What is Project 2025?

Project 2025 was created by the right-wing think tank, The Heritage Foundation, and more than 100 co-sponsors who share an extreme conservative, white Christian nationalist vision for the future of America. Many former Trump advisors and officials were involved, along with others who have successfully shaped conservative policies for previous past presidents. And many are now joining the new Trump administration.

Project 2025 spells out a vision for America where book bans and abortion bans are the norm, the government controls our use of birth control and IVF, and discrimination based on race, sex, gender, or religion is accepted. It attacks our fundamental freedoms and democratic principles: equal rights for all, free and fair elections, representative government, separation of church and state, independent branches of government, freedom of speech and press, and more.

Donald Trump told us that he likes to “grab” things — the implementation of Project 2025 will be his and his political allies’ attempt to grab power and hold onto it. Americans value our freedom, but they want to control us, make our personal decisions for us, and take our country backwards to a time when women stayed in the kitchen.

We don’t want to give any undue microphone to extremists’ views — or clicks to their website — but it’s important for all of us to know what’s at stake with Project 2025 so that we can prepare to fight it. It’s more than 900 pages long and as you might imagine, it’s jam-packed with disinformation. We’ve saved you time and mental energy by reviewing and summarizing Project 2025 for you, cutting through its BS and getting straight to the facts.

Project 2025’s Four Pillars: 

1. A “playbook” of teams and transition plans that aim to gut most of the agencies Americans rely on to keep our country functioning – think the Department of Education, The Department of Homeland Security, the Environmental Protection Agency, and an independent Department of Justice. Gone.
2. A private database of far-right loyalists who want to work for Trump. Think of it as an “extremist LinkedIn.” Their goal is to have at least 20,000 loyalists screened and ready to fill federal appointments throughout the government. We know the damage that just three of his appointees on the Supreme Court have done. Imagine what thousands of his appointees will do across federal agencies!
3. A “Presidential Administration Academy” to train future appointees how to use the government to advance their agenda.
4. A 900+ page “Mandate for Leadership” that creates an agenda for a new Trump administration, completely reforming how much of our government operates. Here are some of the most egregious goals.

Goal: Take Away Our Reproductive Rights

Donald Trump made it clear before his first term that they’d come for abortion if he could get Supreme Court justices seated, and that’s exactly what happened. He’s proudly taken responsibility for the fall of Roe v. Wade and subsequent abortion bans. Now they’re telling us they’ll do more, and they’ve already started, as we’ve seen with Congress’s Life at Conception Act and Alabama’s Supreme Court IVF ruling.

They plan to institute a national abortion ban and reverse the FDA approval of abortion pills — they already have a case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Until then, they’d track, limit, and ultimately ban the mailing of abortion pills, restrict doctors’ ability to provide telehealth for medical abortions, and strictly scrutinize the companies and factories that make abortion pills.

They recommend demanding data from states that currently allow abortion. They would stop federal agencies from using the word “abortion” and would have the government declare that abortion is murder. And if that becomes the law of the land, and they are tracking who has abortions, is criminalizing women next?

Rooted in right-wing Christian nationalism, Project 2025 uses religious justification to demonize recreational sex and contraception. The plan calls for restricting our access to STD testing, birth control and IVF.

Goal: End Programs That Address Climate Change

Project 2025 is aligned with known climate change deniers. The plan rejects regulations that reduce environmental harm. It seeks to reduce or eliminate the EPA and other agencies focused on environmental protection. It would reduce funding for renewable energy while expanding Arctic oil drilling and Western coal mining. It would remove the U.S. from international climate change agreements and remove domestic protections for endangered species, other wildlife, and federally-owned lands.

Goal: End Public Education

We’ve seen efforts nationwide to undermine public education, so it’s no surprise that Project 2025 wants to come after it at the federal level. The plan suggests eliminating teachers’ ability to organize together, overhauling the U.S. Department of Education’s curriculum to align with extremist viewpoints, and ultimately eliminating the Department of Education. Instead of supporting public education, they plan to divert public money to private and religious school attendance. And — in a blow to many who have recently been helped — it suggests rolling back student debt relief efforts.

Goal: Persecute LGBTQ+ Americans

Project 2025 is shameless in its attack on human rights, particularly for LGBTQ+ people. The plan demonizes and potentially criminalizes transgender people and suggests keeping them from serving in the military.

It would remove federal protections for all LGBTQ+ people, allowing them to be fired for their sexual or gender identity. The plan suggests “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ+ people and some of its language leans towards anti-surrogacy positions which would impact LGBTQ+ family planning.

And speaking of families, Project 2025 says that the U.S. government should maintain a “biblically based” definition of marriage and family, that of only heterosexual, two-parent families.

Goal: Encourage Racial Discrimination

The authors of Project 2025 really don’t like the progress that has been made to end institutionalized racism and increase diversity, racial equity, and inclusion in America. The plan would ban these efforts in the federal government and potentially fire government workers who have participated in DEI training. It also specifically calls to end diversity, equity, and inclusion offices in the military. They would stop federal agencies from collecting data that could be used to address racial inequality. And the plan would end the Fair Housing Act which would allow housing discrimination against non-white Americans.

Goal: Mass Deportation and Reduce Immigration 

Trump and other extremists campaigned hard on immigration, and Project 2025 intends to deliver on their promises. It calls for the mass deportation of immigrants and the dismantling of the foundations of our immigration system, notably going around Congress and the courts to do so. 

It aims to suspend applications for legal immigration and reduce visas for the agricultural, construction, and hospitality sectors. It would reduce protections for immigrants seeking asylum to escape human trafficking and domestic or gang violence. It would rescind protections for Dreamers — immigrants who came to America as children and grew up here. 

And in a huge change, Project 2025 would dismantle the Department of Homeland Security, which, in addition to protecting our borders, counters terrorism, protects cybersecurity, and responds to natural and man-made disasters.

Goal: Insert Christian Nationalist Ideology into the Mainstream

Much of Project 2025 is based in Christianity and a biblical worldview. It aims to center that ideology in government and society and turn it into federal laws. The plan assumes that America is Christian and that Christianity and its beliefs should have a privileged place in society, over other religions and civil laws.

Goal: Give Unchecked Power to the President

As we’ve said, Project 2025 is a power grab. It’s a plan to shift America away from democracy and towards authoritarianism by giving the President and his administration more power and ensuring they can maintain it.

Project 2025 plans to end the FBI’s efforts to combat disinformation and reduce the military’s efforts to counter extremism and domestic terrorism. It removes Congress’s ability to review U.S. foreign arms sales. It also reduces Congressional power by limiting their oversight committees and shifting their oversight power to the Executive branch.

It plans to reinstate an executive order from Trump’s first term (Schedule F) to reclassify tens of thousands of current, non-political government employees, eliminating their employment protections and making them easier to fire. Trump’s administration could then use Project 2025’s database of applicants (that “extremist LinkedIn”) and training academy to replace those fired civil servants and pack all levels of the federal government with loyalists who will not check his power. 

Project 2025 also plans to end the current norms and policies that keep the Department of Justice and the FBI independent from the White House. This would allow the President to interfere with how both agencies are led and operate, and to use both agencies for self-serving political purposes. He could put his loyalists in control and use the agencies to go after anyone he perceives as an enemy. These changes would also allow for Executive Branch involvement in how election-related federal offenses are investigated. Now imagine a repeat of “The Big Lie” and January 6th, this time with all these changes in place. If Project 2025 is successful, what limited Trump’s power in his first term may not exist to stop him again.