Jul 13, 2024, 3:00 AM PDT (Vox.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then-president Donald Trump speaks to the Heritage Foundation\u2019s President\u2019s Club Meeting at a hotel in Washington, DC, on October 17, 2017. Andrew Prokop<\/a> is a senior politics correspondent at Vox, covering the White House, elections, and political scandals and investigations. He\u2019s worked at Vox since the site\u2019s launch in 2014, and before that, he worked as a research assistant at the New Yorker\u2019s Washington, DC, bureau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In talk about what a second presidential term for Donald Trump might bring, one name has become the shorthand for all the horrifying things that might await: Project 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s been called<\/a> \u201cauthoritarian\u201d and \u201cdystopian.\u201d It\u2019s the talk of TikTok<\/a>. Some Democrats see it as<\/a> the ace in the hole that could save President Joe Biden\u2019s struggling reelection campaign. But Trump is now claiming<\/a>, implausibly<\/a>, to know nothing about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So what is it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Project 2025 is the conservative movement\u2019s detailed and specific plan for what the next Republican president should do with his power, including its preparation to put that plan into action. Basically, it\u2019s an attempt to make the second Trump term way more organized and effective than the first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Organized by the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation and advised by more than 100<\/a> conservative groups, Project 2025 has put forth a 922-page<\/a> list of policy recommendations, going agency by agency in the federal government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is not a pie-in-the-sky policy agenda full of bold but empty promises. It is crafted to be a list of things the next president\u2019s appointees really can do, put together by many people who served in top posts under Trump last time and could well do so again. (Project 2025 is also collecting a database of names of conservatives who could take jobs in Trump\u2019s second term.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n But what does it say? Are its proposals as terrifying and extreme as progressives are claiming? And are they really what Trump would end up doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The answers are a bit complicated because Project 2025 encompasses a lot of different things (and there are some claims about what\u2019s in it that are simply false). I think of its agenda as falling into three buckets:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1) Concentrating power in the presidency<\/strong>: The idea here is to give Trump and his appointees more power over the executive branch relative to permanent nonpartisan civil service professionals (who he disparages as the so-called \u201cdeep state\u201d). Critics fear this will lead to the abuse of power and political hackery. Trump supports these ideas and we have every reason to believe he\u2019d implement them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2) Achieving longtime conservative priorities: <\/strong>This is stuff like slashing regulations, reducing federal spending on the poor, ditching efforts to fight climate change, ramping up military spending, and so on. Many progressives think these ideas are terrible, but they aren\u2019t exactly new. Trump supports basically all of these. (Project 2025 mostly avoids taking firm positions on issues where Trump breaks from the conservative consensus, such as trade.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3) Taking a hardline religious-right agenda<\/strong>: The project lays out quite aggressive proposals to use federal power to prevent abortions and restrict certain contraceptive coverage. It even says that pornography should be \u201coutlawed\u201d and its creators and distributors should be \u201cimprisoned.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n These last ones are the proposals Trump may be most wary of. \u201cSome of the things they\u2019re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,\u201d he wrote on TruthSocial<\/a>, without specifying which things he meant. But the reality is that these are all major causes of some of Trump\u2019s most important and loyal political allies, people he frequently rewards with key appointments. If he hands them key posts again in his second term and neglects to rein them in, the abortion proposals in particular could well come to pass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, there are also many claims circulating about things purportedly in Project 2025 that are not in fact in there (it does not, for instance, propose ending no-fault divorce). But much of its 922 pages do indeed seem to be a plausibly accurate guide to what Trump would pursue if elected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The story of Project 2025 starts with the Heritage Foundation. Since its founding in the 1970s, Heritage has styled itself as the main think tank of the conservative movement. Its goal is to push the Republican Party toward a further right agenda so that GOP officials listen more to ideologues and hardliners, not moderates and the traditional party establishment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Heritage does this partly by crafting and advocating for policy proposals. They