According to the plan: Despite denials, Trump’s team looks to be implementing Project 2025

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How Project 2025 came into being

The much-discussed “Project 2025” document is a 920-page action plan for the “next Republican president,” published in July 2024. It was not developed by the Trump administration or the Republican Party, but by the conservative Heritage Foundation, where many officials from Trump’s first administration contributed to the text: former Office of Personnel Management director Paul Dans, former Trump adviser Spencer Chretien, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, former presidential trade adviser Peter Navarro, and over 100 others.

The document proposed fairly radical reforms — overhauling the tax system, bringing independent agencies under presidential control, restricting access to abortion medication, tightening of immigration policy, placing increased pressure on the media, limiting LGBTQ+ rights, and scrapping diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.

Project 2025 predictably became a major talking point during the election campaign. Joe Biden said that Donald Trump stood behind the document and warned that the project would “destroy America.” Kamala Harris characterized it as a “plan to return America to a dark past.” The authors themselves also shaped its perception as a threat. Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts directly declared that the country was “in the process of a second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

In the end, Donald Trump and his supporters decided that direct association with Project 2025 was too toxic and began to deny having any ties to it. In July, Trump wrote on his preferred social network: “I know nothing about Project 2025. 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.”

According to the president and his team, their plans after winning the election were published not to be found in Project 2025, but in the Agenda 47 program. This is a much more compact and vague manifesto that nevertheless overlaps with the Project in many respects. For example, Agenda 47 also speaks of expanding presidential power, carrying out mass deportations, relocating manufacturing to the United States, and fighting DEI.

Not the first of its kind

In 1981, shortly after Ronald Reagan entered the White House, a precursor to Project 2025 — titled Mandate For Leadership — was published by the Heritage Foundation. According to the group, by the end of Reagan’s first year in office, almost half of the ideas contained in the program had already been implemented.

Ahead of Trump’s first term in 2016, the organization also presented a Mandate for Leadership with 334 policy recommendations. A year later, the Heritage Foundation published a detailed report claiming that the Trump administration had implemented 64% of its proposals, including America’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, an increase in military spending, reform of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, withdrawal from UNESCO, expanded offshore drilling, and development of federal lands.

Despite Trump’s attempts to distance himself, a similar pattern was seen following the publication of the Heritage Foundation’s latest wish list. According to data from the independent Project 2025 Tracker, 48% of all programmatic provisions of the document have already been implemented. Similar figures – 47% – are cited by the nonprofit organization Center for Progressive Reform.

This statistic cannot be explained simply by an overlapping set of views between Trump and the authors of the document. The implementation is being carried out by the very same people who wrote it, including by new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Brendan Carr, who composed the Project 2025 chapter devoted specifically to FCC reforms. In it, he proposed tightening oversight of technology companies, introducing platform liability for user content, and increasing the accountability of the agency itself.

Russell Vought, who contributed Project 2025 chapters focused on the fight against bureaucracy, was appointed director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) — one of the most influential positions in the federal government. The OMB oversees spending across the entire administration, and unsurprisingly, it played a massive role in the mass layoffs that characterized Trump’s first year back in power.

In total, more than 30 people linked to Project 2025 received senior positions in the new Trump administration — this despite the head of its transition team previously stating that candidates associated with the document would not be considered for such posts.

Trump’s reaper against federal agencies

Nine months after taking office, Trump stopped pretending that he did not know who was behind the document — and that he disagreed with its provisions. On Oct. 2, Trump posted an AI-generated video in which OMB director Vought is shown walking through Washington dressed as the Grim Reaper. He also published a post that read: “I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent. I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity. They are not stupid people, so maybe this is their way of wanting to, quietly and quickly, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Trump’s team gained the ability to act more decisively thanks to the suspension of government funding. First, this made it possible to use procedures such as Reduction in Force (RIF) — mass layoffs in the event of budget cuts or lack of work. Second, it made it possible to carry out reforms with less resistance than would be faced from a government operating under normal circumstances.

