Inside Project 2025
The Heritage Foundation's Plan for an Authoritarian America
During Donald Trump’s first term in office, which included an unprecedented attack on democratic norms, two impeachments, 88 criminal charges, a deadly insurrection, and the mismanagement of a pandemic that led to more deaths than any other large population, high-income nation, the guardrails of our democracy remained relatively intact. The system held because of the civil servants who put their loyalty to the constitution over the whims of an erratic strongman.
But this is no longer the case. The second Trump term is already filled with loyalists cultivated by far-right think tanks. Over the last four years, these groups have been diligently working on a plan to remove the barriers that previously kept Trump in check, to give him unprecedented power over all branches of government, setting the stage for an authoritarian regime
The blueprint for this policy is the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
The Heritage Foundation is a right-wing think tank co-founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich, most notable for bringing evangelicals into the Republican fold because they opposed racial integration. The Heritage Foundation was established to push pro-business economic policy as a response to the consumer, labor, and environmental protections of the 1960s and early 70s, and it was largely funded by the corporations and wealthy elites most affected by the legislation.
Since its founding, Heritage has advocated for the elimination of the minimum wage, opposing unions, giving tax cuts to the wealthy, defunding the National Endowment for the Arts, and pushing school choice, which funnels money out of public schools and into privatized ones.
In 1981, the Heritage Foundation drafted a 3,000-page, 20-volume document called Mandate for Leadership. They distributed it to Ronald Reagan and his entire cabinet, and it became their blueprint for implementing trickle-down economics—the idea that if you give corporations and millionaires tax breaks, it will trickle down to the rest of us. But it was an economic policy that had never been proven to work in the history of the world.
The Mandate for Leadership—and trickle-down economics—was a plan to align the federal government with the desires of Big Business and the uber-rich. This meant slashing budgets for government services that helped the poor and minorities and provided a leg up, like public education, Pell Grants, child nutrition, food stamps, Medicare, drug rehabilitation, charity hospitals, legal services for the poor, and unemployment insurance, all to give the wealthy and corporations massive tax cuts, which created the largest budget deficit in history, reaching some $100 billion a year.
Before Reagan implemented this plan, the US had seen a period of great prosperity thanks to FDR’s New Deal, which created the most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, where the bottom 90 percent reaped 70 percent of the rewards. Since 1980, America has been sliding back to Depression-era inequality in a period described as the Great Regression—history’s fastest and largest redistribution of wealth to the wealthy. Today, the 1% possess more of the nation’s wealth than the bottom 90 percent of families combined, returning the US to levels of inequality not seen since the Great Depression.
Within the first year of Reagan’s presidency, he implemented over two-thirds of the Mandate’s 2,000 recommendations. (The Heritage Foundation even provided 11 members to the Reagan transition team.)
In 2017, The Heritage Foundation handed Trump an updated version of the Mandate for Leadership and supplied 70 former Heritage employees for his administration and transition team. And just like Reagan, Trump implemented two-thirds of the policy recommendations in his first year.
A few of the Heritage policies Trump implemented during his first term include:
Repealing net neutrality (allowing tech companies to charge more for higher internet speeds)
Restricting access to Temporary Assistance to Needy Families
Overturning airline pricing regulations
Cutting federal funding for interstate highways
Cutting funding in half for the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights
Eliminating the Minority Business Development Agency
Eliminating the PLUS loans program, which helped grad students pay for college
Ending funding for common core curricula in grades K-12
Eliminating federal loan forgiveness
Phasing out federal housing subsidies
Eliminating the Labor Department's Women's Bureau
Cutting funding in half for the National Labor Relations Board
Reducing funding for FEMA to respond to national disasters, eliminating disaster relief grants, and ending the National Flood Insurance Program
Leaving the Paris Climate Accord to appease fossil fuel funders, as well as ending renewable energy mandates for federal agencies, ending global warming regulations on vehicles and power plants, and ending funding for the Global Climate Initiative and the Environmental Protection Agency climate programs
Selling off federal land, opening it to fossil fuel companies, and revoking fracturing regulations
Eliminating endangered species management
Ending US membership in UNESCO, the UN Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, which promotes sustainable development between nations
And restricting disability compensation for veterans
In 2023, the Heritage Foundation published its ninth edition of the Mandate for Leadership, a 900-page document better known as “Project 2025.”
