You’ve probably heard of Project 2025 – either from Democrats such as the vice-president, Kamala Harris, warning of what it could mean for US government, or from Republicans such as former president Donald Trump claiming they have nothing to do with it.
The project is an effort by the Heritage Foundation, a prominent rightwing thinktank, to dismantle features of the government it believes conflict with conservative ideology and to install extreme, conservative policies in a potential second Trump term and beyond.
Its director, Paul Dans, stepped down from his role this week and said some of the project’s work would be “winding down”, though it’s not clear what that looks like in practice – the ideas aren’t going away. Dans’s departure came after pressure from the Trump campaign, which said “reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed”.
Trump has disavowed the project and has said he doesn’t know anything about it, though it was written by many who worked in his administration, and shares many of his policy goals. His vice-president pick, JD Vance, has close ties with the Heritage Foundation and its president, Kevin Roberts; Vance even wrote the foreword for Roberts’ new book.
The first part of Project 2025 is a 900-plus page manifesto, which lays out all the changes that the more than 100 conservative groups on board want to see happen if Trump wins again. Subsequent parts will include suggesting personnel and training them on how the government should work.
So what’s actually in the manifesto?
Education
The Project 2025 manifesto suggests a conservative president should dismantle the Department of Education, an idea that Trump has also supported. At most, it says, the department should be a “statistics-gathering agency that disseminates information to the states”.
It wants to phase out Title I funding that goes to low-income schools. And it would allow states to spend federal education money without direction, giving states leeway to use money meant for a specific purpose for whatever they want as long as it relates to education.
The project says a conservative president should push policies to support universal voucher programs, in which public money meant for public schools funds private school tuitions.
The Heritage Foundation also wants to eliminate Head Start, a program that funds early childhood education for low-income families. The left-leaning Center for American Progress says in a new report that eliminating Head Start would reduce access and increase costs for childcare, hurting economic stability.
Abortion
Project 2025 doesn’t explicitly call for a national abortion ban, but the policy ideas it advocates would aggressively limit access to abortions across the country.
The manifesto suggests the Department of Health and Human Services should rename itself the Department of Life, “explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care”.
It calls for eliminating Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) programs that “do not respect human life and conscience rights and that undermine family formation”. The health department would not consider abortion to be healthcare and would fund studies about the “risks and complications” of abortion. It also says the CDC should help promote “fertility awareness” methods of family planning.
It proposes to collect data on abortion across the states, “abortion survivors” and maternal deaths related to abortion. States that don’t share data on abortions within their borders would see federal funds withheld “because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism”. This data collection would include demographics to assess whether any groups are targeted by abortion providers.
The use of mifepristone and misoprostol, the two pills that together provide a chemical abortion, would be curtailed. The project wants the Food and Drug Administration to reverse its approval of mifepristone.
As an “interim step”, the government should outlaw telemedicine for abortion care or the mail ordering of abortion pills, which the project calls “a gift to the abortion industry”.
It also says that US health policies “should never place the desires of adults over the right of children to be raised by the biological fathers and mothers who conceive them”.
Diversity issues
Attacks on diversity programs and the rights of LGBTQ+ people are infused throughout Project 2025. Nearly all agency-specific chapters mention that any efforts to promote diversity or recognize the existence of LGBTQ+ people should be ended.
The project also calls for the government to protect the ability of people to refuse to participate in same-sex unions or gender-affirming care, allowing businesses, healthcare workers and adoption agencies to discriminate if something goes against their conscience. It wants to reverse policies that include sexual orientation as a protected class for discrimination and end collection of data on non-binary people.
The manifesto generally labels these initiatives “woke” and wants to drive them out. The manifesto defines marriage as between a man and a woman and wants to see policies that promote “stable, married, nuclear families”.
Its education section calls for scrapping LGBTQ+ and diversity-focused programs, eliminating trans girls’ ability to play in girls’ sports, and preventing kids from using names or pronouns different from their birth certificate without parental approval.
Federal workers
One of the project’s largest changes would install far more political appointees beholden to a conservative president’s agenda to all levels of government, and firing civil servants with expertise, who often serve as a check and balance to executive power.
The civil service is largely made up of employees who remain in their roles regardless of which party controls the White House. They have employment protections, allowing them to keep their jobs when administrations change. Only about 4,000 federal employees are currently in politically appointed roles, out of more than 2 million civil servants.