Vought did not even conceal his intention to take advantage of this legal loophole. Even before the funding suspension, he issued a memo demanding that agencies prepare plans for mass layoffs in the event of a shutdown.

As a result, on Oct. 1, Vought announced the cancellation of funding for the Green New Deal climate program in 16 states, totaling $8 billion. In addition, during the shutdown he froze funding for construction of the Hudson River tunnel and the expansion of the New York City subway totaling $18 billion, as well as a $2.1 billion project to modernize Chicago’s subway system. The US Army Corps of Engineers was forced to suspend “nonpriority” projects totaling another $11 billion.

All of these cuts applied exclusively to projects promoting a “Democratic agenda” — for example, the development of “green” energy — or projects being implemented in states where Democrats had won elections.

In addition to freezing project funding, Vought moved aggressively to carry out mass layoffs. On The Charlie Kirk Show on Oct.15, he said that official layoff notices had already been sent to 4,100 employees across seven agencies, and that the total number of people dismissed would “likely exceed 10,000.”

After that, federal employee unions (AFGE and AFSCME) filed lawsuits challenging the legality of the layoffs during the shutdown, and a federal court issued a temporary injunction blocking the dismissals.

This was not the first blow dealt by the Trump administration to agencies and departments. The first round of cuts took place at the very beginning of the second term and was largely associated with the activities of Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). For example, at that time the number of employees at the Department of Education was cut by nearly half. In total, according to calculations by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, more than 200,000 federal employees had been laid off by the end of September.

All of these measures align with the goals of Project 2025, which aims to radically reduce staffing levels, weaken the bureaucracy, and transfer more decision-making power to the president.

Consolidation of power

Another key area of the Project involved bringing independent agencies under presidential control. In February 2025, Trump signed an executive order titled “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies.” As a result, all agencies created by Congress — such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) — were required to coordinate their initiatives with the White House.

Another important innovation of the order granted the president and the attorney general exclusive authority to interpret laws for the executive branch. In other words, it is now the administration — not independent agencies — that determines how the laws regulating its activities ought to be applied.

In addition, at the very start of his second term, Trump moved to dismantle independent government oversight, dismissing more than ten inspectors general — independent watchdogs within federal agencies.

Repeal of diversity policies

Trump had already advocated ending diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies during the election campaign and promised to focus on what he described as “anti-white” racism. These views overlap with one of the provisions of Project 2025, which sets the goal of reversing the “DEI revolution” and eliminating the corresponding programs supported by the Democratic Party.

On inauguration day, Trump issued Executive Order 14151, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs.” As a result, DEI programs in federal agencies were abolished, along with all DEI-related contracts and grants. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency canceled around 400 grants totaling $1.7 billion. In addition, lists were compiled within the federal government of employees associated with DEI programs; these were either dismissed or transferred to other units.

The rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies affected not only the government, but also technology companies. Meta disbanded its DEI team, while Google, IBM, and Adobe abandoned hiring targets and scaled back DEI training.

At universities, DEI programs were either shut down entirely — for example, at universities in Michigan, Utah, North Carolina, Alabama, and Virginia — or rebranded, as at Harvard, the University of Cincinnati, and the University of Pittsburgh. Articles on inclusivity and LGBTQ+ rights also began disappearing from university websites.

Cuts to food assistance

The tenth chapter of Project 2025 is devoted to reforming the Department of Agriculture and federal nutrition programs for low-income people (SNAP), which were used by 42 million Americans. In particular, it proposes tightening eligibility requirements for participants and scaling back the tools that states could use to make assistance more accessible. Project 2025 also calls for a return to older benefit-calculation standards (adopted back in the 1960s) in order to reduce the level of support. It also advocates eliminating the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).

In July 2025, Trump signed his “Big Beautiful Bill.” Some of its provisions were focused on SNAP, introducing new requirements for program participants. Among other things, the new law extended work requirements of at least 80 hours per month to veterans, parents with children over the age of 14, older adults up to age 64 (rather than 54, as before), former foster youth, and people experiencing homelessness. As a result of the new rules, about 2.4 million Americans lost their benefits.

