What is Project 2025

Funded and organized by the Heritage Foundation; the Presidential Transition Project, known as Project 2025, is supported by a coalition of more than 100 right-wing organizations and has been described as a significant step toward authoritarianism for our country by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. It is an outline for the first 180 days in office, should Trump be elected in November.

On July 15, American historian and political author Heather Cox Richardson led a discussion about what is included in Project 2025 and why we should understand it before we vote. You can see that discussion HERE.

The Heritage Foundation is the co-sponsor of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Trump, despite leading an insurrection and his conviction on 34 criminal counts, will become the official Republican nominee for president.

Heritage Foundation welcome banner at the RNC convention in Milwaukee. The Heritage Foundation was the sponsor of the RNC convention.

While Trump is trying to distance himself from the bad press Project 2025 is receiving, claiming he “knows nothing about it” Trump has simultaneously said he “doesn’t agree” with parts of it but also that he wishes conservatives “luck” in making it a reality. If elected president in November, Trump could play a significant role in making Project 2025 a reality.

The Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts was even photographed on Donald Trump’s private jet.

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Trump chose J.D. Vance as his running mate. Vance wrote a glowing forward to the Heritage Foundation’s president’s upcoming book.

While Trump has been vague on the specifics of what he’ll do if he is elected in November, he has talked about what he calls Agenda 47, which indicates how he would govern. Parts of Trump’s Agenda 47 closely mirror initiatives of Project 2025.

Project 2025 was written by former Trump Administration officials and members of Trump’s current presidential campaign staff. They are the people Trump will tap to fill Administration positions and set policy if he is elected in November.

76% of Project 2025’s authors worked for Trump.

54% of Project 2025’s contributors worked for Trump.

Trump’s name appears on 194 pages.

Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, recently called Project 2025 the “Second American Revolution” and said it could be “bloodless if the Left allows it to be” which many took to mean that if people protested Project 2025s gutting of the government’s system of checks and balances, they would be met with violence from people on the Right, pitting the country against one another in the same way it was during the Revolutionary War.

Many of the initiatives of Project 2025 would have to be accomplished through Trump’s Executive Orders were he to become president, since it is unlikely they would be approved through Congress, even with a Republican majority due to their extremism. The authors of Project 2025 have already begun drafting those Executive Orders.

Project 2025 erodes the system of checks and balances in our government, placing significantly more power in the hands of the President, who the Supreme Court recently decided was immune from most prosecution for actions taken while in office. The entire Executive Branch of government would be placed under presidential control; Project 2025 erases entire departments and eliminate interdepartmental independence.

Parts of Project 2025 rely heavily on the mass firing of federal workers by enacting Schedule F. Those jobs will then be reclassified as political appointees, something Trump attempted to do during his term. It would end what has been considered a key stability of the federal government, which has relied on the expertise of employees who’s jobs don’t end with every presidential election. Project 2025 calls for the firing of as many as 50,000 federal employees that may not be considered “conservative” enough. Following the mass firing, appointees of Trump loyalists will be made, as determined by their experience, conservative ideology as determined by answers to questionnaires and monitoring of their social media posts relating to topics like abortion and immigration. Recruting and training of this data base of candidates has already begun through a system developed by Project 2025 partners and technology company Oracle. As of April 2023, several thousand potential political recruits had already applied.

Some of Project 2025 initiatives include:

**A conservative fact-check by ‘The Dispatch’, a subscription-based online magazine for conservatives founded by conservatives Jonah Goldberg, Stephen F. Hayes, and Toby Stock, disputes a few of the claims being attributed to Project 2025. Several of The Dispatch’s staff (including Hayes) are alumni of The Weekly Standard, a neoconservative political magazine, which is now defunct. The funders of ‘The Dispatch’ are the same billionaires behind Project 2025. It should also be noted that the Heritage Foundation President made clear they are intentionally not making public all parts of this plan. In some of the Project 2025 initiatives listed below, we indicate when an initiative, while not specifically included in the publicly released portion of Project 2025, is one for which the Heritage Foundation and its partner organizations have specifically advocated and we included the link to the full Project 2025 document.

