What does President Trump’s second term blueprint actually say on key issues?
Americans are growing increasingly anxious about a new plan called “Project 2025” that outlines what a second term for President Donald Trump would look like. Everyone from late-night host John Oliver to musician Lizzo has spoken about the plan, with MSNBC host Chris Hayes warning that it “could completely control every aspect of your life.”
But is it really as alarming as they say? In short, yes.
The plan proposes reforming the federal government, though it’s not the first of its kind. The blueprint, published by the Heritage Foundation, is based on a book called “A Call to Leadership,” first published in January 1981. The book was intended to be a roadmap for Ronald Reagan’s incoming administration.
Though Trump has said he knows nothing about Project 2025, he does have longstanding ties to many of the plan’s architects. CNN estimates that at least 140 former Trump administration officials are involved in the plan in some way, including former Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson. Former Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought was also one of the plan’s chief authors and serves as director of policy and policy for the Republican National Committee.
This document is full of alarming ideas, but we’ve combed through all 900-plus pages to find the most alarming policy proposals so you don’t have to.
The worst part of Project 2025
government
Instead of nonpartisan civil servants implementing policy on everything from health to education to climate, the executive branch would be filled with Trump supporters.
“To carry out the president’s wishes, political appointees need to be given the tools, knowledge, and support to overcome the federal government’s obstructive personnel department. More fundamentally, the new administration needs to be staffed with political appointees. Devine, Kirk, and Dans note that “in the first few months of his term, the Trump administration appointed fewer political appointees than any recent president.” This has put career officials in charge in many places. This can happen even after the departments are well-staffed with political appointees. Vought writes that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) should develop a “reputation as the gatekeeper of the ‘commander’s intent,'” but OMB is dominated by career officials who often try to ignore the political appointees who work in the various executive departments. Empowering political appointees throughout the administration is crucial to the president’s success.”
The plan also includes putting the Department of Justice (and all law enforcement agencies, including the FBI) under presidential control, which would mean Trump could have the power to investigate and potentially jail his political opponents, as he has already promised.
“If there are other ministries that have gone astray as the Department of Health and Human Services, [Health and Human Services] During the Obama and Biden administrations, it was a once-proud Department of Justice (DOJ).”
Labor force
Project 2025 believes the Department of Labor should relax teen labor regulations, writing that “some young people are attracted to jobs that are inherently dangerous.”
“This will help approve training programs and equip teenagers who want to work in these fields.” DOL [Department of Labor] The Government should amend the Hazard Orders regulations to allow teenage workers to take up regulated work, provided they have the appropriate training and parental consent.”
They are calling on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and both public and private employers to stop collecting employment data based on race and ethnicity, which they say “leads to racial quotas.”
LGBTQ rights
Project 2025 violates the rights of same-sex couples by redirecting federal funds to support a “biblical” definition of family. The plan would give the federal government priority to families “composed of a married mother, father, and their children,” and eliminate all policies that promote LGBTQ equality.
“The next Secretary should also reverse the Biden Administration’s focus on LGBTQ+ equality, eliminating subsidies for single mothers, work disincentives, and marriage penalties, and replacing them with policies that encourage marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood, and nuclear families.”
The plan’s creators see gender-affirming care for young people as a “social contagion” that mainly affects girls. They even equate being transgender with pornography, believing that pornography should be banned.
“For example, today’s ubiquitous pornography of transgender ideology and child sexualization is not a political Gordian knot that ties together various claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare.”
abortion
While the project does not specifically call for a nationwide ban, it does offer aggressive proposals to ensure abortion is not considered a medical procedure and to use federal power to block it.
“Conservatives in states and Washington, including the next conservative administration, should do everything they can to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction across the country. In particular, the next conservative president should work with Congress to enact the strongest unborn protection laws Congress supports, while also using existing federal powers to protect innocent life and strictly adhere to the statutory ban on federal funding of abortion.”
The document’s authors also want the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (which the Heritage Foundation has proposed renaming the Department for Life) to collect data on people who have abortions.
“The Department of Health and Human Services should use all available tools, including budget cuts, to ensure that states accurately report how many abortions were performed in their state, the age of the baby, the reason, the mother’s state of residence, and the method used.”
Additionally, the agenda calls for the Food and Drug Administration to revoke its 24-year-old approval of the widely used abortion drug mifepristone and remove it from the market. Other proposals targeting medication abortions include making it more difficult to access, such as by requiring dispensing in person rather than by mail.
“Now that the Supreme Court has recognized that the Constitution does not include a right to abortion, the FDA has an ethical and legal obligation to reconsider and revoke its original approval, which was based on the premise that pregnancy is a ‘disease’ and that abortion is ‘therapeutically’ effective in treating this ‘disease.'”
education
The plan would make sweeping changes to the public school system, including cuts to long-standing federal programs for low-income and early childhood education, like Head Start, and even eliminating the Department of Education entirely.
“Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the Federal Department of Education should be abolished.”
Planners also want the incoming administration to repeal Biden-era revisions to Title IX, a 1972 law that bans education programs from discriminating on the basis of sex, that strengthened protections for LGBTQ+ students. They propose reimplementing the Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IX, which defined “sex” for purposes of the law as only “biological sex at birth.”
“The President should direct agencies to repeal regulations that interpret sex discrimination provisions to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, or sex characteristics…. The President should direct agencies to focus enforcement of sex discrimination laws on the biological binary meaning of ‘sex.'”
Can Project 2025 really be carried out?
Backed by a $22 million budget, the project includes a strategy for implementing Trump’s policies from day one if he takes office in January 2025. The Heritage Foundation, which is behind the plan, has also already compiled a database of conservatives ready for immediate government office.
In response, Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman launched a “Stop Project 2025 Task Force” to devise a coordinated plan across the “ideological spectrum” to counter “right-wing plots to undermine our democracy.”
“Project 2025 is more than just an idea. It is a dystopian plot already in motion to dismantle our democratic institutions, abolish checks and balances, chip away at the separation of church and state, and impose a far-right agenda that violates fundamental freedoms and runs counter to the will of the American people,” Rep. Huffman said in a statement. “It is an unprecedented endorsement of extremism, fascism, and religious nationalism, orchestrated by the far-right and the shadowy organizations that fund it. We need a coordinated strategy to save America and stop this coup before it’s too late.”
