3 Things You Should Know about Project 2025

Project 2025 is meant to prepare what a successful conservative governance would look like if Trump wins in November. The project consists of four pillars: a “Mandate for Leadership” policy agenda, personnel recruitment, training, and a 180-day playbook that would take place starting Jan. 20, 2025.

The “Mandate for Leadership” was fashioned after a policy guide under the same name in 1981 in preparation for Ronald Regan’s administration, CBS News.

It is led by two former Trump officials: Pauls Dans, who served as chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management and serves as director of the project, and Spencer Chretien, former special assistant to Trump and now leads the project associate director.

Before Trump’s first term, the Heritage Foundation created a “Mandate for Leadership” in 2015. During his second year as president, it is reported that Trump instituted 64 percent of its policy recommendations, ranging from leaving the Paris Climate Accords to increasing military spending to offshore drilling and developing federal lands.

In July 2020, the Heritage Foundation delivered an updated version of the “Mandate for Leadership” to have instituted 64% of its policy recommendations, ranging from leaving the Paris Climate Accords, increasing military spending, and increasing offshore drilling and developing federal lands. 

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Although the project involves what another Trump term would entail, the former president has stated he knows “nothing” about it.

“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,” he wrote on Truth Social last week. 

Moreover, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, senior advisers to the Trump campaign, stated that Trump or his campaign team will be the ones making 2024 policy announcements.

“Any personnel lists, policy agendas, or government plans published anywhere are merely suggestions,” they said.

In response to Trump, Project 2025 stressed that the initiative was separate from Trump’s campaign.

“As we’ve been saying for more than two years now, Project 2025 does not speak for any candidate or campaign. We are a coalition of more than 110 conservative groups advocating policy & personnel recommendations for the next conservative president. But it is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement,” a statement on the project’s X account said.

🧵PROJECT 2025 SPOKESPERSON:

“As we’ve been saying for more than two years now, Project 2025 does not speak for any candidate or campaign.

We are a coalition of more than 110 conservative groups advocating policy & personnel recommendations for the next conservative president.

— Project 2025 (@Prjct2025) July 5, 2024

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Several policies behind Project 2025 have been discussed by Republicans throughout the years or pushed by Trump himself, including less federal intervention in education and more support for school choice; work requirements for able-bodied, childless adults on food stamps; and a secure border with increased enforcement of immigration laws, mass deportations and construction of a border wall. 

The project also touches on other hot topics in the political landscape, such as abortion, social issues, targeting federal agencies, employees and policies, and immigration.

Regarding abortion, the initiative urges the Food and Drug Administration to reverse its 24-year-old approval of the widely used abortion pill mifepristone. Additional proposed actions centering on medication abortion include reinstating stricter rules for mifepristone’s use, which would enable it to be taken up to seven weeks into a pregnancy instead of the current ten weeks, and requiring it to be dispensed in-person instead of through the mail.

Project 2025 also targets longstanding federal agencies, such as calling for the downsizing of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.

The policy book states that NOAA’s six offices, including the National Weather Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, “form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and is harmful to future U.S. prosperity” the policy book states. 

The guidebook for Project 2025 also calls for the dismantling of the Department of Homeland Security and its agencies, either combined with others or moved under the purview of other departments altogether.

The project also targets diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives in higher education at the executive level by removing various DEI-related positions, policies, and programs and calling for the termination of funding for partners that promote DEI practices.

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