“Can we admit now that we’re going to implement Project 2025?” right-wing YouTuber Benny Johnson said.
With Donald Trump reelected as president, a policy agenda that was written up by a conservative think tank is back at the forefront of conversations over what a second Trump term could look like.
Known as Project 2025, the 922-page document was crafted by the Heritage Foundation as a blueprint for the next Republican administration that would radically reshape how the American government works. Democrats repeatedly tried to link Trump to Project 2025, but Trump had said he had “no idea who is behind it” and had “nothing to do with” the plan. (Project 2025 was spearheaded by two former Trump officials: Paul Dans and Spencer Chretien; Vice President-elect JD Vance also wrote the foreward to Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts’s book.)
One of the first groups to congratulate Trump on his presidential win was the Heritage Foundation. In a statement Wednesday morning, Roberts wrote, “The entire conservative movement stands united behind him.”
Since Wednesday morning, multiple Trump supporters have come out to throw their support behind Project 2025.
Conservative activist Matt Walsh posted on X, “Now that the election is over I think we can finally say that yeah actually Project 2025 is the agenda. Lol.” Reacting to Walsh’s post, Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief strategist, said on his podcast War Room Wednesday that “Project 2025 is the agenda.”
Texas’s Tarrant County GOP chair Bo French also posted on X, writing, “So can we admit now that we are going to implement Project 2025?” Conservative YouTuber Benny Johnson chimed in with, “It is my honor to inform you all that Project 2025 was real the whole time.”
The Trump campaign has not commented on Project 2025 as of Thursday afternoon
What is Project 2025 and what is it proposing?
Project 2025 describes itself as “a policy agenda, personnel, training and a 180-day playbook” to be initiated on “day one” of the next Republican presidency. It outlines several agenda items including law proposals, laws to revoke and government agency restructuring.
While the Trump campaign separated itself from Project 2025, Trump’s name is mentioned over 300 times throughout the document.
Some of its specific directives include:
- An overhaul of the Department of Justice and FBI, the former of which it labels “a bloated bureaucracy” with employees “who are infatuated with the perpetuation of a radical liberal agenda.”
- Implement Schedule F, a Trump-era executive order that the Biden administration repealed that would allow the reclassification — and potential replacement — of thousands of government workers.
- Eliminate the Department of Education.
- Shut down the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights.
- Impose wide restrictions on abortion access, including reversing federal approval of the abortion pill mifepristone.
- Allocate funding for “construction of additional border wall systems.”
- Ban pornography and imprison anyone who produces or distributes it.
- Promote “Sabbath Rest” by encouraging Congress to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to require people who work these days to be paid time and a half.
- Have the federal government promote “biblically based, social science reinforced” heterosexual marriages.
- Call on the new Health and Human Services secretary to “reverse the Biden Administration’s focus on ‘LGBTQ+ equity’” and “subsidizing single-motherhood.”
- Remove sexual orientation, gender identity, diversity, equity, inclusion and gender equality from any federal rule, regulation or legislation.
- Revive Trump’s plan to open most of the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska to leasing and development.
What to know about the Heritage Foundation
Since its founding in 1973, the Heritage Foundation has been ranked by the University of Pennsylvania as one of the most influential public policy organizations in the U.S. The think tank also advised the administrations of George W. Bush and Trump.
Numerous people involved in Project 2025 worked in the Trump administration or have helped with Trump’s reelection campaign. Dans, the former director of Project 2025 at the Heritage Foundation, was chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management under Trump. Associate directors Chretien and Troup Hemenway worked for the Trump administration as well.
Of the 34 authors and two editors listed on the project, at least 25 have served Trump in some capacity, several in senior positions in his presidential administration.
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