President Donald Trump has signed a slew of executive orders in the two weeks since his inauguration that reflect proposals outlined in the far-right policy blueprint Policy 2025—even as the president has long tried to distance himself from the controversial document.
President Donald Trump holds up an executive order after signing it during an indoor inauguration ... [+]
Project 2025 includes a 900-page report proposing a total overhaul of the executive branch, which was crafted by the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups in 2023 as a roadmap for the next conservative president—namely Trump—to follow.
Trump has repeatedly denied having any involvement with Project 2025, after Democrats highlighted it as a key reason to vote against Trump in the election, and while there’s no evidence he’s explicitly following its proposals or has any plan to, many of the steps he’s taken since his inauguration are in line with suggestions made in the policy blueprint.
DEI: Trump has taken significant efforts to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives throughout the government—and in the private sector—since taking office, signing multiple executive orders aimed at abolishing those programs, which mirrors Project 2025’s calls for the next conservative president to “eliminate every one of [the Biden administration’s] wrongful and burdensome ideological projects,” writing “Nondiscrimination and equality are the law; DEI is not.”
Among the “DEI” policies Trump revoked is a 60-year old policy from 1965 that prohibited employment discrimination by government contractors and empowers the federal government to impose consequences for any discriminatory practices, which Project 2025 explicitly called to revoke, writing that abolishing the Lyndon B. Johnson-era executive order would mean contractors will “be less subject to the changing political whims of a President that might impose significant new costs or burdens.”
Border Security and Defense: Project 2025 is largely in line with Trump’s broad moves to restrict immigration and tighten security on the southern border, with both the president and Project 2025 advocating increasing detention facilities for undocumented migrants, taking steps that would give local law enforcement more jurisdiction over identifying undocumented migrants, rescinding Biden-era immigration policies, restricting undocumented immigrants’ abilities to receive public funds and restricting parole programs for migrants, among other moves.
Funding Freeze: The Trump administration’s recent decision to broadly halt federal assistance, which it later walked back, echoes Project 2025’s call for the president to “use every possible tool to propose and impose fiscal discipline on the federal government,” saying “Anything short of that would constitute abject failure”—a passage written by Russell Vought, whom Trump tapped to lead the Office of Management and Budget, which issued the funding pause memo.
Trump’s move to block government agencies from spending funds appropriated through Biden-era infrastructure and inflation bills is also reflected in Project 2025, which said those laws should be repealed and it “support[s] the rescinding of all funds not already spent by these programs.”
Education: Trump has signed executive orders restricting funding for K-12 schools that “indoctrinate” students based on “gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology,” reflecting values espoused in Project 2025—though that proposal doesn’t call for restricting funding—and an order for agencies to investigate how to implement policies that expand “school choice,” after Project 2025 called for the government to use federal funding to “[empower] families to choose among a diverse set of education options.”
Climate Change: Project 2025 proposed leaving the Paris Climate Agreement, which Trump did on his first day in office, and the president’s broad proposals to roll back climate change policies is in line with Project 2025, which denounced the Biden administration’s “radical climate agenda” and called for climate change efforts to be removed from governmental efforts like providing foreign aid and regulating agriculture.
Energy: Trump declared a “national energy emergency” and broadly took action against efforts on renewable energy, like the Biden administration’’s pro-electric vehicle policies and federal wind energy projects—saying the U.S. should instead increase energy production through oil and gas drilling—after Project 2025 similarly claimed the U.S.’ “energy crisis is caused … by extreme ‘green’ policies” and said the next president “must be committed to unleashing all of America’s energy resources.”
Abortion: Though Trump has not taken broad steps to restrict abortion, as Project 2025 advocates, he did issue an executive order undoing Biden-era policies that weakened the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal dollars from being used on abortion, as Project 2025 advocated for, and reinstated the “Mexico City Policy” that prohibits non-governmental organizations receiving federal funds from performing or promoting abortion.
Foreign Policy: Trump signed an executive order calling for the secretary of state to put the agency’s operations “in line with an America First foreign policy,” echoing Project 2025’s calls for the State Department to “refocus [its] mission” and “ensur[e] that the interests of American citizens are given priority.”
Trump’s executive order to sanction countries that refuse to go along with his hardline immigration policies—which led to a trade standoff with Colombia over whether the country would accept deported migrants—also reflects Project 2025, which says the executive branch should “quickly and aggressively address recalcitrant countries’ failure to accept deportees by imposing stiff sanctions until deportees are in fact accepted for return (not just promised to be taken).”
World Health Organization: Project 2025 denounced the World Health Organization before Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the public health institution, with Project 2025 authors claiming the WHO’s “manifest failure and corruption … during the COVID-19 pandemic” posed “danger … to U.S. citizens and interests,” and the U.S. “must be prepared to take appropriate steps in response” to any international organizations that purportedly threaten its interests, “up to and including withdrawal.”
