As Donald J. Trump was closing in on the 270 electoral votes that sealed his astounding political victory in the early hours of Wednesday, one of the first groups to salute him was the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, a policy playbook that Mr. Trump had feigned having any connection to during the campaign.
“The entire conservative movement stands united behind him as he prepares to secure our wide-open border, restore the rule of law, put parents back in charge of their children’s education, restore America to its proper place as a leader in manufacturing, put families and children first, and dismantle the deep state,” Kevin Roberts, the foundation’s president, said in a statement.
Democrats had spent months trying to tie Mr. Trump to the 900-page plan to overhaul the federal government, one that they had said offered an unvarnished preview of a second-term agenda bent on giving him unchecked powers to exact retribution while undermining abortion rights and climate change reforms.
Despite several of the plan’s authors having served in Mr. Trump’s administration during his first term in the White House, he repeatedly disavowed it on the campaign trail, including when he debated Vice President Kamala Harris. He falsely claimed that he knew nothing about it or the people involved in it.
Across the battleground states, voters were inundated with television ads and billboards that tried to cast Mr. Trump as a driving force for Project 2025.
Here is what to know about Project 2025, and who is behind it.
What is Project 2025?
Project 2025 was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation and like-minded conservative groups before Mr. Trump officially entered the 2024 race. The Heritage Foundation is a think tank that has shaped the personnel and policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency.
The project, which the foundation began putting together in 2022, was intended as a buffet of options for the Trump administration or any other Republican presidency.
What does Project 2025 propose?
Much of the plan’s nearly 900 pages detail extreme executive-branch overhauls. Among many recommendations, Project 2025 lays out plans for criminalizing pornography, disbanding the Commerce and Education departments, rejecting the idea of abortion as health care and shredding climate protections.
It calls out the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service, as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” And it backs deploying the military “to assist in arrest operations” along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Beyond the policy proposals, something else comes up over and over again in the document — Mr. Trump and the Trump administration, which are mentioned hundreds of times.
A former Trump administration official and climate change denier, appearing in a leaked training video for Project 2025, emphasized that the next Republican president must be focused on reversing the federal government’s current environmental policies.
“If the American people elect a conservative president, his administration will have to eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere,” said Bethany Kozma, a former deputy chief of staff at the United States Agency for International Development.
The video is one of several that were obtained by ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom, and the journalism project Documented.
What are Trump’s ties to Project 2025?
Portions of the plan were driven by people who were top advisers to Mr. Trump during his first term and would most likely serve in prominent roles during his second term.
Russell T. Vought, Mr. Trump’s former budget director, led a section of Project 2025 that dealt with executive orders. Mr. Vought was the policy director for the Republican National Convention, and the national party is controlled by Trump allies. The party adopted a new policy platform that reflected priorities laid out on the Trump campaign website. Another person involved in Project 2025 is John McEntee, a former White House personnel chief who began Mr. Trump’s systematic attempt to sweep out officials deemed to be disloyal in 2020.
In a post on his own social media site, Truth Social, Mr. Trump wrote in July that he had no idea who was behind Project 2025. “Some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” he wrote. He did not specify which items he was talking about.
After weeks of criticism, Project 2025’s director, Paul Dans, stepped down that same month. The Trump campaign said the project’s demise “would be greatly welcomed.”
Mr. Dans, who has met with Trump campaign officials and visited Mar-a-Lago, stood by his project’s policies and asserted independence from the former president’s efforts.
What are Trump’s plans for a second term?
Mr. Trump has made no secret about his plans to gut civil-service protections, conduct the largest mass deportation effort in U.S. history, impose sweeping tariffs and target his enemies using presidential powers. His allies have developed a legal rationale to erase the Justice Department’s independence from the president, and several of his closest advisers had vetted lawyers seen as more likely to embrace aggressive legal theories about the scope of his power.
Some of this, though not all of it, can be found in the Trump campaign’s own policy platform called Agenda47.
How do the Trump campaign plans and Project 2025 differ and overlap?
There are a few ways the two plans differ.
One is on abortion. Project 2025 takes an aggressive approach to curtailing abortion rights, stating that the federal Health and Human Services Department “should return to being known as the Department of Life” (it was never known by that name) and that the next conservative president “has a moral responsibility to lead the nation in restoring a culture of life in America again.” Agenda47, however, does not mention abortion once.
Mr. Trump, who has vacillated over the years on the issue of abortion, often takes credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade as a result of his appointment of three anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court during his presidency. When he debated Ms. Harris in September, he said that abortion rights should be decided on a state-by-state basis.
Despite the differences between Project 2025 and Mr. Trump’s stated vision for his second term, there are numerous similarities.
One overlap: eroding the independence of the Justice Department. Mr. Trump has frequently criticized the legitimacy of the department’s investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 election, and he has said he would “completely overhaul” it. Project 2025 argues that the department suffers from bureaucratic bloat and must be reined in because it is teeming with employees committed to a “radical liberal agenda.”
On immigration, Mr. Trump has made no secret of his plans to hold the largest mass deportation effort in history. Project 2025, likewise, suggested the removal of any and all “immigration violators.”
Project 2025 sought to bring an end to the federal Education Department. At a rally on Sept. 7, Mr. Trump pledged to ultimately dismantle the department and give states the final say on public education.
The campaign and Project 2025 also share equal demands to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs and the “toxic normalization of transgenderism,” as Project 2025 calls it. In many rallies, Mr. Trump asserted that he would “keep men out of women’s sports.”
On international policy, Mr. Trump and Project 2025 both emphasize a protectionist outlook, often called “America First” policies by the Trump campaign. Sections in Project 2025 and in Agenda47 both suggest higher tariffs on competitors and increasing competition with China.
What did Democrats say about Project 2025?
Less than 10 minutes into their presidential debate, Ms. Harris sought to frame the discussion by tying the project to Mr. Trump’s plans for a second term.
“What you’re going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025 that the former president intends on implementing,” Ms. Harris said.
Mr. Trump immediately rejected her statement. But the Harris campaign and its supporters had yoked Project 2025 around their opponent’s neck, repeatedly warning that it is his shadow platform and that it is evidence of an extreme second-term agenda. Over many months, they had called it an authoritarian blueprint in an onslaught of advertisements, social media posts and TV appearances.
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