The government shutdown also dealt a blow to SNAP, with food assistance programs for millions of Americans being temporarily frozen. The Trump administration said it would not use reserve funds to maintain SNAP, citing the need to preserve resources for other programs and blaming Democrats, who it said “do not want to pass a budget.” The courts ordered a partial restoration of payments, but benefits were still only paid in part in the month of November.

A black wall and mass deportations

Of course, Trump pursued a hardline immigration policy even during his first term. Construction of the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border was one of the most memorable episodes of his presidency. After winning reelection, Trump promised to complete the wall by 2029 and decided to paint it black — so that it would heat up under the sun, making it harder to climb. In short, it is not Project 2025 that pushed Trump to take a harder stance on immigration. However, even here, the document’s proposals provided the president a clear roadmap for getting where he already wanted to go.

Immediately after his inauguration, Trump signed Executive Order 14159, “Protecting the American People From Invasion.” It expanded the use of expedited removal, introduced fines for migrants who failed to report a change of address, and stripped federal funding from “sanctuary cities” that did not cooperate with the national government on immigration enforcement.

In April 2025, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security terminated the Humanitarian Parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, under which 532,000 people had previously received legal status and work authorization in the United States. The Trump administration also canceled the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program, created back in 1990 to provide protection to foreign nationals who had immigrated because of armed conflicts or other crises. As a result, 70,000 immigrants from Honduras and Nicaragua were left without legal status, making them vulnerable to deportation.

In May, the State Department launched the creation of an Office of Remigration (yes, bureaucratic newspeak is not unique to Russian officials). Its tasks include “actively facilitating the return of migrants to their countries of origin” and working with the Department of Homeland Security on deportations. At the same time, Trump signed an executive order on “self-deportation” that offered undocumented migrants the option of voluntarily leaving the United States in exchange for a one-way ticket and an exit bonus of $1,000.

In addition, the Trump administration, which regularly reports on cutting government spending, allocated a record $170 billion to combating migration. Of that amount, $45 billion is earmarked for expanding the ICE detention system. The law also provides for the hiring of 10,000 new deportation agents.

What else could become reality?

Despite the fact that the authors of Project 2025 can already check off about half of their ideas, many provisions remain. By every indication, several of them will be addressed in 2026.

For example, the document includes a proposal to completely ban medical abortions, and Trump has already taken some steps in this direction, ending federal funding for abortions performed for nonmedical reasons and rescinding two of Joe Biden’s executive orders protecting reproductive rights. However, Project 2025 also describes more radical measures, including revoking licenses for abortion pills and banning their distribution by mail.

Another provision of Project 2025 that clearly appeals to Trump is ending birthright citizenship in the United States. He has already tried to do this through his executive order “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” but it was blocked by a federal court. Nevertheless, the administration continues to push its interpretation of the 14th Amendment. Under this view, if parents are in the United States illegally or on a temporary basis, their children are not fully subject to U.S. jurisdiction and therefore are not covered by the amendment. This would mean they could be denied citizenship.

In addition, Project 2025 calls for fairly sweeping changes to the tax system. Instead of the seven existing individual tax brackets (10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35%, and 37%), its authors propose keeping only two — 15% and 30% — and cutting the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 18%. So far, however, within the framework of his “Big Beautiful Bill,” Trump has merely extended the tax cuts from his own 2017 reform (the TCJA), which were set to expire at the end of 2025, while also introducing several additional breaks. For example, he excluded tips and overtime pay from the taxable base and allowed interest paid on auto loans to be deducted.

Project 2025 also proposes a radical overhaul of federal funding for the media. Trump, who is well known for his confrontations with the press, has already issued an executive order ending funding for PBS and NPR.

At the same time, the authors of Project 2025 advocate a deeper purge of “liberal” media and tighter control over programming, to be exerted by the executive branch. However, such measures are widely unpopular in American society and provoke sharp criticism even from Trump’s core electorate.