“Project 2025,” a far-right manifesto designed to gut checks and balances in an unprecedented power grab by extremists in service of Donald Trump.” Congressman Dan Goldman (D-NY10)
The Top Line on Project 2025– An action plan for the next Republican Administration.
It promotes the elevation of loyalists to key positions in government and a drastic reduction of qualified specialists who take civil service exams in regulatory agencies.
It seeks to eliminate pharmaceutical and medical abortions.
Enforce the Comstock Act to block any abortion equipment or medication from being mailed
Rename the Department of Health and Human Services to the Department of Life
Move the Justice Department, and all of its law enforcement arms like the FBI, directly under presidential control
Dismantle the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service, and privatize some of its functions.
Promotes the use of the US military to patrol the border.
It eliminates all climate change initiatives.
Reduce corporate taxes to 18% (from 21%)
Puts lifetime caps on some federal health reimbursement programs.
Abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
Abolish the Department of Education
… Just to name a few
Key Features of Project 2025
Here is a Chapter by Chapter breakdown of Project 2025 from Stop The Coup 2025
SOURCE: https://www.stopthecoup2025.org/chapter-breakdown
SECTION I. TAKING THE REINS OF GOVERNMENT
CHAPTER 1. – WHITE HOUSE OFFICE.
Key Points:
✓ Put an “activist” conservative White House Counsel in place
✓ Invite outside conservative legal advice to the White House Office
✓ Consider limiting mainstream press access to the White House
CHAPTER 2. – EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE VICE-PRESIDENT.
Key Points:
✓ Flex the untapped statutory powers of the OMB to control the funding of offices
✓ Put OMB Program Associate Directors who are conservative loyalists in charge of vast
Resource Management Offices, and replace career officials with new deputy PADs.
✓ Make the National Security Council a part of the White House, unaccountable to other
offices
✓ Seek to completely reverse Biden administration climate change policies
✓ Eliminate the Gender Policy Council and end all federal discussion or support for gender
and LGBTQ+ identity, transgender care, and reproductive health, including abortion
CHAPTER 3. – CENTRAL PERSONNEL AGENCIES: MANAGING THE BUREAUCRACY.
Key Points:
Personnel:
✓ Reward managers and employees who implement conservative policies
✓ Make MSBP the main arbiter of federal personnel dispute cases, not EEOC
✓ Use Schedule F to remove career employees and prior administration holdovers
✓ Restore Trump-era Executive Orders to boost management rights vs. union power
✓ Give the president the power to fast-track personnel appointees, with empowered OMB
✓ In Coast Guard and military posts, “re-vet” promotions and hirings during Biden
Administration; rehire personnel let go for refusing Covid vaccination, offer back pay
✓ Reduce US Secret Service budget; reassign USSS personnel to ICE, Justice, emphasize
protection roles
✓ Eliminate the Office of Intelligence and Analysis
✓ Hire more Schedule C/political legal appointees to the Office of General Counsel to assure
consistency of legal viewpoints in response to Congressional requests
✓ Only political appointees from the Office of Legislative Affairs should speak to
Congressional staffers; all requests to pass to OLA
Civil Rights:
✓ Reduce size, and authority of Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties;
✓ put it and Privacy Office under Office of General Counsel, eliminate their access
to review, advise on intelligence products
Intelligence Community:
✓ Cooperate in the shrinking or elimination of the I&A (Intel, Advisory) role in the
intelligence community
Immigration:
✓ Eliminate both Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman (OIDO) and Office of
the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman (CISOMB);
✓ issue policy to stop assisting illegal aliens and DACA applicants to obtain benefits
✓ Move Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and Dept of Justice Executive Office for
Immigration Review and the Office of Immigration Litigation to DHS control,
aggressively help to build US southern border wall
Housing:
✓ Only US citizens, ‘lawful’ permanent residents can use or live in federally subsidized
housing
Education:
✓ Deny US loans to non-US citizens, lawful permanent residents, and students at schools that
provide in-state tuition to illegal aliens
Labor:
✓ Eliminate the two (of four) lowest wage levels for foreign workers
Treasury:
✓ Equalize taxes between American citizens and working visa holders and quickly provide
DHS with all tax information of illegal aliens
SECTION TWO. THE COMMON DEFENSE
CHAPTER 4. – DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE.