while the Heritage Foundation and its partner organizations have not included a federal abortion ban in Project 2025, they have advocated for it outside of this document and the initiatives that are included would effectively eliminate legal abortion care in the United States;
abortion would no longer be considered healthcare by the Dept. of Health and Human Services;
prevents pharmacies from filling prescriptions for abortion pills;
while not included in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation has called for criminalizing abortion providers;
restricts contraception access;
defunds Planned Parenthood and other healthcare organizations that provide abortion care;
allows employers to opt out of covering contraceptive medication under insurance plans;
nearly 48 million women of reproductive age would lose guaranteed no-cost access to emergency contraception;
bans IVF, although not specifically mentioned in the publicly released portion of Project 2025, this is something for which the involved organizations have advocated;
cuts to Social Security are not specifically mentioned, although the Heritage Fund and others have proposed raising the retirement age to 70 or 72;
advocates for time limits and lifetime caps for Medicaid;
steeply cuts Medicaid funding by instituting block grants and per capita caps;
recommends ‘adjustments’ to overtime pay, which would disadvantage employees by allowing employers to overload busy workweeks with extra-long shifts and then take advantage of slow periods through under-scheduling
eliminates the Department of Education;
Christian religion is taught in schools;
higher taxes for working class due to instigation of a flat tax while giving larger tax breaks to corporations and the 1% by dropping the corporate tax rate from 21% to 18%;
while Project 2025 does not directly call for an end to the Affordable Care Act, the policies it includes would particularly harm people in states like Wisconsin which have not accepted the Medicaid expansion;
shutters LGBTQ+ health programs;
prevents LGBTQ+ people from serving in the military;
eliminates DEI efforts to include LGBTQ people, women and historically excluded communities;
while Project 2025 doesn’t directly call for the end of marriage equality, it calls for the government to only recognize a “biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family”;
makes heterosexuality the only ‘valid’ form of sexual expression and identity and forbids the words ‘sexual orientation’ to be used in any federal legislation;
repeals federal policies that assist struggling single mothers;
mass tent internment camps for immigrants without due process and for homeless people;
ends the Flores Settlement Agreement, which outlines protection and standard of care for immigrant children while in U.S. custody mass deportations;
eliminates the expansion of the electrical grid for wind and solar energy;
although ending birth right citizenship is not specifically mentioned in the publicly released Project 2025, it is something the Heritage Foundation and partner organizations support;
ends green energy initiatives;
ends free and discounted school lunch program for millions of students;
eliminates the Department of Education;
ends current breaks on prescription medications the Biden Administration fought for;
ends $35 insulin cap;
ends ability of Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription medications which has lowered costs;
makes pornography illegal and imprisons people who create it;
while Project 2025 doesn’t specifically call for the use of the U.S. military to break up domestic protests, it does leave it to the president’s discretion;
calls for the reevaluation of military hybrid and remote work policies;
outsources many military core health care services to private companies;
gives the president the power to reduce the number of military generals;
the Heritage Foundation has called for significant changes in military BAH, although they are not outlined specifically in Project 2025;
takes away worker’s ability to organize for better wages/conditions;
exploits child labor;
controls local school curriculum and books, specifically dealing with American Black history and LGBT people;
restructures the FBI, eliminating term limits for the director and making that person only answerable to the President;
ends cybersecurity efforts to combat dis- and misinformation;
ends protections for DREAMERs, children who were brought to America without documentation;
reverses policies that meant to prevent discrimination in housing;
sells off public housing units for poor and low-income families to benefit real estate developers;
eliminates the Food and Drug Administration;
downsizes the Environmental Protection Agency significantly and eliminates its focus on climate change;
slashes funding for research on green energy and climate mitigation;
eliminates the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency (weather monitoring);
puts increasing American tax dollars into religious schools;
veterans are expected to be particularly impacted by Project 2025’s political firings as they make up approximately 30% of government employees;
privatizes veterans healthcare services to for-profit entities;
ends regulations put in place to protect the environment and workers.

How do we know Republicans will enact Project 2025 if Trump is elected in November? They’ve already overturned Roe, attacked IVF and contraceptive access, established the data base for filling politically fired government workers and have already begun enacting some of these initiatives in Republican-led states.

Trump’s Vice Presidential pick: J.D. Vance and Project 2025

J.D. Vance has almost no public service experience, only 1.5 years, yet would be a heartbeat away from the presidency. Sarah Palin had more experience when she was nominated for Vice President. Vance was a venture capitalist before being elected to the Senate.

Like Donald Trump, Vance is an election denier and has already begun actively sowing doubt about the 2024 election results. He has said he would not have certified the 2020 election.

Vance has called gun violence “fake problems” and referred to efforts to address it “a huge distraction.” He supports abolishing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which enforces federal gun laws. He is supported by the National Rifle Association.

J.D. Vance has publicly supported many of the initiatives of Project 2025. His support of these initiatives and of now fealty to Donald Trump is why he was selected as Vice President.

Vance has equated abortion with murder and has supported abortion bans without exception for rape or incest, stating an unwanted pregnancy is merely an “inconvenience.” Last year he opposed Issue 1, which enshrined abortion into law in his home state of Ohio. He has earned an A+ rating from anti-abortion group, Susan B. Anthony List.

Vance has also indicated he believes people, even those in violent marriages, should stay together for the sake of their children. The Heritage Foundation has publicly advocated for an end to no-fault divorce.

Last year, his first in elected office, Vance introduced a Senate bill that sought to criminalize those who provided medically approved gender affirming care to minors as part of healthcare to trans youth including puberty blockers, hormonal treatments and/or surgical interventions to minors.

Vance has expressed skepticism about climate change and spoken in favor of fossil fuels over clean energy sources.