There's a plan to drastically reshape the federal government to benefit the political brand of Donald Trump, created by people closely allied with his campaign and funded by the influential Heritage Foundation.
Project 2025 outlines a comprehensive plan for a government-in-waiting that aims to reshape the federal bureaucracy and implement a vision aligned with Trump-era conservatism. The plan involves crisscrossing America to recruit thousands of individuals and create a pool of talent that are ready on day one to execute goals outlined in the guide.
The handbook from the conservative Heritage Foundation and more than 100 like-minded groups looks to strengthen the power of the White House and limit the independence of federal agencies. When reception to the plan was cool, Trump began to distance himself from it, writing on Truth Social, "I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it.”
But Democrats are quick to point this out: Project 2025 is led by former Trump administration officials including Paul Dans, who was Trump's chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management and serves as director of the project, and Spencer Chretien, former special assistant to Trump and now the project's associate director.
"For over two years, the Left has ignored the voice of everyday Americans leading to crippling inflation, biological males dominating women's sports, rampant violence, and a crisis in education not seen in decades. Our country is all but unrecognizable," Heritage President Dr. Kevin Roberts said in statement. "This is why the conservative movement is coming together to prepare for the next conservative administration. Heritage is convening the conservative movement behind the policies to ensure that the next president has the right policy and personnel necessary to dismantle the administrative state and restore self-governance to the American people."
Project 2025 builds on four pillars to "collectively pave the way for an effective conservative administration:" a policy agenda, personnel recruitment, training, and a 180-day playbook to kick off the term on Jan. 20, 2025. It offers "both specific proposals for addressing every major issue facing the country and a blueprint for how to restructure each agency to solve those issues," according to the Heritage Foundation.
The nearly 1,000-page policy agenda, officially titled "Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise," features 30 chapters and each corresponds to a federal agency.
"It outlines, in the opinion of about 400 people who worked on this book, what conservative success would look like at that agency over the next four years," Spencer Chretien, associate director for Project 2025 and former special assistant to the president and associate director of presidential personnel during the Trump administration, told WWL First News.
"It's designed to lay the groundwork, to support future conservative presidents and to begin the process of catching up to the left when it comes to building the infrastructure for presidential transitions, for government service," he continued. "We see that the deep state is real and that it serves as an impediment to conservative change. So this project was designed to unite the movement around solving those problems."
Among the recommendations:
• Giving the FBI a hard reset, 'ensuring consistent litigation decisions, and enforcing immigration laws.'
• Solidify our border by restructuring the Department of Homeland Security and its priorities in ways that streamline the immigration process, end unclear immigration visas, and create a more secure immigration process.
• Break up the Department of Education to 'strengthen education freedom, enhance parental rights in education, and protect taxpayers from student loan forgiveness.'
It also outlines a long wish list of conservative ideas, per MSNBC, including:
• Passing sweeping tax cuts for the wealthy
• Limiting the U.S. role in NATO
• Developing new nuclear weapons
• Abolishing the Department of Education and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• Reversing the FDA’s approval of abortion pills
• Reducing legal immigration
• Ending Head Start, the federal program that assists low-income kids
• Stripping NPR and PBS of federal funding
• Outlawing pornography
• Cutting Social Security benefits by raising the retirement age
• Allowing companies to give workers compensatory time off instead of paying overtime
The Heritage Foundation, which has been distributing its "Mandate for Leadership" guide to presidents for decades, said the Trump administration embraced nearly 64% of the 2016 edition's policy solutions after one year.
Trump has denied any connection to Project 2025.