Career Civil Servants: Project 2025 strongly advocates for replacing career civil servants with political appointees dedicated to the president’s agenda, and Trump has taken multiple steps toward that goal already, including reimplementing a “Schedule F” order that makes it easier to fire career officials, imposing a hiring freeze for career civil servants—both of which Project 2025 suggested—and offering buyouts to millions of government employees.
Transgender Rights: Trump’s moves against transgender Americans include ordering the government to only recognize Americans’ sex at birth, banning federal prisons from classifying inmates based on their gender identity, reinstating his ban on transgender Americans from serving in the military and restricting gender-affirming care for minors, after Project 2025 broadly called for gender ideology and identity to be removed from government policies and for the transgender military ban to be reinstated.
Refugees: Trump suspended refugee admissions in an executive order on his first day, after Project 2025 said the “federal government’s obligation to shift … essential screening and vetting resources to the forged border crisis will necessitate an indefinite curtailment of the number of USRAP refugee admissions.”
Sanctuary Cities: Trump signed an executive order saying the government should try to block “sanctuary cities” or areas that offer greater protections to undocumented immigrants from receiving federal funding, after Project 2025 said Congress should “set financial disincentives” for areas that implement “sanctuary” policies.
Death Penalty: Trump directed his attorney general to pursue the death penalty where applicable—as in Project 2025, which says the federal government should “enforce the death penalty where appropriate and applicable”—and actually went even further than Project 2025, saying the death penalty should be imposed in crimes involving the murder of law enforcement officers and capital offenses committed by undocumented immigrants, “regardless of other factors.”
Security Clearances: Trump signed an executive order giving security clearances to any individual designated by the White House counsel to receive one, rather than waiting for the full background check process to be completed, with Project 2025 also decrying the “extraordinary delays” caused by the clearance process.
Project 2025 also backed up Trump’s decision to revoke many former government officials’ security clearances, saying the next president “should immediately revoke the security clearances of any former … senior intelligence officials who discuss their work in the press or on social media” without prior authorization.
FEMA: Project 2025 proposed the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be moved to the Department of the Interior and reformed—which Trump suggested he may do, saying he will sign an order to “begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of them.”
The policy proposal also supports Trump’s suggestion he could refuse to give FEMA funds to areas that oppose him politically, with Project 2025 arguing FEMA grants should only go to areas that “can show that their mission and actions support the broader homeland security mission”—though Project 2025 specifies that wouldn’t include disaster relief funding, while Trump has suggested he could also withhold those funds.
Military Policies: Trump reinstated members of the military who were discharged for not complying with its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, as Project 2025 urged, and also signed an order ending DEI programs in the military, after Project 2025 called for the military to “eliminate Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs and abolish newly established diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff.”
While many of his policies in office line up with priorities outlined in Project 2025, Trump has publicly disavowed Project 2025 and has not changed his stance since taking office. There’s no indication he’s actually following Project 2025’s playbook now, as there’s always been significant overlap between his personal policy agenda and what Project 2025 has proposed, though Reuters reported ahead of the inauguration that the Heritage Foundation was among the groups providing draft executive orders to Trump’s transition team. Trump has not yet given any suggestion that he’s planning on imposing some of Project 2025’s more controversial sweeping measures, like abolishing the Department of Homeland Security, taking broad steps to restrict abortion or applying a baseline tax rate.
“This is exactly the work we set out to do,” former Project 2025 leader Paul Dans, who served as the program’s director before stepping down in July, told CNN about Trump’s early actions in office.
In a statement to CNN, Trump spokesperson Harris Fields said Trump “had nothing to do with Project 2025.” “In his first few days in office, President Trump has delivered on the promises that earned him a resounding mandate from the American people – securing the border, restoring common sense, driving down inflation, and unleashing American energy,” Fields said.
Trump’s policies since taking office also have some significant differences from what Project 2025 outlines. Most notably, one of Trump’s first acts in office was to pause the federal ban on TikTok while his administration tries to negotiate a way for parent company ByteDance to divest from it, while Project 2025 calls for banning the app. Trump’s call for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants also goes beyond what’s proposed in Project 2025, which calls for broad-scale immigration reforms and strengthened border security, but does not explicitly endorse widescale deportations. While Project 2025 proposes narrowing pathways to legal immigration and moving away from what it terms a “system that favors extended family–based and luck-of-the-draw immigration,” Project 2025 also does not call for ending birthright citizenship, as Trump has ordered. (His executive order abolishing birthright citizenship has been temporarily blocked in court.) Trump also is going further than Project 2025 on restricting foreign aid, as he reportedly plans to move the U.S. Agency for International Development to be under the State Department, while Project 2025 only called for “reforming” USAID and “scal[ing] back USAID’s global footprint.”
