INDIANAPOLIS — Project 2025 is a plan to dismantle much of the United States federal government and remake it to match the ideals of former President Donald Trump and many of his supporters.
Led by the long-established Heritage Foundation think tank and fueled by former Trump administration officials, the far-reaching effort is essentially a government-in-waiting for the former president’s return — or any candidate who aligns with their ideals and can defeat President Joe Biden.
With a nearly 1,000-page “Project 2025” handbook and an “army” of Americans, the idea is to have the civic infrastructure in place on Day One to commandeer, reshape and do away with what Republicans deride as the “deep state” bureaucracy, in part by firing as many as 50,000 federal workers.
“We need to flood the zone with conservatives,” said Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project and a former Trump administration official who speaks with historical flourish about the undertaking.
“We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said.
What we know about Project 2025
Trump's relationship to Project 2025
The former president denies any direct knowledge of Project 2025.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump posted on his social media website. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying, and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
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But many of the people working on the project were part of his first administration. And many of the plans build on policies and ideas implemented before his defeat in the 2020 election.
A chapter written by Trump’s former acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security calls for bolstering the number of political appointees, and redeploying office personnel with law enforcement ability into the field “to maximize law enforcement capacity.”
At the White House, the book suggests the new administration should “reexamine” the tradition of providing work space for the press corps and ensure the White House counsel is “deeply committed” to the president’s agenda.
Much of the agenda would be accomplished by reinstating what’s called Schedule F — a Trump-era executive order that would reclassify tens of thousands of the 2 million federal employees as essentially at-will workers who could more easily be fired.
Biden had rescinded the executive order upon taking office in 2021, but Trump has vowed to reinstate it.
Experts argue Schedule F would create chaos in the civil service, which was overhauled during President Jimmy Carter’s administration in an attempt to ensure a professional workforce and end political bias dating from 19th century patronage.
As it now stands, just 4,000 members of the federal workforce are considered political appointees who typically change with each administration. But Schedule F could put tens of thousands of career professional jobs at risk.
There’s a “top to bottom overhaul” of the Department of Justice, particularly curbing its independence and ending FBI efforts to combat the spread of misinformation. It calls for stepped-up prosecution of anyone providing or distributing abortion pills by mail.
There are proposals to have the Pentagon “abolish” its recent diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, what the project calls the “woke” agenda, and reinstate service members discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.
Chapter by chapter, the pages offer a how-to manual for the next president, similar to one Heritage produced 50 years ago, ahead of the Ronald Reagan administration. Authored by some of today’s most prominent thinkers in the conservative movement, it’s often sprinkled with apocalyptic language.
The response to Project 2025
“He’s trying to hide his connections to his allies’ extreme Project 2025 agenda,” Biden said of Trump in a statement early in July. “The only problem? It was written for him, by those closest to him. Project 2025 should scare every single American.”
Warning about the far-right Project 2025 agenda for a Donald Trump White House, a group of House Democrats has launched a task force to start fighting the proposal and stop it from taking hold if the Republican former president returns to power.
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Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman, of California, is unveiling The Stop Project 2025 Task Force on Tuesday, the latest sign that congressional Democrats and outside groups are treating Trump’s campaign seriously in the expected rematch against Democratic President Joe Biden this fall.
“The stakes just couldn’t be higher,” Huffman told The Associated Press.
Huffman said the Project 2025 agenda will hit “like a Blitzkrieg,” and lawmakers need to be ready.
“If we’re trying to react to it and understand it in real time, it’s too late,” Huffman said. “We need to see it coming well in advance and prepare ourselves accordingly.”
Some large Heritage Foundation donors have backed away since it publicly launched the plan.