The Making of the President 2024: Project 2025
A political initiative known as Project 2025 (also called the 2025 Presidential Transition Project) has inserted itself into the 2024 Presidential election campaign. The initiative was published in 2022 by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation. Its goals are to promote conservative policies that would become government policy under the assumption that Donald Trump wins the 2024 Presidential election. The plan seeks to consolidate executive power, and it is based on something called the unitary executive theory, a hypothesis that asserts that the entire executive branch of government is controlled completely by the President of the United States. Under the plan, tens of thousands of federal civil servants could be dismissed and replaced with those loyal to the President. Those who designed Project 2025 believe that the current government bureaucracy is unaccountable and liberal. The project also seeks to infuse the government and society with those possesses of what they consider to be conservative Christian values.
Critics have characterized Project 2025 as an authoritarian and contrary to constitutionally mandated sepatation of church and state. Project 2025 envisions widespread changes to economic and social policies and to the federal government and its agencies. The plan proposes taking partisan control of all government departments including the Department of Justice, as well as federal law enforcement agencies like the FBI, DEA, and ATF, as well as regulatory agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission, It also proposes to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security and to reduce environmental and climate change regulations in order to give preference to fossil fuels. It recommends abolishing the Department of Education and cut funding for climate research
The project also proposes cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and to outlaw abortions on a federal level. It also seeks to eliminate coverage of emergency contraception and to prosecute those who send and receive contraception and abortion pills. It proposes criminalizing pornography, removing legal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identification and calls for terminating diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and affirmative action. It also proposes that the DOJ prosecute "anti-white racism."
The Project calls for the arrest, detention and deportation of illegal immigrants, and for the deployment of the miliary for domestic law enforcement. It supports capital punishment.
The Heritage Foundation employs many people closely aligned with Donald Trump's campaign including members of his presidential administration, although they have said that the project does not speak for Trump or his campaign. The project's controversial proposals led Trump and his campaign to distance themselves from the project, and Trump himself has said that he knows "nothing about it."
The Heritage Foundation is closely aligned with a number of conservative groups run by Trump allies. Heritage president Kevin Roberts has said that he sees the organization's current role as "institutionalizing Trumpism." At a 2022 Heritage Foundation dinner, Trump endorsed the organization, saying it was "going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do ... when the American people give us a colossal mandate."
Project 2025 proposes reconsidering the accommodations given to journalists who are members of the White House Press Corp, and it calls for defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private, nonprofit corporation that provides funding for PBS and NPR. It has called for revoking NPR stations' noncommercial status, forcing them to relocate outside the 88-92 range on the FM dial, which could then be taken by religious programming.
Trump has said that he wants little to do with Project 2025. “I have no idea who is behind it,” the former president recently claimed on social media. But six of his former Cabinet secretaries helped write or collaborated on the 900-page plan, and four individuals Trump nominated as ambassadors were also involved. About 20 pages are credited to his first deputy chief of staff. At least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025 according to a CNN review. CNN found nearly 240 people with ties to both Project 2025 and to Trump, covering nearly every aspect of his time in politics and the White House - from day-to-day foot soldiers in Washington to the highest levels of his government.
Since becoming the Democratic Party's presidential nominee, Kamala Harris tried to tie the controversial initiative to her opponent. She has indicated her support for passing legislation which would restore the federal abortion right protections previously guaranteed by Roe v. Wade, and she has argued that Trump would let his anti-abortion allies implement Project 2025 to restrict abortion and contraception throughout the US.