Project 2025 Becomes Blueprint for President Trump’s 2nd Term

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump vehemently denied involvement with the unpopular policies outlined in Project 2025.

When the 900-page “mandate for leadership” made headlines last Summer, politicians, scholars, and civil rights groups sharply criticized it for its anti-LGBT and anti-democratic priorities. The public backlash made the ominously sounding policy mandate the focus of the Democratic strategy in 2024.

It was also covered in depth by John Oliver on Last Week Tonight and mocked by SNL star Kenan Thompson at the Democratic National Convention. 

In the wake of the controversy, then-candidate Trump took to social media to call Project 2025 “ridiculous” and “abysmal.” In his first presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, he insisted he didn’t even want to read Project 2025. 

Shortly after the election, Trump softened his stance, telling TIME Magazine, “I don’t disagree with everything in Project 2025, but I disagree with some things.”

Leading up to his inauguration, the President announced several appointments with close ties to The Heritage Foundation, including one of the architects of Project 2025 and self-avowed proponent of Christian Nationalism, Russell Vought, who now leads the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). 

Since taking office, President Trump has signed 73 executive orders and commentators have been quick to point out how they mirror the priorities laid out in Project 2025. PBS, MSNBC, CBS, and CNN are just some of the major news outlets that have aired such stories in just this past week. 

In an analysis conducted by CBS News, more than half of the 36 executive orders signed by President Trump in his first week in office had similarities to the policies laid out in Project 2025.

Policies like directing the use of military personnel at the Mexican border and rescinding Biden-era LGBT+ protections all seem to be lifted directly from Project 2025. To be sure, militarizing the Southern border and declaring that there are “only two genders” have been part of the GOP platform since Trump secured the party’s nomination for the first time in 2016. 

However, some of the more extreme policies that were proposed in Project 2025 but absent from Trump’s 2024 platform seem to have made their way to the President’s desk. 

To start, there’s the abolition of FEMA, which the President passionately argued on social media earlier this month. Project 2025 recommends “reforming FEMA emergency spending to shift the majority of preparedness and response costs to states and localities instead of the federal government.” Though the Trump campaign did not have an official stance on breaking up FEMA, during an October rally, he did push a later debunked claim that Joe Biden gave away FEMA funds to illegal migrants.

Legislative priorities like sweeping cuts to USAID and other independent Federal agencies— not unlike those enacted by Elon Musk’s DOGE team— were also laid out in Project 2025. When describing his vision for a second Trump presidency, Vought once said, “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “We want to put them in trauma.” 

The only part of Trump’s official platform that remotely resembled the firing of thousands of civil servants, including scientists and essential experts, is a vague item that reads, “End the weaponization of government against the American people.” 

In terms of social issues, it’s widely known that President Trump ran on an “anti-woke” agenda, but the Trump campaign only offered two legislative proposals relating to the topic: 1) “cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, radical gender ideology, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children; and, 2) ‘keep men out of women’s sports’.”

President Trump has gone above and beyond these campaign promises. The administration has scrubbed words such as “equity” from federal documents, removed transgender identifiers, and slashed international medical aid —all items on the Project 2025 wish list. 

Vague or otherwise, the parallels between Trump’s platform and Project 2025 were latent long before he signed his first executive order.