To its conservative authors and backers, Project 2025 is a detailed road map for a complete remaking of the federal government — a next step in a “second American revolution,” that will be bloodless “if the left allows it to be,” in the words of one of the project’s principal architects.
Those on the opposite end of the political spectrum have denounced the plan with words like “chilling,” “terrifying” and “extreme,” and are calling attention to its proposals as part of the Democratic Party’s campaign to defeat former President Donald Trump in his bid to retake the White House.
For those somewhere in the middle, Project 2025 may be simply too long to read — roughly 900 pages — so here’s the gist: The controversial document was created by the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think tank. More than 400 like-minded contributors penned the project as a blueprint for the next Republican presidency and published it in April 2023. It's hefty wish list and, like all proposals, isn't guaranteed even if Republicans retake the White House in the upcoming election.
Among its many proposals, it calls for dismantling or reshaping numerous federal agencies, rolling back policies designed to mitigate climate change, investing more power in the presidency, replacing government employees with political appointees, outlawing the abortion pill and gutting LGBTQ+ protections.
What is Project 2025 about?
There are four pillars in Project 2025:
Policy: The hefty agenda, known as “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.”
Personnel: The creation of a database of vetted and trained personnel to be considered for positions in a presidential administration in order to implement the project’s policy recommendations.
Training: An online training program known as the “Presidential administration academy” to prepare future political appointees to work on day one of the next Republican presidency.
Playbook: A plan for the first 180 days of the next Republican presidency.
What economic proposals are in Project 2025?
Most of Project 2025 would have economic implications if implemented and many proposals would affect Americans on a personal finance level. While this is not an exhaustive list, here are some key proposals:
Broad tax cuts to corporate and income taxes.
Eliminate or reshape the Federal Reserve. One proposal within Project 2025 suggests eliminating the Fed and replacing it with “free banking.” Other proposals seek to diminish the Federal Reserve’s powers in other ways.
Increase energy production and energy security largely by expanding oil and natural gas production.
Overhauls to Medicare and Medicaid. Converting the current funding for Medicaid into a block grant program in which each state receives a fixed amount as opposed to funding specific needs; instituting time limits or lifetime caps on benefits; and adding a work requirement. Medicare Advantage, administered by private insurers, would become the default choice for new Medicare enrollees.
Weaken child labor protections. It would permit teens to work in "inherently dangerous jobs” as long as they have training and parental consent.
Change overtime laws. Allow employees to choose between receiving time-and-a-half pay or accumulating time-and-a-half paid time off. It also calls for requiring time-and-a-half payment for hours worked on “the Sabbath,” or Sunday.
Reform additional labor laws. Exempt small-business owners from “first-time, non-willful” violations of certain health and safety precautions that are enforced by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration. It would also make cuts to retirement benefits for federal workers. And it would allow state and local governments to get waivers from federal labor laws.
Unionization limits. Consider banning public employee unions and more union transparency in the private sector.
Unemployment limits. Make it more difficult to receive unemployment benefits.
Get rid of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Potentially eliminate the Federal Trade Commission and increase standards for antitrust violation suits.
Child care. Incentivize on-site child care.
Decrease government spending.
Consider returning to a gold-backed currency.
Abortion. Removing mifepristone, the abortion pill, from the market, including banning distribution by mail. It emphasizes that Congress must “enact the most robust protections for the unborn” and other pro-life policy measures. It also calls for more federal and state support for adoptions.
Big Pharma. Reform Food and Drug Administration rules to ban pharmaceutical companies from purposely preventing generic versions of their drugs from entering the market.
Overhaul government employment. Fire certain government employees who are not “ideologically aligned” with the “majority of the American People” and replace them with political appointees.
Sweeping immigration changes. Increasing funding for a U.S.-Mexico border wall; altering how agencies address immigration; restricting visa access; instituting additional immigrant worker limitations; and dismantling the Department of Homeland Security.
Higher education. Promote trade schools, apprenticeship programs and alternatives to student loans “that fund students’ dreams instead of Marxist academics.”
Contradicting tariff proposals: Boosting free trade and fair trade.
Project 2025 calls for big changes to Medicare, Medicaid
Project 2025 contains several proposed changes to Medicare and Medicaid, framing the programs as being largely responsible for the United States’ annual budget deficit, which currently stands at $1.27 trillion for 2024.
“In essence, our deficit problem is a Medicare and Medicaid problem,” the Project 2025 proposal states.
Learn more about what Project 2025 has in store for Medicare and Medicaid.
What else is in the Project 2025 playbook?
The Project 2025 playbook, again, is lengthy — too long to include every proposal here. But some other significant policy changes the document calls for include:
Expanding the power of the president to have complete control over the entire federal bureaucracy.
Getting rid of many existing climate-related protection policies.
Eliminating the Department of Education, as well as expanding both school choice and parental control in education. It would also end diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs from governmental and public entities, including schools.
Changing terms used in schools and regulations. Eliminating “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” from school curriculum. It also would rid many terms from law and federal regulations such as “sexual orientation” and “reproductive rights”.
Overhauling federal agencies including the FBI and the Department of Justice; dismantling the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; consolidating the Bureau of Economic Analysis with the Census Bureau and the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics; privatizing the Transportation Security Administration.
A ban on pornography and closing telecommunications and tech firms that help to spread it.
What has Trump said about Project 2025?
Trump, who is now running against Vice President Kamala Harris after President Joe Biden bowed out of the race, has tried to distance himself from the controversial policy plans. In a July 5 post on Truth Social, the conservative social media platform launched by Trump in 2022, the former president said, “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
However, recent reports suggest that Trump has been aware of Project 2025 for quite some time. On Aug. 7, The Washington Post reported that in April, Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, told the outlet that he had briefed Trump on Project 2025. Even further back, in 2022, Trump shared a private flight with Roberts on the way to a Heritage Foundation conference. And in his keynote address during the conference, Trump nodded to an upcoming package of proposals that would become Project 2025. At the time he said “They're going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do,” he said.
Multiple outlets have pointed out that many former officials and advisers under the Trump administration are involved with Project 2025. The director of the project was Paul Dans and the associate director is Spencer Chretien, both of whom were officials under the Trump administration. On July 30, Dans stepped down from his position heading the project, as well as the Heritage Foundation itself, following backlash from Trump’s campaign. CNN estimates about 140 people involved with the Trump Administration contributed to the playbook.
What has Harris said about Project 2025?
One of the first things Harris said after receiving Biden’s endorsement pointed to Project 2025. On July 21, she posted on X: “I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party — and unite our nation— to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda.”
Before Biden exited the race, he condemned Project 2025. During a rally in Detroit on July 12, Biden called it “the biggest attack on our system of government and our personal freedom that has ever been proposed in the history of this country.” He also accused Trump of lying about his relationship to the project saying, “It was a project built for Trump.”
Biden said, “We’ve never seen anything like this. And it’s not a joke. It’s time for us to stop treating politics like entertainment and reality TV.”
On June 11, a group of Democrats launched a Stop Project 2025 Task Force. In a press release, U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California, called Project 2025 “a radical, extreme, pro-authoritarianism plan pushed by conservatives who are desperate to take our country backwards.”
(Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images News via Getty Images.)
