WASHINGTON — Over the past year, Project 2025 has endured as a persistent force in the presidential election, a far-right proposal that Democrats have been pushing as shorthand for what Donald Trump would do with a second term in the White House.
Although the former president’s campaign has distanced itself from Project 2025 — Trump himself has said he knows “nothing” about it — the sweeping Legacy Foundation proposal to streamline the federal workforce and dismantle federal agencies is in line with his vision. The architects of Project 2025 come from within the ranks of the Trump administration and top Heritage officials have briefed the Trump team on this.
It is rare for a complex 900-page policy book for a dominant figure in a political campaign. But from the beginning in the think tank, to the viral spread on social media, ups and downs and potential ups again Project 2025 shows unexpected political power to illuminate the election year and threaten not only Trump at the top of the ticket. but down-ballot Republicans in the race for Congress.
Through it all, Project 2025 has not disappeared. There is not only a policy blueprint for the next administration, but a database of about 20,000 job seekers who could become White House and Trump administration staffers and an unreleased “180-day playbook” that the new president can implement. First day after inauguration on January 20, 2025.
The president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, who recently took the helm of the project, seemed happy with the fight, moving forward.
“Rest assured that we will not give up,” Roberts wrote in an email to supporters this summer. “We will not back down.”
When Project 2025 debuted in April 2023, he promised to “destroy the administrative state” by implementing personnel and policies that could serve as a roadmap for the next conservative president.
Former Trump administration officials working on the project said they want to avoid mistakes in the first Trump White House by ensuring the next Republican president will be prepared with personnel and policies to implement campaign priorities.
“There is a push to move forward,” said Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, in a 2023 Associated Press interview.
Centered at the Heritage Foundation, a respected conservative think tank in Washington, DC, the concept of the book harks back to an earlier version, the Reagan-era “Leadership Mandate” said to be so popular in the White House that it copied it. was put on the work table to guide the new president.
At least 100 conservative groups, many alumni of the Trump administration, came together to make proposals for a major restructuring of the federal government – from installing more political appointees in the Department of Justice to reassigning government workers with law enforcement backgrounds to handle illegal immigration. to dissolve the Department of Education.
One of the core proposals would ease government staffing with Trump loyalists by reclassifying some 50,000 workers into layoff jobs — a revival of the Schedule F policy that Trump tried to implement before leaving office. That idea is now central to conservatives’ vision of dismantling the “deep state” bureaucracy blamed for obstructing Trump’s priorities.
The 2025 Project rollout on the foundation’s 50th anniversary was also a debut for Roberts; he has previously been seen as an ally for Trump’s rival Ron DeSantis, who keynoted the gala event at the beginning of the presidential primary term.
“The conservative movement is coming together to prepare for the next conservative administration,” Roberts said in the announcement. Warisan, he said, seeks “to ensure that the next president has the right policies and personnel needed to dismantle the administrative state.”
President Joe Biden’s campaign has warned against Project 2025 early on, in social media posts before the State of the Union address in April, and House Democrats launched a Project 2025 Task Force to raise concerns in June. A few days later, comedian John Oliver was mocked on his HBO show.
But until Biden’s poor debate performance with Trump in June, Project 2025 had a viral moment.
Not so much was said in the presidential debate as it was left unsaid: Biden failed to mention Project 2025, dashing the hopes of allies hoping for a defeat.
That weekend, one thread on X about Project 2025 garnered nearly 20 million views, according to the Democratic campaign. Actress Taraji P. Henson, who spoke with Vice President Kamala Harris in a segment for the BET Awards, warned the main audience: “The Project 2025 plan is not a game. Look!” And countless young TikTok creators have spoken directly to their cameras to explain the threats they believe Project 2025 poses to civil rights, reproductive rights and other rights in videos that have gone viral.
“This is really a case of the grassroots rebelling,” said Joe Radosevich at the Center for American Progress. “They saw what was offered as the contours of the race and rejected everything.”
Especially after the Dobbs Supreme Court ruling that ended constitutional protections for abortion, Democrats and their allies wanted to make their case to show how the presidential election will affect people’s lives in the future, rather than just giving voters a choice between their personalities. .
People want to debate policy, Radosevich said, not an election “purely of vibes.”
In late June, Google searches for “Project 2025” surpassed searches for Taylor Swift and the NFL, Harris’ campaign said.
And when giant-sized replicas of the Project 2025 book are brought to the stage for nightly derision at the Democratic National Convention, it’s not just celebrities and liberal conventioneers who scoff. Conservatives have since blamed Legacy and Project 2025 for damaging Trump’s election chances.
Trump’s campaign has never embraced the 2025 Project and has actively avoided it, despite the proximity of people and policies familiar to the former president in the White House.
Other conservative groups with ties to Trump are also preparing for a second term in the White House. The Trump campaign team has repeatedly warned Heritage to tone down and not portray Project 2025 as part of the Trump campaign.
But Roberts seemed undeterred, even though he came under fire in July to suggest, after the Supreme Court ruled to give the president broad immunity from prosecution over the January 6 insurrection, that the country was in the middle of “the second American Revolution, which.” will remain bloodless if the left allows it.”
Trump spoke strongly against Project 2025 the next day.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump posted on his own social media account. “I don’t know who is behind it. I don’t agree with some of the things they say and some of the things they say are really ridiculous and abysmal. Whatever they do, I appreciate it, but I have nothing to do with them.
Trump at that time launched his own policy platform before the Republican National Convention, which was planned in part by one of the former administration officials, conservative leader Russ Vought, who also contributed to Project 2025 and the 180-day playbook.
Warisan parted ways with Dans, the chief architect of Project 2025, who resigned at the end of the month, a move that seemed to please the Trump team.
“The report of the death of Project 2025 will be very welcome and should be news to anyone or any group that tries to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign – it will not end well for you,” said Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, Trump. campaign manager, in a joint statement.
As the race for control of Congress tightens to the point where one seat could determine which party controls the House or the Senate, the 2025 Project is used by outside groups aligned with Democrats to portray Republicans associated with hardline proposals.
The House Accountability Project has created micro-websites for more than a dozen House Republicans in some of the most contested seats, tying past votes on abortion, government funding and other issues to the Project 2025 proposal.
“The House GOP is actually pushing the policies that are in Project 2025 as we speak,” said Danny Turkel, a spokesman for the House Accountability War Room. “They’ve taken that policy to the Capitol.”
The House Republican campaign committee said the candidates had nothing to do with Project 2025, and that the attacks were made by Democrats to divert attention from their own border and inflation policies.
“They’re making bogus attacks based on things that House Republicans have never read,” said Will Reinert, press secretary for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
He called the attack a “desperate lie” as House Democrats “see their chances of gaining a majority dwindling.”