also try to be a sort of \u201cadministration-in-waiting\u201d when the GOP is out of power, with experts on their payroll who can join a newly elected administration. In some ways, Project 2025 is not new: The Heritage Foundation has been releasing extremely long (and extreme) plans for what the next conservative president should do since 1980<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet the dynamics this time around are different, in part due to Heritage\u2019s close ties to Trump and in part due to the unusual situation where a former president is trying to regain office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ordinarily, there\u2019d be a fair amount of ambiguity about who the next president would appoint to his administration if elected. But Trump has been president before, and when he was, he heavily relied on Heritage appointees. (After his unexpected 2016 win, he needed to quickly staff an administration and come up with policies, and Heritage<\/a> was ready<\/a> and waiting<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n About two-thirds of authors and editors involved in Project 2025\u2019s plan served in the Trump administration. HUD Secretary Ben Carson, acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, deputy White House chief of staff Rick Dearborn, former OMB director Russ Vought, and top DHS official Ken Cuccinelli contribute chapters, just to name a few. And John McEntee, the White House personnel director who purged<\/a> officials viewed as disloyal to Trump, has a key role in collecting staff recommendations<\/a> for the project. (CNN reported<\/a> that at least 140 former Trump administration officials were in some way involved in it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump also praised<\/a> the Heritage Foundation at an April 2022 event, calling it a \u201cgreat group\u201d that would \u201clay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do\u201d when \u201cthe American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.\u201d (Obviously, that conflicts with his recent claim<\/a> that he has \u201cno idea who is behind\u201d it and that he has \u201cnothing to do with them.\u201d) Much of the plan also seems crafted to appeal to Trump specifically, and there\u2019s tons of stuff in it that he openly supports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having said all that, it does appear true that Project 2025 was crafted without Trump\u2019s personal involvement. It was put together in early 2023<\/a>, before Trump had actually won the nomination again, and while Heritage was cultivating close ties to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis<\/a> too. It\u2019s a plan for what movement conservatives, including many close Trump allies, hope to do, but he hasn\u2019t necessarily signed onto all of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The main Project 2025 policy document is, again, 922 pages long<\/a>. After an introduction by the Heritage Foundation\u2019s president, there is a separate chapter for each major executive branch agency or office. Each is written by someone with expertise on that office\u2019s capabilities \u2014 often someone who could, conceivably, run that office if Trump returns to power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The details, within three broad categories, break down along these lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1) Concentrating power in the presidency<\/strong>: Trump\u2019s allies believe that his first term failed because he couldn\u2019t get enough \u201cloyal\u201d appointees in place and because the \u201cdeep state\u201d bureaucracy sabotaged him. So a main recurring theme of Project 2025 is how to bend the executive branch to a conservative president\u2019s will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA President today assumes office to find a sprawling federal bureaucracy that all too often is carrying out its own policy plans and preferences \u2014 or, worse yet, the policy plans and preferences of a radical, supposedly \u201cwoke\u201d faction of the country,\u201d Vought, Trump\u2019s former OMB director, writes in one chapter. \u201cThe modern conservative President\u2019s task is to limit, control, and direct the executive branch on behalf of the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Project 2025\u2019s proposals to achieve that goal include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2) Longtime conservative priorities: <\/strong>The vast majority of Project 2025\u2019s policy plan is focused on longstanding conservative priorities \u2014 with some tweaking and elisions for the Trump era. Though some are indeed quite extreme, they\u2019re not all that new or specifically tied to Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are far too many to list here, but just as a flavor:<\/p>\n\n\n\n On a few issues \u2014 trade, antitrust, the Export-Import Bank \u2014 the plan states that the conservative movement is divided, and lays out the thinking of two different sides on each issue. On the question of Social Security and Medicare, which Heritage has long supported overhauling but Trump does not, the document is basically silent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3) A hardline religious-right agenda<\/strong>: There are also parts of Project 2025 that, while not exactly surprising for conservatives, are quite extreme in ways that are politically problematic for Trump. The plan calls for:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a fiery introduction by Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, Project 2025 also calls for banning porn:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Roberts also adds that pornography is \u201cmanifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children,\u201d suggesting that he may define \u201cpornography\u201d much more broadly than is typical \u2014 that he may view any attempt to explain or teach about trans people as worthy of outlawing and imprisonment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is reflective of a broader push<\/a> from religious and cultural conservatives. (The demand for porn prohibition does not show up in the document again after Roberts\u2019s introduction, making it unclear how it would be implemented.