At least 140 people who worked for Trump in the past were involved in crafting Project 2025, including Christian nationalists who believe in removing the line between church and state, and white supremacist hate groups who want to return the nation to the 1950s, if not the 1850s.
Anne Nelson, Research Scholar of International and Public Affairs, (and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the recipient of a 2005 Guggenheim Fellowship for work on media and Nazi Germany,) described it best:
At least 100 conservative organizations contributed to Project 2025, and their names read like a masterclass in Orwellian language—language that means the opposite of what it claims. A few of the groups include:
Alliance Defending Freedom
American Compass
The American Conservative
America First Legal Foundation
American Accountability Foundation
American Center for Law and Justice
American Cornerstone Institute
American Council of Trustees and Alumni
American Legislative Exchange Council
The American Main Street Initiative
American Principles Project
Center for Equal Opportunity
Center for Family and Human Rights Center for Immigration Studies
Center for Renewing America
Claremont Institute
Coalition for a Prosperous America
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Conservative Partnership Institute
Concerned Women for America
Defense of Freedom Institute
Ethics and Public Policy Center
Family Policy Alliance
Family Research Council
First Liberty Institute
Forge Leadership Network
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Foundation for Government Accountability
FreedomWorks
Honest Elections Project
Independent Women’s Forum
Institute for the American Worker Institute for Energy Research
Institute for Women’s Health Intercollegiate Studies Institute
The Leadership Institute
Liberty University
National Association of Scholars
National Center for Public Policy Research Pacific Research Institute
Personnel Policy Operations
Recovery for America Now Foundation
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America
Texas Public Policy Foundation
Young America’s Foundation
Here are just some of Project 2025’s proposed policies:
Cut social security and raise the retirement age
Cut Medicare and repeal Biden’s drug price negotiation, raising the price of prescription drugs
Cut disability benefits for veterans
Eliminate the Department of Education, Head Start, and free school lunches
Use taxpayer dollars to fund private religious schools, and teach Christian religious beliefs in public school
Eliminate the Department of Agriculture’s role in promoting nutrition and food safety
End the Affordable Care Act, which provides healthcare to 40 million Americans
Eliminate overtime pay, and weaken labor laws to make it harder for workers to organize and form unions, thus depressing wages
Weaken labor laws to make it harder to organize and form unions, thus depressing wages
Use the military to break up peaceful protests and bypass state governors to deploy the national guard
Increase student loan payments and reverse Biden’s student debt relief efforts
Defund the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, and prohibit the FBI from combatting disinformation, letting Kremlin propaganda proliferate on social media (in a media environment where rightwing fake news outlets now outnumber actual newspaper sites)
Extend the Trump tax cuts for corporations and the rich, while raising taxes on the middle class
CLIMATE
Repeal the Inflation Reduction Act because of its landmark climate initiatives
Eliminate energy efficiency standards for appliances, eliminate the Clean Energy Corps, gut clean energy programs, and slash funding for research into renewable energy
Expand fossil fuel consumption and arctic drilling
Withdraw from all climate change agreements that don’t benefit the fossil fuel industry, including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Climate Agreement
IMMIGRATION
End birthright citizenship
Allow ICE to conduct raids at schools, churches, hospitals, and playgrounds
The mass deportation of 11 million immigrants, to make America white again, using the military and national guard to round them up into migrant detention centers. (This new border policy would be even more inhumane than the last, where Trump separated at least 5,000 children from their families and locked them in cages, of which 2,000 kids have still not been reunited with their parents. Over 50 asylum seekers died in custody, at least 6 of whom were children, and nearly all of which were preventable.)
