse the historic U.S. policy of deterrence-only to invest and adopt an offensive missile defense policy and a space defense policy
- Support allies to engage in, and shoulder, the burden of conventional warfare
- Expel individuals with “gender dysphoria” (transgender), cut public funding for transgender surgery or to facilitate abortion for servicemembers
- Enact a radical transformation of the Marine Corps, Force Design 2030
- Counter DOD diversity initiatives: eliminate “Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs” and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices and staff
- Monitor military schools to remove “Marxist indoctrination;” eliminate tenure for leftist scholars
- Invest in US CyberCom
Chapter 5: Department of Homeland Security | Immigration
National Security and this department is something that interests you, definitely check out the full chapter in the book (linked above). There is too much information, too many proposals and directives to list here.
Key points:
- Eliminate the Department of Homeland Security and create a super agency with 100,000 strong work force focused on law enforcement domestically, while limiting Office of Civil Rights role
- Drastically expand ICE’s mandate to arrest, detain, and expel undocumented immigrants
- Direct the Office of General Counsel to help make reforms legal or defend challenges to reforms
- Apply “irregular warfare” to create a militarized domestic surveillance corps against individuals or groups at odds with presidential / Project 2025 conservative agenda
- Use a novel approach to immediately place loyalists in temporary “acting” positions with unquestioned authority to decide policy — while sidestepping Congressional oversight
Chapter 6: Department of State
Key points:
- Remove all Biden officials and immediately place conservative loyalists in key decision-making positions via a novel strategy of appointing them in “acting,” or temporary positions, with possible decision-making authority, even as they await Senate approval
- Increase the number of loyalists in foreign policy positions
- In foreign policy, leverage career diplomats who align with conservative agenda
- Freeze and/or review all existing international treaties to assure they align with presidential agenda and foreign policy priorities
- Focus foreign policy on Iran, Venezuela, Russia, North Korea, and China; develop an Article X review of China policy and reverse Biden’s Iran policy
- Cut funding to international organizations that fund abortion or social policies that are viewed as counter to conservative values, including the WHO
Chapter 7: Intelligence Community
Key points:
- Revise the Executive Order related to the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 to give the next administration expanded powers to conduct domestic intelligence activities that might infringe on civil liberties and privacy
- Beef up and expand the intelligence community’s activities, including the FBI, and make greater use of technology to modernize and improve the IC’s work, especially compared to China
- Focus on China’s Communist Party as a major global threat; prioritize IC focus on China
Chapter 8: Media Agencies | U.S. Agency for Global Media
Key points:
- The USAGM and VOA need a complete reform – or be eliminated if that’s not possible
- The president and NSC should have oversight of the USAGM, or alternatively, the State Department’s Office of Global Public Affairs at the Department of State to assure messaging does not reflect any enemy “anti-American” messaging
- The National Security Council should oversee VOA content
- USAGM employees need better vetting; the agency is vulnerable to foreign spies
- The USAGM should never be used for domestic broadcast, only foreign
- Federal funding to PBS should be cut on grounds it has liberal bias
- Abolish federal funding to strip PBS, NPR (and Pacifica Radio) of noncommercial education (NCE) status as “left of the dial” stations with longer, low-frequency reach—This would force the stations to pay regulatory fees not paid by NCE stations
Chapter 9: Agency for International Development
Key points:
- Cutting USAID’s global footprint to its pre-Covid 2019 budget level
- “Deradicalize” agency programs and structures (DEI, gender reforms), and realign to reflect conservative Christian values and ideology.
- In foreign policy, make China a USAID priority focus, highlight US free market system
- Sharply reverse Biden policy: rescind all climate policies from US foreign aid programs
- Dismantle USAID’s DEI policy apparatus; stop DEI promotion
- Make anti-choice policies the key goal of USAID’s work
- Reinstate the “Mexico City Policy” (“Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance”) (PLGHA) that denies pro-abortion policies as a condition of receiving US assistance
- Remove all references, examples, definitions, photos, and language on USAID websites, publications, policies, contracts, and grants that include the terms: “gender,” “gender equality,” “gender equity,” “gender diverse individuals,” “gender aware,” “gender sensitive,” etc.
- Remove references to “abortion,” “reproductive health,” and “sexual and reproductive rights” and “controversial sexual education materials”
- Make “international religious freedom” central to USAID’s development efforts
- Assure groups given PEPFAR funds align with presidential agenda values
- Transfer away from large awards to large, “corrupt” UN agencies, global NGOs, and contractors to local, especially faith-based, entities already operating on the ground
SECTION: GENERAL WELFARE
Chapter 10: Department of Agriculture
Key points:
- Via Executive Order, reverse Biden administration regulations for food and animal safety, including safety rules for large-scale farming
- Remove Biden ‘Climate Smart’ regulations for environmental protection, climate change
- Push ‘America First’ agricultural production policies
- Decrease welfare access: enact work requirement for SNAP food program; tighten eligibility for food stamps, Thrifty Food, and WIC; K-12 school lunch program access
- End required food (safety) labeling; replace with voluntary labeling
- Reform USDA; revise its dietary guidelines
- Restore prior Trump Executive Order to promote timber sales, forest clearing
Chapter 11: Department of Education
Key points:
- Cut DoED as a Cabinet-level agency, reorder chain of command, put loyalists in charge
- Redirect federal dollars to state and local governments, champion alternatives to liberal, higher education schools: private charter, trade, technical, and faith-based institutions
- Reverse Biden’s student loan forgiveness program and crack down on loan enforcement
- Eliminate equity and diversity regulations in Title IX and VI rules (SOGI, CRT)
- Set up a Parental Savings Account program to fund parent’s school choice; boost parental control of classroom discussions and disclosure of school information to parents
Chapter 12: Department of Energy
Key points:
- Providing leadership/coordination on energy security and related national security issues
- Promoting U.S. energy economic interests abroad
- Leading the nation and the world in cutting-edge fundamental advanced science
- Remediating former Manhattan Project and Cold War nuclear material sites
- Developing new nuclear weapons and naval nuclear reactors
Chapter 13: Environmental Protection Agency
Key points:
- Support the efforts of the states making sure choices about the environment are in the hands of the people who live in those states
- Focus on only “tangible environmental problems”
- Reduce or eliminate “duplicative, wasteful, or superfluous programs”
- Reduce the economic costs of its actions on local communities
- Be transparent in what scientific studies the EPA uses to make decisions
This is not an exhaustive list of every chapter in the 920-page manual. Additional chapters will be added over the next few weeks. Bookmark this page and check back for more details. Otherwise, follow the link to the full book near the beginning of the article to read more now.
One of the key takeaways from Project 2025 is the emphasis on actionable strategies for implementing the proposed policies. Each chapter provides a clear outline of steps that can be taken to achieve the outlined goals, from restructuring government agencies to reforming healthcare and education systems.
Check out our Project 2025 Topic Hub for all related news and videos.
