Project 2025

Project 2025. Known formally as ‘The 2025 Presidential Transition Project.’ An initiative organized by the Heritage Foundation with the aim of promoting a collection of conservative and right-wing policy proposals to reshape the U.S. federal government and consolidate executive power should Donald Trump win the 2024 presidential election.

The Project asserts that the entire executive branch is under the direct control of the president under the unitary executive theory. It proposes reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers as political appointees, to replace them with loyalists more willing to enable Trump’s policies. In doing so, proponents argue that the change would dismantle what they view as a vast, unaccountable, and mostly liberal government bureaucracy.

The Project seeks to infuse the government and society with Christian values. Critics have characterized Project 2025 as an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan to steer the U.S. toward autocracy. Many legal experts have said it would undermine the rule of law, the separation of powers, the separation of church and state, and civil liberties.

Project 2025 envisions widespread changes to the government, particularly economic and social policies and the role of the federal government and its agencies. The plan proposes taking partisan control of the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Commerce, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), dismantling the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and sharply reducing environmental and climate change regulations to favor fossil fuel production.

The blueprint seeks to institute tax cuts, though its writers disagree on the wisdom of protectionism. Project 2025 recommends abolishing the Department of Education, whose programs would be either transferred to other agencies or terminated. Funding for climate research would be cut and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would be reformed according to conservative principles.

The project seeks to cut funding for Medicare and Medicaid, and urges the government to explicitly reject abortion as health care. The project seeks to eliminate coverage of emergency contraception under the Affordable Care Act and enforce the Comstock Act to prosecute those who send and receive contraceptives and abortion pills nationwide.

It proposes criminalizing pornography, removing legal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and terminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and affirmative action by having the DOJ prosecute “anti-white racism.” The Project recommends the arrest, detention, and deportation of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. It proposes deploying the military for domestic law enforcement. It promotes capital punishment and the speedy “finality” of those sentences.

Although Project 2025 cannot legally promote a specific presidential candidate, many contributors are associated with Trump and his 2024 presidential campaign. The Heritage Foundation employs numerous people closely aligned with Trump, and coordinates the initiative with various conservative groups run by Trump allies.

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts suggested in an interview that there would be a second American Revolution, which Democrats and others criticized as a veiled threat of violence. The project has been described as a “battle plan to regain control” of the government.

See: Project 2025: Blueprint for Eroding Democracy and Civil Liberties (July 25, 2024)