What is Project 2025? Is it Trump’s plan? What to know about the right-wing plan for a conservative nation

Social media has been abuzz with the ultra-conservative initiative Project 2025. So just what is it?

The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank out of Washington, D.C., launched the 2025 Presidential Transition Project to “assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State.”

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It is based on a more than 800-page “Mandate for Leadership,” published in April 2023 by the Foundation, reimagining the executive branch and as a plan to overhaul multiple federal government agencies, including the FBI, Department of Justice and Department of Education, and that isn’t even talking about the want to ban certain words from the legislature and what jobs in the federal government will be appointed.

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All of this is intended to be the playbook for the next conservative president to follow.

Here’s what we know about Project 2025 and what it could mean for the 2024 presidential election.

What is Project 2025?

For many it is being referred to as just Project 2025, and it has become a hot topic among celebrities, political figures, media and on social media in recent weeks.

The “Mandate for Leadership” outlines conservative agendas that would mean the repeal of parts of initiatives President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama brought forth during their tenure at the White House, including student debt forgiveness and the Affordable Care Act. Beyond that, the deportation of undocumented immigrants is high up on Project 2025’s to-do list.

There is also a section of this plan that appears to undo LGBTQ+ rights in multiple different areas, including banning people with HIV or those who are transgender from serving in the military, rescinding regulations that bar discrimination “on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics,” and also seems to oppose same-sex marriage and gay couples adopting children by seeking to “maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family.”

Here are just some other items that Project 2025 entails:

• Passing sweeping tax cuts and changes to the tax code which will impact those with lower incomes while benefiting those with a higher income.

• Reversal of DEI programs

• Development of new nuclear weapons and building of more nuclear power plants

• Dismantling of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration due to it being “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.”

• Ending Head Start and dismantling the Education Department

• Outlawing pornography

Why are people worried about Project 2025?

One of the main things in this playbook? The reinstatement of a Trump executive order augmenting a president’s power to hire and fire federal officials by replacing civil servants with political appointees throughout government.

Project 2025 has been “pre-screening the ideologies” of thousands to become part of the federal government once a conservative takes office to have, “a pre-vetted, pro-Trump army of up to 54,000 loyalists.”

Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation leadership have also called this group “conservative warriors,” and enacted imagery of them marching into Washington, D.C., like an army.

While the Heritage Foundation’s nearly 900-page mandate is a blueprint for a far-right way of “taking back control” of the federal government, it is also the rhetoric that is coming from people like the group’s president, Kevin Roberts.

“We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless ― if the left allows it to be,” Roberts said on a conservative media outlet called Real America’s Voice.

“Project 2025 should scare every single American,” said President Joe Biden, in a speech slamming former President Donald Trump for having any part of Project 2025. “It would give Trump limitless power over our daily lives and let him use the presidency to enact ‘revenge’ on his enemies, ban abortion nationwide and punish women who have an abortion, and gut the checks and balances that make America the greatest democracy in the world.”

Is Project 2025 part of Trump’s plan if he wins the 2024 presidential election?

Though the plan’s organizers want Trump to follow Project 2025 if he wins the November election ― it even has his name in different areas throughout the plan ― the businessman turned politician has tried to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation after Biden slammed him in the press for being affiliated with the group.

Trump took to his Truth social media account in an attempt to lead the narrative away from his affiliation with Heritage Foundation writing. “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.”

In a post early Thursday morning he wrote, ” I know nothing about Project 2025. I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it. The Radical Left Democrats are having a field day, however, trying to hook me into whatever policies are stated or said. It is pure disinformation on their part. By now, after all of these years, everyone knows where I stand on EVERYTHING! DJT”

And while Trump denies knowing the people who are “in charge of it,” some are members of his previous staff.

• Russ Vought (Project 2025 writer) headed the Office of Management and Budget under Trump

• John McEntee (senior adviser for Project 2025) was the director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office under Trump

• Paul Dans (head of Project 2025 team), former Trump staffer

• Spencer Chretien (head of Project 2025 team), former Trump staffer

• Troup Hemnway (head of Project 2025 team), former Trump staffer

Project 2025 said it “does not speak for any candidate or campaign” in a July 5 post on X, formerly Twitter. Its playbook is comprised of suggestions the coalition believes will benefit the “next conservative president.”

Who is involved with Project 2025?

The Heritage Foundation has pulled together 100 coalition partners of conservative groups in the country. Here are the partners of Project 2025 reported by the Heritage Foundation:

• 1792 Exchange

• American Accountability Foundation

• American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists

• Alabama Policy Institute

• Alliance Defending Freedom

• ACLJ Action

• American Commitment

• American Compass

• American Cornerstone Institute

• The American Conservative

• American Council of Trustees and Alumni

• American Family Association

• America First Legal

• American Juris Link

• American Legislative Exchange Council

• The American Main Street Initiative

• American Moment

• American Principles Project

• The American Family Project

• The American Redistricting Project

• Americans United for Life

• AMAC Action

• California Family Council

• Centennial Institute

• Center for a Secure Free Society

• Center for Equal Opportunity

• Center for Family and Human Rights

• Center for Immigration Studies

• Center for Military Readiness

• Center for Renewing America

• Citizens Against Government Waste

• The Claremont Institute

• Coalition for a Prosperous America

• Competitive Enterprise Institute

• Concerned Women for America

• Conservative Partnership Institute

• Defense of Freedom Institute

• Discovery Institute

• Eagle Forum

• Ethics and Public Policy Center

• Fairer America

• Family Policy Alliance

• Family Research Council

• Feds for Freedom

• First Liberty Institute

• For America

• Forge Leadership Network

• Foundation for American Innovation

• Foundation for Defense of Democracies

• Foundation for Government Accountability

• Freedom’s Journal Institute

• The Frederick Douglass Foundation

• Calvert Task Group

• The Heartland Institute

• The Heritage Foundation

• MacArthur Society of West Point Graduates

• Hillsdale College

• Honest Elections Project

• Independent Women’s Forum

• Institute for Education Reform

• Institute for Energy Research

• Institute for the American Worker

• The Institute for Women’s Health

• Intercollegiate Studies Institute

• Dr. James Dobson Family Institute

• The James Madison Institute

• Job Creators Network

• Keystone Policy

• The Leadership Institute

• League of American Workers

• Liberty University

• Mackinac Center for Public Policy

• The Malone Institute

• Media Research Center

• Mississippi Center for Public Policy

• Moms for Liberty

• Mountain States Policy Center

• National Association of Scholars

• National Center for Public Policy Research

• Native Americans for Sovereignty and Preservation

• Noah Webster Educational Foundation

• Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs

• Project 21 Black Leadership Network

• Pacific Research Institute

• The Palm Beach Freedom Institute

• Palmetto Promise

• Patrick Henry College

• The Patriot Foundation Trust

• Personnel Policy Operations

• Public Interest Legal Foundation

• Recovery for America Now Foundation

• Republicans Overseas Foundation

• Stop Abusive and Violent Environments

• Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services

• Students for Life of America

• Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America

• Tea Party Patriots

• Texas Public Policy Foundation

• Teneo Network

• Turning Point USA

• Young America’s Foundation

USA TODAY contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: What Trump says about Heritage Foundation’s controversial Project 2025

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