WASHINGTON (AP) — Over the past year, Project 2025 has asserted itself as a persistent force in the presidential election. His far-right proposals were used by Democrats as shorthand for what Donald Trump might do with a second term in the White House.
Although the former president’s campaign has vigorously distanced itself from Project 2025 – Trump himself has said he knows “nothing” about it – the Heritage Foundation’s sweeping proposal to defund the federal workforce and dismantle federal agencies closely aligns with his vision. The architects of Project 2025 come from the ranks of the Trump administration, and senior heritage officials have briefed Trump’s team about it.
It is uncommon for a complicated 900-page policy book to play such a dominant role in a political campaign. But from its early start in a think tank to its viral spread on social media, the rise and fall and potential rise again of Project 2025 shows the unexpected staying power of politics to illuminate an election year and threaten not just Trump at the top but the Republicans are defeated in the race for Congress.
Despite all this, the 2025 project has not disappeared. It serves not only as a policy blueprint for the next administration, but also as a database of about 20,000 job seekers who could fill a Trump White House and administration, as well as an as-yet-unpublished “180-day playbook” of actions that a recent one would take President could implement day one after the inauguration on January 20, 2025.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, who recently took over leadership of the project, seems to be enjoying the fight and is moving full steam ahead.
“Rest assured we will not give up,” Roberts wrote in an email to fans this summer. “We will not give in.”
How the 2025 project came about
When Project 2025 launched in April 2023, it promised to “dismantle the administrative state” by laying out the staff and policies that could serve as a roadmap for the next conservative president.
The former Trump administration officials who worked on the project said they wanted to avoid the mistakes of the first Trump White House by ensuring the next Republican president has the staff and policies in place to carry out his campaign priorities.
“There is an impetus to really take off,” Paul Dans, director of the Presidential Transition Project 2025, said in a 2023 interview with the Associated Press.
The book’s concept, based at the Heritage Foundation, the venerable conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., harkens back to an earlier version, the Reagan-era “Mandate for Leadership,” said to have been so popular in the White House that it will be copied were placed on work tables to guide the recent presidency.
At least 100 conservative groups, many with graduates of the Trump administration, came together to develop proposals for a sweeping restructuring of the federal government, from adding more political appointees to the Justice Department to reassigning government employees with law enforcement experience to deal with to deal with illegal immigration and to dismantle the Ministry of Education.
One of the key proposals would make it easier to pack the government with Trump loyalists by reassigning about 50,000 workers to jobs from which they can be fired – a revival of the so-called Schedule F policy that Trump introduced before he left the US tried to introduce office. The idea is now central to the conservative vision of dismantling the “deep state” bureaucracy, which they blame for blocking Trump’s priorities.
The launch of Project 2025 to mark the foundation’s 50th anniversary was also a debut of sorts for Roberts; He was previously considered an ally of Trump’s rival Ron DeSantis, who was the keynote speaker at the gala event at the start of the presidential primary season.
“The conservative movement is coming together to prepare for the next Conservative government,” Roberts said in the announcement. Heritage, he said, wants to “ensure that the next president has the right policies and personnel in place to dismantle the administrative state.”
When Project 2025 became a viral sensation
President Joe Biden’s campaign warned early about Project 2025 in social media posts before his State of the Union address in April, and House Democrats formed a Project 2025 task force in June to address their concerns to reinforce. Days later, comedian John Oliver made fun of it on his HBO show.
But it was Biden’s dismal debate performance with Trump in June that gave the project its viral moment in 2025.
It wasn’t so much what was said at the presidential debate as what was left unsaid: Biden didn’t even really mention Project 2025, disappointing the expectations of his allies who had expected more of a knockout blow.
This weekend, a single thread started on actress Taraji P. Henson, who spoke to Vice President Kamala Harris on a segment of the BET Awards show, warning primetime viewers: “The 2025 Project plan is not a game. Look!” And countless juvenile TikTok creators, speaking directly to their cameras, explained in videos that went viral the threat they said Project 2025 posed to their civil, reproductive and other rights.
“This is really a case of grassroots revolt,” said Joe Radosevich of the Center for American Progress. “They saw the contours of race in the offer and rejected it completely.”
Particularly after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling, which struck down constitutional abortion protections, Democrats and their allies wanted to show how the presidential election would affect people’s lives in the future, rather than simply giving voters a personal choice allow .
People wanted a debate about policy, Radosevich said, and not an election “just based on mood.”
By the end of June, Google searches for “Project 2025” exceeded searches for Taylor Swift and the NFL, the Harris campaign said.
And when a giant replica of the book “Project 2025” was dragged onto the stage to make fun of the Democratic National Convention that evening, it wasn’t just celebrities and liberal convention-goers who made fun of it. Conservatives began blaming Heritage and Project 2025 for hurting Trump’s election chances.
The 2025 project is sharply criticized by Trump
Trump’s campaign never embraced Project 2025 and actively avoided it, despite its proximity to people and policies familiar from the former president’s time in the White House.
Other conservative groups with close ties to Trump are also preparing for a second term in the White House. Trump’s campaign team had repeatedly warned Heritage to tone it down and not portray the 2025 project as part of Trump’s campaign.
But Roberts appeared undeterred, even as he came under fire in July for suggesting that the country was in the middle following the Supreme Court’s ruling that granted the president broad immunity from prosecution over the Jan. 6 insurrection in a “Second American Revolution” will remain bloodless if the left allows it.”
Days later, Trump spoke out strongly against Project 2025.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump posted on his own social media account. “I have no idea who is behind this. I don’t agree with some of the things they say and some of the things they say are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. I wish them luck in whatever they do, but I have nothing to do with them.”
At that time, ahead of the Republican National Convention, Trump unveiled his own policy platform, drafted in part by one of his former administration officials, conservative leader Russ Vought, who also contributed to Project 2025 and its 180-day plan.
Heritage parted ways with Project 2025’s chief architect, Dans, who resigned at the end of the month, a move that apparently pleased Trump’s team.
“Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be very welcome and should serve as a tip-off to anyone or group attempting to misrepresent its influence on President Trump and his campaign – it will not end well for you,” said Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita , the Trump campaign manager, in a joint statement.
The future of the project 2025
As the race for control of Congress heats up to the point where a single seat could decide which party controls the House or Senate, Project 2025 is being used by Democratic-allied outside groups to target Republicans as opposed to its hardline proposals to represent connected.
The House Accountability Project has created micro-sites for more than a dozen House Republicans in some of the most competitive seats, linking their past votes on abortion, government funding and other issues to proposals for the 2025 project.
“The House GOP is currently advancing the policies contained in Project 2025,” said Danny Turkel, spokesman for the House Accountability War Room. “They’re already taking these policies to the Capitol.”
The House Republican Campaign Committee argues that its candidates have nothing to do with Project 2025, and the attacks are being hatched by Democrats to divert attention from their own border and inflation policies.
“They concocted a false attack based on something House Republicans had never read,” said Will Reinert, press secretary for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
He called the attacks a “desperate lie” as Democrats in the House of Representatives “see their chances of regaining the majority dwindling.”