CIVIL RIGHTS
Reverse the FDA’s approval of abortion medication, ban shipment of abortion pills from state to state, ban birth control nationwide, and allow states to monitor women’s pregnancies—and prosecute women who violate abortion bans
End no-fault divorce, making it harder for victims of domestic violence to leave abusive relationships
Erase the terms “sexual orientation”, “gender identity”, “gender equality”, “reproductive health,” and “reproductive rights” from government websites and civil discourse, paving the way to erase the civil rights of LGBTQ, minorities, and women
Allow the federal government to establish marriage between a man and woman, end marriage equality, and reverse protections for gays and lesbians, once again allowing for discrimination and criminalization
Withdraw federal anti-discrimination protections for transgender students, and reimplement Trump’s transgender ban in the military
End Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs (DEI), ban African American and gender studies in all levels of education, and ban books and curricula about Black history and slavery
Ban pornography
GOVERNMENT
Eliminate federal agencies like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which would privatize weather services
Remove FDIC banking protections for savings accounts
Prohibit the Centers for Disease Control from attempting to control diseases, from issuing health guidelines, and advising vaccinations for schoolchildren (welcome back smallpox, measles, and polio)
But perhaps worst of all, Project 2025 calls for removing job protections for government employees, giving Trump the ability to fire any civil servant at will and replace them with loyalists willing to do his bidding.
Within Trump’s first week in office, two-thirds of his executive orders have come from Project 2025—a blueprint for turning America into an oppressive, neo-fascist autocracy where oligarchs strip the country for parts and corporations run roughshod, free of regulations, taxes, and accountability.
The Heritage Foundation has long been recruiting loyal servants to help achieve that vision. And the Supreme Court has essentially given Trump carte blanche to do it, granting this convicted felon the immunity of a king.
Additionally, Trump has pardoned Jan 6 insurrectionists and validated domestic terrorists, which means if they engage in new acts of political violence on his behalf, Trump could order the Justice Department not to prosecute them, in the same way Hitler looked the other way when his brownshirts attacked Jews and political opponents in Nazi Germany. (For more similarities between Trump and Hitler, see The Truth About… Hitler, Trump, and Godwin’s Law.)
Many of Trump’s first-term policies failed because our democratic institutions held, but now, only weeks into his second term, those safeguards are rapidly collapsing.
This time, Trump will not fail. But our democracy just might.
Art by Allan Whincup. Watch the full animated video here: The Truth About… A Second Trump Presidency (and Project 2025)
Sources:
Project 2025: The Latest Plot Against America: https://washingtonspectator.org/project-2025-the-latest-plot-against-america/
Project 2025: https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
Project 2025 … and 1921, and 1973, and 1981: https://prospect.org/politics/2024-07-10-project-2025-republican-presidencies-tradition/
How Far Trump Would Go: https://time.com/6972021/donald-trump-2024-election-interview/
How Right-Wing Groups Are Plotting To Implement Trump’s Authoritarianism: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/09/heritage-foundation-project-2025-trump-authoritarianism-our-land/
The “Day One” Dictatorship: https://newrepublic.com/article/181224/day-one-dictatorship
Trump Administration Embraces Heritage Foundation Policy Recommendations: https://www.heritage.org/impact/trump-administration-embraces-heritage-foundation-policy-recommendations
At least 5,000 families were forcibly separated during the Trump administration. The work of reunifying them is painfully incomplete: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/separated-families-border-trump-zero-tolerance-immigration.html
New Report Finds Nearly All Deaths in ICE Custody Over 5 Years Were Preventable": https://truthout.org/articles/new-report-finds-nearly-all-deaths-in-ice-custody-over-5-years-were-preventable/
Breaking Down what Project 2025 Means for US by Democracy Forward: https://democracyforward.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2024-05_Peoples-Guide-Pro-2025.pdf
Project 2025 in Comic Book form: https://stopproject2025comic.org/?fbclid=IwY2xjawGf255leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHbOFKnxRZoLGbM1AIqO-_ASgST6SWiYpHB1Gtg1uJjgRgsn8qZlXy8o8OA_aem_AfEw1DNTkuOf-p_ekU2ekg