Multiple high-level officials and nominees in Trump’s second administration played a role in crafting Project 2025, including Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr, senior counselor for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro, Securities and Exchange Commission head Paul Atkins and Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan. Carr and Navarro each authored sections of Project 2025’s policy blueprint, while Atkins and Homan are listed as contributors. Most notably, Trump nominated Vought to serve as the head of the Office of Management and Budget after Vought reportedly previously served as a key architect of Project 2025. He authored the policy proposal’s chapter on the Executive Office of the President of the United States and reportedly spearheaded the project’s playbook for Trump’s first 180 days. The Republican-controlled Senate Budget Committee advanced Vought’s nomination Thursday with unanimous GOP support, while Democrats boycotted the vote. NBC News reports the Trump transition team also used a LinkedIn-style database of federal staffers that Project 2025 compiled to help recruit lower level administration staffers.
One of the central features of Project 2025’s policy blueprint is a heavy influence on nuclear families and supporting the nuclear family, with a goal of boosting marriage and birth rates, such as through restrictions on abortion. Vice President JD Vance, a close ally of the Heritage Foundation who has long espoused similar views about promoting marriage and birth rates, called at the anti-abortion rights March for Life rally in January for there to be “more babies in the United States of America,” arguing, “The benchmark of national success is not our GDP number or our stock market, but whether people feel that they can raise thriving and healthy families in our country.” “It is the task of our government to make it easier for young moms and dads to afford to have kids, to bring them into the world and to welcome them as the blessings that we know they are here at the March for Life,” Vance said. Trump’s Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy also issued guidance Thursday dedicated to “advancing President Donald Trump’s agenda to rescind woke policies” and “roll back burdensome and costly regulations.” That guidance includes a provision saying the department should prioritize giving grants to “communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.”
Project 2025 proposes a broad overhaul of the executive branch aimed at making it more aligned with conservative ideologies, and giving the president more power. In addition to proposals that would get rid of climate change efforts, rescind LGBTQ rights-centered policies, replace career civil servants with political appointees and impose an “America First” foreign policy outlook—as Trump is now to some extent adopting—the policy blueprint also makes a number of other bold policy suggestions, such as abolishing numerous government agencies, banning pornography and overhauling the Federal Reserve, proposing to do so through such measures as returning to the gold standard or getting rid of the government’s control over the U.S.’ money entirely. Project 2025 also proposes imposing a baseline tax rate—of 15% for anyone under the Social Security wage base of approximately $168,000, or 30% for those earning more than that—and lowering the corporate tax rate to 18%. It suggests making significant cuts to Medicaid and imposing work requirements to receive benefits, as well as making the paid Medicare Advantage program, which is now an alternative to regular Medicare, the default option for patients, among numerous other moves.
Trump’s administration is still only entering its third week, and it remains to be seen what steps he’ll take going forward that could line up—or go against—Project 2025. Among the major moves that Trump has floated is getting rid of the Department of Education, a proposal made in Project 2025, though he has not yet taken any steps toward doing so. Trump’s Health Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also did not rule out at his confirmation hearing Tuesday the possibility the Trump administration could revoke approvals for abortion drug mifepristone, as Project 2025 proposes, saying only that Trump “has asked me to study the safety of mifepristone” and “Whatever [Trump] does, I will implement those policies.” Trump previously told CBS News the abortion drug—which studies have overwhelmingly shown is broadly safe and effective—“is going to be available,” when asked before the election whether he would ban it, walking back his previous suggestion during an August press conference that he could be open to restricting it.
While Project 2025 became best known for its 900-page policy blueprint, the project also included creating a playbook for Trump’s first 180 days in office. Unlike the policy blueprint, that playbook was never made public, with Vought telling journalists from the Centre for Climate Reporting—who obtained secret footage of the Project 2025 architect by posing as potential donors—that it was by design. The 180-day playbook is “very, very closely held,” Vought said in the secret footage, and Micah Meadowcroft, a Vought aide also working on Project 2025, told the undercover journalists the group was intentionally keeping the playbook a secret. Those efforts included ensuring staffers knew the plans before Trump entered office, so that they wouldn't have to converse over government work emails that would be subject to public disclosure rules. It’s still unknown what that playbook says and whether Trump is now implementing it in office.
Project 2025’s policy blueprint was initially released in 2023, part of what the Heritage Foundation has said is a long tradition of the organization crafting policy proposals for incoming GOP presidents that dates back to Ronald Reagan. Though the agenda had already been out for months, it only started garnering widespread attention last summer, ahead of the election, as Democrats started pushing the 900-page document and its policies as a key reason to oppose Trump, causing Trump to publicly denounce the plan. Trump claimed on Truth Social in July he has “nothing to do with [Project 2025],” has “no idea” who’s behind the plan and finds some of its ideas “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal”—even as Trump has long had significant ties to the Heritage Foundation and many of the document’s contributors worked in Trump’s first administration. The policy proposal continued to remain controversial within the Trump team through the election, with Trump’s campaign manager Chris LaCivita calling the effort a “pain in the ass” for the Trump campaign and Trump transition head Howard Lutnick—now Trump’s Commerce Secretary pick—publicly claiming he would blacklist people involved with Project 2025 from working in the second administration.