(Bloomberg) -- Conservatives behind an extensive plan for reshaping the US government known as Project 2025 see it as a resource for the next presidency of Donald Trump, should he succeed in his bid to return to the White House. Democrats are eager to tie Trump to the plan, given that its more controversial proposals could turn off independent voters. Project 2025 echoes many of the positions Trump has taken in his campaign, and a number of people close to him are heavily involved in it. But Trump has distanced himself from the initiative, repeatedly lambasting it.
What is Project 2025?
The project, a collaboration spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation that has so far attracted more than 100 conservative groups, arose from a broad concern among Republicans that Trump wasn’t adequately prepared at the start of his term in 2017. It aims to ease the transition back to the White House and eliminate the infighting and legal challenges that marked the early part of Trump’s presidency.
More broadly, the initiative’s stated goal is to “rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left.” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said in July that the US was “in the process of the second American Revolution” — one he said would “remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Project 2025 gathers resumes of individuals interested in staffing a Republican administration and offers related training. The organizers say they are creating a “playbook of actions” for the first 180 days of a future Trump administration. In April 2023, they released a 900-page guide, called the Mandate for Leadership, that details policy recommendations. The sections are bylined by authors whose ideas aren’t necessarily shared by everyone involved, according to an introductory note.
Roberts said the plan isn’t just for a potential second Trump term, but for any future Republican administration, as well as leaders in Congress.
“The point about Project 2025 is that if they decide to open the policy atlas and say this is what we want to do, there is a plan there,” he said at a Bloomberg roundtable in July.
What policies does Project 2025 call for?
The policy guide includes proposals to:
- Dismantle the so-called “administrative state,” in part by making it easier to fire federal government workers. The argument is that career bureaucrats in federal departments and agencies have excessive power over policy making that should belong to political appointees devoted to the ambitions of the president.
- Crack down on illegal border crossings and increase deportations of undocumented immigrants by deploying the military to the borders; combining immigration agencies to simplify enforcement; working with Congress to increase funding for additional immigration officers and detention space; and imposing sanctions on countries that fail to accept people designated for deportation.
- Simplify the system for taxing personal income at the federal level. The highest earners would pay 30% and the rest would pay 15%; currently there are seven brackets and the rates range from 10% to 37%. Most deductions and credits would disappear.
- Reduce the corporate tax rate to 18% from 21%.
- Abolish the Department of Education.
- Prioritize fossil-fuel production and deemphasize environmental concerns by reducing regulation to encourage exploitation of US oil and gas reserves; working to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which offers tax credits and other incentives for the production of electric vehicles and renewable energy; and downsizing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is described as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.”
- Remove diversity, equity and inclusion considerations from the work of the executive branch and its policies, and ban transgender people from the military.
- Increase defense spending and expand the US nuclear arsenal.
- Outlaw pornography and imprison producers and distributors of it.
- Further regulate pregnancy and abortion, including by working with Congress to pass a restrictive nationwide abortion law; rescinding regulatory approval of drugs such as mifepristone used in medication abortion, the most common method of terminating a pregnancy in the US; and conducting expansive government tracking of every instance of “spontaneous miscarriage; treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child (such as chemotherapy); stillbirths; and induced abortion.”
What is Trump’s position on Project 2025?
Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social that he hasn’t endorsed any of Project 2025 and found some of its policy recommendations “absolutely ridiculous,” without singling out any of them. His campaign has repeatedly pushed back on Democratic efforts to tie him to the project.
How do the project’s proposals compare with Trump’s campaign rhetoric?
Neither the Trump campaign agenda nor the Republican Party’s 2024 platform offer proposals nearly as detailed as those drafted by Project 2025. But Trump has called generally for the destruction of what he calls the “deep state” bureaucracy, better border enforcement and mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, the abolition of the education department, an unleashing of the US fossil fuel industry and loosening of environmental rules, the strengthening of the military, and a rollback of diversity policies including protections for transgender people.
Trump also proposes to lower taxes. He wants a corporate rate as low as 15%. And he proposes renewing his 2017 cuts to personal income taxes, which retained the seven brackets but reduced the rate in most of them.
On abortion, Trump’s stance in the campaign departs from that of Project 2025. The initiative proposes that the next president work to pass a federal law that is as restrictive as Congress will support — Republican Senator Lindsay Graham has proposed limiting abortions nationwide after the 15th week of pregnancy — and using federal powers in other ways to reduce abortions. Trump, who has held a variety of positions on the subject, most recently has opposed federal legislation, saying abortion laws should continue to be set by each state. He’s also said he would not block access to mifespristone.
At the Republican National Convention in mid-July, the Heritage Foundation’s Roberts acknowledged there were differences between his group and a Trump agenda, saying, “We will work on those when we’re talking about specific legislative vehicles” once a new president is inaugurated. A spokesman for the foundation said, “We do not speak for President Trump or his campaign.”
Who, close to Trump, is involved in Project 2025?
The original director of Project 2025, Paul Dans, worked in the Trump administration as the chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management. Roberts said in a statement July 30 that Dans will be “departing the team.” The project’s associate director is Spencer Chretien, who served as the associate director of presidential personnel under Trump. Much of the policy guide was written by people who were high-ranking officials in Trump’s administration. Many have been floated as top contenders for positions in a second term. They include former Housing Secretary Ben Carson, former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, economist and informal adviser Stephen Moore, former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, and former Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russ Vought.
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