The benignly named “Schedule F”, however, would increase the number of political appointees significantly by classifying far more roles as policy-related. The exact number of federal government employees this would affect isn’t known, but some estimates say about 50,000 people could lose their jobs if their roles became political ones.
Trump issued an executive order making the change near the end of his term in office, and the project wants to revive it. It makes suggestions in most chapters of different roles that should become political appointments. For instance, in the state department, the project says “no one in a leadership position on the morning of January 20 should hold that position at the end of the day”.
Climate change
The project’s goals include eliminating much of the government’s policies on climate change and enabling more drilling. It de-emphasizes renewable energy by cutting funding for certain offices aimed at energy transition.
At the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the project wants to move away from climate-related goals, saying the agency is “being coopted by the Left for political ends” by “embedded activists”.
The chapter on the EPA suggests eliminating the office of environmental justice and external civil rights. It wants to lessen regulations on clean air and water and prioritize the needs of businesses and private property owners.
A fact check made by Project 2025 said it was true they want to increase Arctic drilling, calling the area “of immense strategic importance to America” and in need of “development of vast energy resources”.
Free weather reports are also at risk, with the project proposing to dismantle the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which houses the National Weather Service, and privatize some of its functions. Research conducted by Noaa on issues like greenhouses gases would be diminished because the research arm is “the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism”.
Taxes
How the project’s tax proposals could affect you is complicated. It generally suggests moving from the seven tax brackets now in place to two tax brackets at 15% and 30%, with the 30% rate kicking in for people who make more than about $168,000 and eliminating “most deductions, credits and exclusions”.
It also calls for some kind of national consumption tax, like a national sales tax, business transfer tax or specific type of flat tax because it would be the “least economically harmful way to raise federal tax revenues”.
A conservative president should also seek to repeal subsidies included in the Inflation Reduction Act, like those aimed at green energy, the project says.
It also wants to make permanent Trump-era estate and gift tax exemptions and reduce rates for these types of taxes, which affect a tiny subset of Americans with high wealth. “If you’re one of those people, your heirs would be very happy with this proposal,” one analyst told CNBC.
The project proposes decreasing corporate taxes to 18%. The corporate tax rate is currently 21% after cuts in the Trump era. The project claims “the corporate income tax is the most damaging tax in the US tax system.”
While the project doesn’t specifically call for reducing or eliminating overtime pay, it proposes a host of changes to who can receive overtime pay and how it would be calculated that could result in lower overtime pay for some workers.
Immigration
The project aims to crack down significantly on immigration, both legal and otherwise.
The plans would entail mass deportations, including of unaccompanied minors and via raids at worksites. It would allow immigration officers to carry out “civil arrest, detention, and removal of immigration violators anywhere in the United States, without warrant where appropriate”. It also says that when there’s a mass migration event, the homeland security secretary will stop migration from specific lists of countries.
Limits would be imposed on visa programs as well, generally hewing toward allowing high-wage specialty workers into the country. And there would be a “premium processing” visa option that would allow people to pay more to get faster service. If there are any backlogs for visas, the project says the government should pause applications until those backlogs are cleared.
The immigration plans extend well beyond the border: the project wants to block federal financial aid to college students if their state allows in-state tuition access for undocumented immigrants, including Dreamers. And it would ban people from receiving any federal housing benefits if someone in their home doesn’t have legal status.
For cities that don’t adhere to the immigration hard line, the project suggests a conservative president should withhold federal disaster funding until they get in line. This would include states where migrants can get driver’s licenses and places that don’t share immigration-related data with the federal government.
Veterans benefits
For veterans, the project notes that more disability ratings were added in recent years for health conditions, of which “some are tenuously related or wholly unrelated to military service”. Recognizing it is politically charged to get rid of these disability-related benefits, the project suggests some disability awards for future veterans could be “revised” while preserving them “fully or partially” for current beneficiaries.
“Wholesale benefits reform is unnecessary and politically a ‘third rail’,” the project says.
Pornography
As part of its social policy ideas that align with rightwing Christian values, the project wants to criminalize the production, distribution and consumption of pornography. On the Project 2025 website, the group says “pornography has no claim to First Amendment protection and its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime.”
