Warnings about America becoming the dystopian Handmaid’s Tale series. Promises to flee the country. Invocations of “fascism” and “authoritarianism.” Warnings that former President Donald Trump will become a dictator if granted a second term. These hysterical notions have spread across the internet, all centered on one thing: “Project 2025.” 

Legacy media and Democratic politicians alike regularly refer to it as “Trump’s Project 2025.” But what is Project 2025, exactly, and would Trump actually implement it if reelected?

Project 2025 is essentially a very, very long white paper put out by conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation in collaboration with many other right-of-center groups. It has no direct connection to Trump, but many of the people involved in its creation did work in the Trump administration and have extensive links to Trumpworld. 

As for its contents, well, as journalist Isaac Saul noted in an excellent explainer, “It has four pillars: a set of policy proposals for the next administration, a database of personnel who could serve in that next administration, a ‘Presidential Administration Academy’ designed to train that personnel, and a playbook of actions that the next president should take in their first 180 days in office.”

Most of the panic has centered on Project 2025’s policy proposals and recommended presidential actions, some of which are admittedly quite extreme. They include typical conservative policy ideas such as cutting taxes, building a border wall, and expanding school choice programs. But, as the BBC explains, it also includes much more controversial right-wing ideas such as banning nearly all pornography, removing the abortion medication mifepristone from the market, and enacting large-scale mass deportation of illegal immigrants. 

So, is that what awaits America under a second Trump term? That’s what progressive critics of Project 2025 are insisting, but the reality is more complicated. 

Trump has specifically distanced himself from Project 2025. On Truth Social, he wrote, “I know nothing about Project 2025. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”

And at a recent campaign rally, Trump again put space between himself and the Heritage Foundation’s proposals, calling the Project 2025 creators “the radical Right,” labeling the proposals “extreme,” and saying, “I don’t want to know anything about it.” 

To be clear, Trump is not being entirely honest when he says he doesn’t know the people behind Project 2025 or anything about it. Many of those involved were high-up in his administration, and he is certainly well acquainted with them. But he is being truthful when he says that Project 2025 is not his agenda, and the notion that Trump would ever enact its most controversial elements is contradicted by his actual platform. 

Trump put out an official 2024 Republican platform that includes none of the extreme abortion restrictions outlined in Project 2025. Plus, his platform doesn’t say anything about banning pornography. And while Project 2025 advocates “biblical marriage,” the Trump platform specifically removed the old language about opposing gay marriage, which Trump has supported for years.

To be fair, on some things, such as immigration policy, including engaging in a historic mass deportation campaign, there is very little daylight between Project 2025 and Trump’s agenda. But anyone broadly conflating the two as one and the same is, at best, mistaken and, at worst, engaged in fearmongering and demagoguery. 

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Despite what Vice President Kamala Harris says, it is not “Trump’s Project 2025.” 

As Saul explained, “It’s more accurate to say that Project 2025 is a proposal that a group of conservative activists are hoping to sell Trump on — it’s an aspirational plan they want him to adopt if he wins a second term.” And if Trump’s recent comments are anything to go by, many of the most controversial elements of Project 2025 are going absolutely nowhere even if he wins in November. 

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is an independent journalist, YouTuber, and co-founder of BASEDPolitics.