What is Project 2025? Everything we know about the “dystopian” manifesto for Trump’s second term

A The 900-page plan, drawn up by former Donald Trump aides and supported by a powerful right-wing think tank, has long been seen as the former president's roadmap for his second administration.

Project 2025 — a blueprint for Trump's presidency pushed by the Heritage Foundation and more than a dozen former Trump administration officials — is essentially a wish list for his administration, with plans to expand his executive powers to replace officials with ideologically aligned officials replace, abolish abortion rights, etc., among other things, push through an anti-immigrant agenda.

Throughout their campaign, Democrats made the conservative plan a key goal.

Using an oversized, printed hardcover version of the 900-page document, Saturday Night LiveKenan Thompson used Project 2025 for a comedy sketch. “Have you ever seen a document that could kill a small animal and democracy at the same time? Here it is,” Thompson asked as the crowd roared with laughter.

Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris repeatedly made Project 2025 a direct focus of her campaign rhetoric.

“(Trump) and his extreme Project 2025 agenda will weaken the middle class. We know we have to take this seriously,” Harris said at a rally. “Can you believe they put that in writing? Read it. It’s 900 pages.”

At the same time, the former president desperately tried to distance himself from the plan by claiming he knew “nothing” about it or “who was behind it,” even though its originators came from the Trump White House and Republicans had close ties to the group brought it into being.

At a rally in Michigan, just a week after a 20-year-old gunman opened fire at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, killing one attendee and wounding two others while only slightly injuring Donald Trump's right ear, he told the Crowd: “Some of the right, the hard right, came up with this Project 25, I don't even know, some of them I know who they are, but they are very, very conservative. They are, so to speak, the opposite of the radical left.”

“There's the radical left and the radical right, and they're coming – I don't know what the hell it is, it's Project 25,” Trump continued, botching the initiative's name. “You read some things and they are extreme, they are really extreme. But I don’t know anything about it, I don’t want to know anything about it.”

The central policy book of Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise details major changes across the federal government, from the White House to lesser-known agencies, with chapters written by former Trump officials. Additionally, many of Project 2025's policies are virtually identical to those proposed by Trump during his re-election campaign.

As The Independent As previously reported, the plan would strip away checks and balances to give Trump unprecedented, concentrated executive power over federal agencies. If strictly followed, the new Trump administration would unleash a blitzkrieg of shootings on all federal agencies, opening the door to an army of loyalists who would then use the government as a weapon against their rivals.

The plan recommends abolishing the U.S. Department of Education, cutting funding for federal law enforcement and undermining agencies that regulate broadcasting and campaign finance to suppress dissent.

This consolidation of power would also protect Trump from legal threats and could trigger a wave of attacks against immigrants, reproductive health care and civil rights protections for LGBT+ people.

The plan would also revoke the federal government's approval of widely used abortion drugs, expand the country's nuclear footprint, resume nuclear weapons testing and activate active-duty military to make arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border, among other measures.

House Democrats, led by California Rep. Jared Huffman, created a Stop Project 2025 task force to coordinate with members of Congress, pro-democracy and civil rights groups, and affected communities “to investigate, expose, and “to forestall and counteract it” in order to undermine democracy.”

“Project 2025 is more than an idea, it is a dystopian conspiracy already underway to dismantle our democratic institutions, abolish separation of powers, abolish the separation of church and state, and impose a far-right agenda that infringes and violates fundamental freedoms. “ “The public will,” Huffman said in a June 11 statement.

“This is an unprecedented embrace of extremism, fascism and religious nationalism, orchestrated by the radical right and its dark backers,” he said. “We need a coordinated strategy to save America and stop this coup before it is too late.”

Project 2025 was designed by dozens of former Trump administration officials and other loyalists, nearly half of whom are recipients of dark-money donations from groups tied to conservative donor Leonard Leo, who helped usher in Trump's radical overhaul of the federal judiciary .

The plan's reform of the federal government also poses a threat to marriage equality and public school funding and could “tear down the wall of separation between church and state and upend our democracy,” said Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

The nearly 1,000-page plan begins with a “pledge” to eliminate access to abortion, and “abortion” is mentioned nearly 200 times.

“And their attacks don’t stop at abortion,” said Karen Stone, vice president of public policy and government relations at Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “They also plan to restrict funding for birth control and other preventive care and attack gender-affirming care and sex education.”

During the campaign, the task force served as a public information campaign as interest in Project 2025 surged on social media, and it could now serve as an important bulwark in Congress against any moves by Trump to pursue such an agenda. But if Trump holds all the power, it will not be within their power to stop them unless serious alliances are forged.

“Project 2025 will not be 'stopped' by a frivolous, error-filled press release or a House Democratic task force that lacks a basic understanding of federal governance,” Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, said in a statement. “The task force created by House Democrats only underscores the left's fear of losing control of its authoritarian bureaucracy… We will not give up and we will win.”

Trump campaign advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said last year that “any staff lists, policy agendas or government plans published anywhere are merely suggestions.”

The efforts of outside groups like the Heritage Foundation were “appreciated” but did not support the campaign, they said.

In a statement denying ties to the campaign, the Heritage Foundation said the plan was merely a guideline “for the next conservative president.”

“But it will ultimately be up to this president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement,” the group said.

As Trump seeks a second term in the White House, the American people must now wait to see what happens next.

This story was originally published in June 2024 and has been updated with developments