Key Points:
✓ Refocus the DOD on warfighting, chain of command accountability
✓ Adopt “irregular warfare” as a cornerstone of US military strategy abroad
✓ Design a system to purchase new or experimental weapons systems without breaking the
law but avoiding DOD regulatory red tape; boost U.S. military sales.
✓ Increase DOD support to DHS for domestic border security
✓ Limit China and its nuclear military capability by supporting a Taiwan “denial defense”
✓ In a major step, reverse the historic U.S. policy of deterrence only to invest and adopt an
offensive missile defense policy and a space defense policy.
✓ Support allies to engage in, and shoulder, the burden of conventional warfare
✓ Enact a radical transformation of the Marine Corps, Force Design 2030
✓ Expel individuals with “gender dysphoria” (transgender), cut public funding for
transgender surgery or to facilitate abortion for servicemembers
✓ Counter DOD diversity initiatives: eliminate “Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical
race theory programs” and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices and staff
✓ Monitor military schools to remove “Marxist indoctrination;” eliminate tenure for leftist
scholars
✓ Invest in US CyberCom
CHAPTER 5. – DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Key Points:
✓ Eliminate the Department of Homeland Security and create a super agency with 100,000-
strong workforce focused on law enforcement domestically, while limiting the Office of Civil
Rights role
✓ Drastically expand ICE’s mandate to arrest, detain, and expel undocumented immigrants
✓ Direct the Office of General Counsel to help make reforms legal or defend challenges to
reforms
✓ Apply “irregular warfare” to create a militarized domestic surveillance corps against
individuals or groups at odds with presidential / Project 2025 conservative agenda
✓ Use a novel approach to immediately place loyalists in temporary “acting” positions with
unquestioned authority to decide policy — while sidestepping Congressional oversight
CHAPTER 6. – DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Key Points:
✓ Remove all Biden officials and immediately place conservative loyalists in key decision-making positions via a novel strategy of appointing them in “acting,” or temporary
positions, with possibly decision-making authority, even as they await Senate approval
✓ Increase the number of loyalists in foreign policy positions
✓ In foreign policy, leverage career diplomats who align with a conservative agenda
✓ Freeze and/or review all existing international treaties to ensure they align with
presidential agenda and foreign policy priorities
✓ Focus foreign policy on Iran, Venezuela, Russia, North Korea, and China; develop an
Article X review of China policy and reverse Biden’s Iran policy
✓ Cut funding to international organizations that fund abortion or social policies that are
viewed as counter to conservative values, including the WHO
CHAPTER 7. – INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY.
Key Points:
✓ Revise the Executive Order related to Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention
Act of 2004 to give the next administration expanded powers to conduct domestic
intelligence activities that might infringe on civil liberties and privacy
✓ Beef up and expand the intelligence community’s activities, including the FBI, and make
greater use of technology to modernize and improve the IC’s work, especially compared
to China
✓ Focus on China’s Communist Party as a major global threat; prioritize IC focus on China
CHAPTER 8. – MEDIA AGENCIES. US AGENCY FOR GLOBAL MEDIA
Key Points:
✓ The USAGM and VOA need a complete reform – or be eliminated if that’s not possible
✓ The president and NSC should have oversight of the USAGM, or alternatively, the State
Department’s Office of Global Public Affairs at the Department of State to assure
messaging does not reflect any enemy “anti-American” messaging
✓ The National Security Council should oversee VOA content
✓ USAGM employees need better vetting; the agency is vulnerable to foreign spies
✓ The USAGM should never be used for domestic broadcast, only foreign
✓ Federal funding to PBS should be cut on grounds it has a liberal bias
✓ Abolish federal funding to strip PBS, NPR (and Pacifica Radio) of noncommercial
education (NCE) status as “left of the dial” stations with longer, low-frequency reach
✓ This would force the stations to pay regulatory fees not paid by NCE stations
CHAPTER 9. – AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT.
