How the right-wing vision of Project 2025 became a flashpoint in this year’s elections

WASHINGTON — Over the past year, Project 2025 has remained a persistent force in the presidential election, with its far-right proposals presented by Democrats as shorthand for what Donald Trump would potentially do with a second term in the White House.

While the former president’s campaign has vigorously distanced itself from Project 2025 — Trump himself has declared that he knows “nothing” about it — the Heritage Foundation’s sweeping proposal to destroy the federal workforce and dismantle federal agencies aligns closely with your vision. The architects of Project 2025 come from the ranks of the Trump administration, and top Heritage officials briefed the Trump team on it.

It’s rare for a complex 900-page policy book to feature such a dominant figure in a political campaign. But from its beginnings in a think tank, to its viral spread on social media, the rise and fall and potential rise of Project 2025 show the unexpected staying power of politics to brighten up an election year and threaten not only Trump at the top of the plate. but they voted negatively for Republicans in congressional races.

Despite everything, Project 2025 has not disappeared. It exists not just as a political blueprint for the next administration, but as a database of some 20,000 job candidates who could fill the White House and Trump administration and a yet-to-be-released “180-day playbook” of stocks that a new president could employ. First day after opening on January 20, 2025.

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, who recently took charge of the project, appears to be enjoying the fight, moving full steam ahead.

“Rest assured we will not give up,” Roberts wrote in an email to supporters this summer. “We will not back down.”

When Project 2025 debuted in April 2023, it promised to “dismantle the administrative state” by laying out the personnel and policies that could serve as a roadmap for the next conservative president.

Former Trump administration officials working on the project said they wanted to avoid the mistakes of the first Trump in the White House by ensuring that the next Republican president would be ready with the personnel and policies to implement his campaign priorities.

“There is momentum to really get to work,” Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, said in an interview with the Associated Press in 2023.

Centered on the Heritage Foundation, the venerable conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., the book’s concept harked back to an earlier version, his Reagan-era “Mandate for Leadership,” which was said to be so popular in the White House that copies were placed on work tables to guide the new presidency.

At least 100 conservative groups, many of them Trump administration alumni, have come together to draft proposals for a sweeping restructuring of the federal government — from installing more political appointees at the Justice Department to reassigning experienced government officials in law enforcement to deal with illegal immigration. to dismantle the Department of Education.

One of the main proposals would make it easier to staff the government with Trump loyalists, reclassifying about 50,000 workers into jobs where they can be fired — a revival of the so-called Schedule F policy that Trump tried to implement before leaving office. The idea is now central to the conservative vision of dismantling the “deep state” bureaucracy they blame for blocking Trump’s priorities.

Launching Project 2025 on the foundation’s 50th anniversary was also something of a debut for Roberts; he had previously been seen as an ally of Trump rival Ron DeSantis, who was the keynote speaker at the gala at the start of the presidential primary season.

“The conservative movement is coming together to prepare for the next Conservative administration,” Roberts said in the announcement. Heritage, he said, sought “to ensure that the next president has the right policy and personnel necessary to dismantle the administrative state.”

President Joe Biden’s campaign warned against Project 2025 from the start, in social media posts ahead of his State of the Union address in April, and House Democrats launched a Project 2025 task force to amplify their concerns in June. Days later, comedian John Oliver poked fun at it on his HBO show.

But it was only after Biden’s terrible performance in the debate with Trump, in June, that Project 2025 had its viral moment.

It was not so much what was said in the presidential debate, but rather what was not said: Biden did not even mention Project 2025, crushing the expectations of allies who expected another decisive blow.

That weekend, a single thread on X about Project 2025 took off, racking up nearly 20 million views, according to the Democratic campaign. Actress Taraji P. Henson, who chatted with Vice President Kamala Harris in a segment on the BET Awards show, warned primetime viewers: “The Project 2025 plan is not a game. Look it up!” And countless young TikTok creators speaking directly to their cameras explained the threat they believed Project 2025 posed to their civil rights, reproductive rights and other rights in videos that went viral.