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Project 2025 has captured the attention of progressives, various lists purporting to lay out what\u2019s in it have spread online. Some of these lists are largely accurate,<\/a> but others contain exaggerations and falsehoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Contrary to some online claims<\/a>, Project 2025 itself does not call for ending no-fault divorce, a complete ban on abortions without exceptions, a ban on contraceptives, raising the retirement age, teaching Christian beliefs in public schools, ending marriage equality, banning Muslims from entering the country, or abolishing the FDA and EPA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, various Heritage Foundation experts and allied groups who signed onto the project have indeed called for many of these things at various points and hope to work toward such goals. Here are Heritage links in support of raising the retirement age<\/a> and a nationwide abortion \u201cheartbeat\u201d ban<\/a>. (Trump, of course, called for \u201ca complete and total shutdown<\/a> of Muslims entering the United States\u201d during his 2016 campaign. He also called for abolishing the EPA<\/a>.) But such proposals are not in the document itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lots!<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the level of broad principles, Trump supports much of Project 2025\u2019s ideas. He has appointed many of its authors, and may well appoint many of them again. The proposals are mostly crafted to be achievable through executive authority alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s every reason to believe a second-term President Trump will go full steam ahead with centralizing executive authority in a way that could enable major abuses of power, and with pursuing much of the typical conservative agenda through the executive branch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are a handful of things that he probably won\u2019t do \u2014 like the porn ban, something he has never supported or shown any seeming desire to pursue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The big uncertainty is around the abortion-related topics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his first term, Trump happily handed over key appointments to anti-abortion conservatives, including the Supreme Court justices who eventually overturned Roe v. Wade<\/em>. And now that Roe<\/em> is gone, those loyal allies of his want more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While running for office, Trump has been wary of the demands of anti-abortion activists. He has been vague about what he\u2019d do with federal authority over abortion policy if elected, saying that he wants to leave the issue to the states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But what would he do once the election is in the rearview mirror? Would he appoint anti-abortion hardliners to key posts? If so, would he overrule them if they took extreme measures, given his intermittent interest in the nuts and bolts of governance?<\/p>\n\n\n\n We can\u2019t know for sure. But given Trump\u2019s current vagueness, there are good reasons to believe he\u2019d reward his loyal allies once he\u2019d no longer be punished for that at the polls. Which means some of the most extreme Project 2025 ideas could well come to pass if he wins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The sweeping conservative plan for Trump’s second term is very real. Here\u2019s what it actually says. by Andrew Prokop Jul 13, 2024, 3:00 AM PDT (Vox.com) Then-president Donald Trump speaks to the Heritage Foundation\u2019s President\u2019s Club Meeting at a hotel in Washington, DC, on October 17, 2017.Mandel Ngan\/AFP via Getty Images… Continue reading ![\"US-POLITICS-TRUMP-TAX](\"https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/07\/GettyImages-862546872-1.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C2.60663507109%2C100%2C94.78672985782&w=2400\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Mandel Ngan\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Andrew](\"https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/chorus\/author_profile_images\/14413\/Screen_Shot_2017-11-09_at_10.54.58_AM.0.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=96\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWho is behind Project 2025? Is it Trump?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What is actually in Project 2025?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
What\u2019s not in Project 2025<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
If Trump wins, how much of Project 2025 will happen?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n