What is Project 2025 and why is it alarming?

In a post on his TruthSocial platform last week, former President Donald Trump tried to distance himself from the extreme agenda of Project 2025. “I don’t know anything about Project 2025,” Trump wrote. “I have no idea who’s behind it. I disagree with some of the things they say, and some of it is absolutely ridiculous and pathetic. Whatever they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

Despite Trump’s apparent ignorance about Project 2025, a number of former Trump administration officials contributed to the nearly 1,000-page mandate, including former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, former Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli and Peter Navarro, Trump’s former top trade adviser. Trump also has deep ties to The Heritage Foundation, the group behind Project 2025, and dozens of conservative organizations that contributed to the plan.

Original Post, June 28

The general election is still about four months away, and with recent polls showing an incredibly close race, anything could happen in that time. But that hasn’t stopped former President Donald Trump, who has teamed up with leading Republicans and conservative figures and organizations to outline a plan to remake the federal government in their image.

The plan is called Project 2025 — a set of proposed policy changes that spell out how Trump, if elected in November, could fundamentally reshape the federal government to most effectively advance his far-right extremist agenda.

“It’s not enough for conservatives to win the election,” the project’s website says. “If we want to save the country from radical left rule, we need both a government program and the right people on the ground, ready to implement that program on day one of the next conservative administration. That’s the goal of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project.”

What exactly is Project 2025?

In short, Project 2025 is a massive, 920-page document that spells out exactly what the next Trump presidency will look like. It’s not just policy proposals — like immigration actions, education proposals, and economic plans — but rather a portrait of America that conservatives hope to implement in the next Republican administration, whether Trump’s or someone else’s. The document is a detailed blueprint for exactly how to achieve that vision, through recommendations for key White House staffers, Cabinet positions, Congress, federal agencies, commissions, and boards. It goes so far as to outline a vetting process for appointing and hiring the right people at every level of government to carry out that vision.

The plan’s opening essay, written by Heritage Project President Kevin D. Roberts, succinctly summarizes Project 2025’s goal: the promise to make America a conservative nation. To do that, the next presidential administration should focus on four “broad fronts that will determine America’s future.”

The four fronts include:

1. Let’s restore the central role of the family in American life and protect our children.
2. Abolish the administrative state and restore self-government to the Americans.
3. Let us defend the sovereignty, borders and wealth of our country from global threats.
4. To assure us of our God-given individual rights to live in freedom – what our Constitution calls the “Blessing of Liberty.”

The rest of the document details how the next Republican administration can advance its goals on these four fronts. It includes a comprehensive outline of what the White House and every single federal agency should do to reorganize its goals and day-to-day operations—from the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Defense, the Small Business Administration and the Financial Regulatory Agencies. Each branch of the executive branch has a detailed plan in Project 2025 that explains how it can advance its ultraconservative agenda.

Why should we worry about Project 2025?

As The New Republic notes, Project 2025 is “an incredibly detailed guide to turning the United States into a fascist haven.” Project 2025’s main document, the magazine explains, presents what is essentially “a Christian nationalist vision of the United States in which heterosexuality in marriage is the only valid form of sexual expression and identity; all pregnancies would be carried to term, even if forced or killed; and transgender and gender nonconforming people do not exist.”

It’s a terrifying vision of what life could look like for Americans, but what’s most disturbing about The 2025 Project is its playbook for the first 180 days of a hypothetical second Trump term. “Time is short, and conservatives need a plan,” the playbook says. “The Project will create a playbook of actions to take in the first 180 days of the new administration to quickly provide relief to Americans who are suffering under the left’s destructive policies.”

Among the numerous disturbing suggestions in the handbook is a detailed plan that essentially aims to purge the federal workforce of tens of thousands of workers in favor of hiring those who will follow the conservative principles of Project 2025. Paul Dans, a former Trump administration official who is director of the Presidential Transition Project 2025, told The Associated Press that the 180-day transition plan is “a clarion call to come to Washington… People need to put down tools, step away from their professional lives and say, ‘This is the moment of my life to serve.’”

Much of the 180-Day Playbook reads like a cult recruiting brochure, explaining how department and agency heads should vet potential candidates. “This book is functionally an invitation to you, the reader—Mr. Smith, Ms. Smith, and Ms. Smith—to come to Washington or support those who can,” Dans writes in the Playbook’s introduction. “Our goal is to assemble a united army of vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives who will go to work on Day One to deconstruct the administrative state.”

Who is behind Project 2025?

The 2025 Project is the brainchild of The Heritage Foundation, a 50-year-old conservative think tank that is one of the most influential right-wing organizations in the country.

For nearly half a century of its existence, the Heritage Foundation has used its resources, influence, and money to advance its conservative views in nearly every aspect of American life: through anti-abortion activism, voting rights suppression, anti-climate policies, and anti-LGBTQ activism.

Although The Heritage Foundation organized Project 2025, the initiative is actually a coalition of more than 100 right-wing groups, including notable groups like America First Legal, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, and Moms For Liberty. According to NBC News, a massive network of right-wing dark money groups affiliated with Project 2025, led by the Leonard Leo-connected Donors Trust, has seen a large increase in donations since the project was announced.

Chapters in Project 2025 and the 180-Day Playbook were written by “more than 400 academics and policy experts from across the conservative movement and the country,” the group says. They include former Trump administration officials and prominent right-wing figures such as former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, former Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli and Peter Navarro, Trump’s former top trade adviser.

Read the full Project plan for 2025 here.