How Project 2025 became the blueprint for Donald Trump’s second term
Throughout the 2024 presidential election campaign, Donald Trump denied claims he intended to shape his second administration’s policies around Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a renewed conservative America. But despite his repeated denials, Trump 2.0 has adopted much of Project 2025 into the White House’s agenda.
The Heritage Foundation, the right-wing Washington think tank which published Project 2025, has provided policy guidance for Republican presidents since the Reagan administration. Despite the foundation’s longevity, Project 2025 has met with opposition from many quarters.
The 900-page publication, Mandate for Leadership: the Conservative Promise, was published in 2023. It went largely under the radar until Democrats and civil liberty champions established Stop Project 2025 during the presidential campaign. Essentially, Project 2025 consists of policy recommendations for each department of the executive branch.
The project has several broad objectives. It aims to reassert presidential power by removing federal agencies’ independence and appointing political loyalists rather than career civil servants. It sets out to dismantle the administrative state by cancelling initiatives and projects that do not match conservative aims.
It reinforces traditional conservative family values and rolls back on LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights. It removes regulatory constraints aligned with climate and environmental protections and weakens consumer protection laws. And it calls for increased deportations of illegal aliens and the imposition of harsh immigration restrictions.
Even before he had taken office, Trump and his team sought to replace career-long specialists in federal agencies with those that matched his own beliefs. His transition team used Project 2025 to guide its appointment of officials for the forthcoming administration. Reports quoting insiders within Trump’s team say that the team consulted a database of Trump loyalists created by the Heritage Foundation to fill vacancies.
Contributors to Project 2025 were also appointed to key roles. These have included including border tsar, Tom Homan, and CIA director John Ratcliffe. Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Committee, wrote a chapter of Project 2025 on the committee.
The principal author of Project 2025, Russ Vought, has been appointed as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) – the nerve centre of the federal government’s expenditure. Vought’s influence within the administration has led one journalist to call him “the real mastermind behind Trump’s imperial presidency”.
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The alignment of Trump’s policy decisions and Project 2025’s objectives continued after he was inaugurated on January 20. The raft of executive orders issued by Trump during the first few weeks reflected many of Project 2025’s ambitions.
CNN analysed the 53 executive orders signed by Trump in his first week as president and concluded that 36 of those orders mirrored proposals within the Heritage Foundation’s brief. The alignment spread across numerous departments.
Trump’s controversial reciprocal tariffs on US imported goods match Project 2025’s desire for free trade and its belief that the World Trade Organization’s most favoured nation principle is unfair. Although both Trump tariffs and Project 2025 have a foundation in economic nationalism, Trump has favoured a broad and aggressive approach compared to Project 2025’s more targeted aims.
The savings to federal expenditure proposed by Doge, the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk, are also broadly covered within the paper. A theme running throughout Project 2025 is ensuring value for taxpayers by reducing unnecessary government expenditure.
But while a large amount of Project 2025 has already been incorporated into the administration’s policies, there is still a significant number of recommendations and initiatives that remain to be implemented.
What’s still to come?
While Trump has already ended the use of federal taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion through Executive Order 14182, Project 2025 calls for stronger initiatives to support a pro-life position by threatening to withhold funding to states if they fail to adhere to new guidelines. These penalties could be incurred through states failing to report to the Center for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC) data on how many abortions take place within the state, for example.
The administration has also not yet matched Project 2025’s calls for increasing the defence budget to 5% of GDP. Earlier this month, however, Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, promised that their next budget proposal would include a $1 trillion defence budget. Hegseth posted on X that the money would be spent on ‘lethality and readiness.’
Trump’s recent criticisms of the refusal by Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, to lower interest rates might suggest that he agrees with Project 2025’s criticism of the Federal Reserve and its recommendation that it be abolished. But the market’s negative reaction to Trump’s attack on Powell looks likely to end any prospect of eradicating the Fed.
Perhaps a greater concern to Americans is Project 2025’s designs for social security. As part of the focus on fiscal stability, the authors of Project 2025 have recommended that the retirement age be increased from 67 to 69. Social security reforms have been discussed by the administration but yet to be put into place.
When questioned, Republican legislators have stopped short of telling constituents that Social Security is safe from change. After all, Trump maintained that he has no plans to either reduce social security payments or increase the retirement age.
However, just this week, Trump and Doge have announced cuts to the Social Security Administration (SSA), the body that administers payments. This has led to concerns for the former SSA director, Martin O’Malley, who suggested that the cuts would mean that future payments of vital benefits might be delayed.
Where the administration turns next is unclear. There are hundreds of policy recommendations within the 900-page document, some of which have been implemented in full, others only in part.
Nonetheless, Project 2025 has acted as a blueprint for much of the new Trump administration’s policies, even though the White House has shown some reluctance to incorporate all of the recommendations within the project.
There are signs, however, that the administration has not yet finished with Project 2025 and that the conservative wishlist continues to influence the administration’s policymaking decisions.
Dafydd Townley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.