(NEXSTAR) — Throughout the current election season, Democrats and those seeking to prevent a second term for Donald Trump have tried to link the former president to Project 2025. the controversial plan for a future Republican president, compiled by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation.
Trump said he was knowing nothing about the wish list of politiciansand has more recently distanced himself from the plan, despite his close ties to many of its key architects. That hasn’t stopped Democrats from warning voters about Project 2025, even reaching out to comedian and “SNL” alumnus Kenan Thompson highlights aspects of this during the national convention last month.
Think tank proposals on policies and personnel are nothing modern. They are common “across the ideological spectrum,” Bill Muck, a political science professor at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, told Nexstar. The hope of those who draft these proposals is that they will “influence the policy process.”
Nevertheless, Project 2025 has remained a major topic of conversation for both parties recently. But what makes it so unique?
According to Muck, it depends on the scope and specificity of the plan. The nearly 1,000-page document “goes into a lot of detail” but appears to serve to “represent a good portion of where the conservative ideological movement stands today,” he explained.
This, coupled with the fact that Trump is not a “politician,” provides space for groups like the Heritage Foundation to create detailed plans like Project 2025, according to Muck.
“We often point the finger at Donald Trump and say he’s the one driving this whole thing. Of course he plays a role in all of this, but this is a reflection of the broader movement, the current base, and that’s where these ideas come from.”
Because Project 2025 appears to reflect a larger portion of the party’s base, Muck noted that unlike other similar policy wish lists, it could have greater influence if Trump is elected president.
“Although Donald Trump is running a little bit from Project 2025 during his candidacy because it might not be politically advantageous, I think on a deeper level there is agreement that this is where the conservative movement stands,” Muck said. “It’s likely that when he’s in office he won’t implement the entirety of Project 2025, but it will probably be a blueprint for some of the core principles he would pursue as president.”
Among the proposals outlined in Project 2025, Muck believes Trump might be most interested in Unified Executive Theoryor “the idea that the president has enormous power.”
While the plan does not rely directly on this theory, it envisions a dramatic expansion of presidential power and calls for the firing of up to 50,000 government employees by loyalists of the president. It calls for the closure of the Department of Education and the dissolution of the Department of Homeland Security, with parts of it being absorbed by other federal agencies.
“I think that’s something that will be very, very appealing to Donald Trump, regardless of all the details, because as president, Donald Trump likes the idea of having power and being able to make decisions.”
While distancing himself from Project 2025, Trump has already announced that he will overhaul the federal bureaucracy he has long accused of blocking his first-term agenda. He said, “I will completely wipe out the deep state.” The former president plans to reissue the Schedule F executive order stripping civil service protections. He said he would then fire “renegade bureaucrats,” including those who “weaponized our justice system,” as well as the “America Last warmongers and globalists in the deep state, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the national security industrial complex.” Trump has also announced plans to dismantle the Department of Education and wants to curtail the independence of regulatory agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission. As part of his efforts to reduce government waste and red tape, he has also promised to eliminate at least ten modern federal regulations for every modern one.
The decision to make Ohio Senator JD Vance his vice presidential running mate was seen by some as another connection to Project 2025. Heritage President Kevin Roberts said he was good friends with Vance and that the Heritage Foundation had secretly been rooting for him to be the vice president.
Vance wrote the foreword about Robert’s modern book, which was supposed to be published in September but has now been postponed because Project 2025 is in turmoil. Roberts postpones release of his potentially fiery modern book until after November Presidential elections.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