Key Points:
✓ Cutting USAID’s global footprint to its pre-Covid 2019 budget level
✓ “Deradicalize” agency programs and structures (DEI, gender reforms), and realign to
reflect conservative Christian values and ideology.
✓ In foreign policy, make China a USAID priority focus, highlight US free market system
✓ Sharply reverse Biden policy: rescind all climate policies from US foreign aid programs
✓ Dismantle USAID’s DEI policy apparatus; stop DEI promotion
✓ Make anti-choice policies the key goal of USAID’s work
✓ Reinstate the “Mexico City Policy” (“Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance”)
(PLGHA) that denies pro-abortion policies as a condition of receiving US assistance
✓ remove all references, examples, definitions, photos, and language on USAID
websites, publications, policies, contracts, and grants that include the terms:
“gender,” “gender equality,” “gender equity,” “gender diverse individuals,”
“gender aware,” “gender sensitive,” etc.
o remove references to “abortion,” “reproductive health,” and “sexual and
reproductive rights” and “controversial sexual education materials”
✓ Make “international religious freedom” central to USAID’s development efforts
✓ Assure groups given PEPFAR funds align with presidential agenda values
✓ Transfer away from large awards to large, “corrupt” UN agencies, global NGOs, and
contractors to local, especially faith-based, entities already operating on the ground
SECTION 3. THE GENERAL WELFARE
Chapter 10. – Department of Agriculture.
Key Points:
✓ Via Executive Order, reverse Biden administration regulations for food and animal safety,
including safety rules for large-scale farming
✓ Remove Biden ‘Climate Smart’ regulations for environmental protection, climate change
✓ Push ‘America First’ agricultural production policies
✓ Decrease welfare access: enact work requirement for SNAP food program; tighten
eligibility for food stamps, Thrifty Food, and WIC; K-12 school lunch program access
✓ End required food (safety) labeling; replace with voluntary labeling
✓ Reform USDA; revise its dietary guidelines
✓ Restore prior Trump Executive Order to promote timber sales, forest clearing
Chapter 11. Department of Education.
Key Points:
✓ Cut DoED as a Cabinet-level agency, reorder the chain of command, put loyalists in charge
✓ Redirect federal dollars to state and local governments, champion alternatives to liberal,
higher education schools: private charter, trade, technical, and faith-based institutions
✓ Reverse Biden’s student loan forgiveness program and crack down on loan enforcement
✓ Eliminate equity and diversity regulations in Title IX and VI rules (SOGI, CRT)
✓ Set up a Parental Savings Account program to fund parent’s school choice; boost parental
control of classroom discussions and disclosure of school information to parents
Chapter 12. – Department of Energy and Related Commissions.
Key Points:
✓ Rename and reorient the DOE as the Department of Energy Security and Advanced
Science (DESAS)
✓ Dismantle any government initiatives to deal with climate change
✓ Continue destructive mining for fossil fuels
✓ Eliminate government support for renewable energy sources
✓ Deregulate nuclear reactor development
Chapter 13. – Environmental Protection Agency.
Key Points:
✓ Dismantle all attempts to address climate change, and challenge the accepted scientific
position on the effect of human activities on the climate
✓ Leadership by states, not the federal government
✓ Loosen regulations if they get in the way of business
✓ Reduce enforcement of existing regulations
Chapter 14. – Department of Health and Human Services.
Key Points:
✓ Rename HHS the ‘Department of Life,’ and center it around an anti-abortion agenda
On abortion, fertility, marriage, family
✓ Abortion is not health care (it harms women and girls)
✓ Ban Mifepristone and outlaw mailing it
✓ Ban the morning-after pill
✓ Remove all funding from Planned Parenthood
✓ Prevent Medicaid from paying for abortions
✓ Promote the rhythm method for contraception (fertility awareness–based
methods)
✓ Ban fertility treatments such as three-person embryo creation
✓ Marriage and family should be defined by the Bible On Sex, Gender
✓ Sex is binary; any challenge to this is “junk science”
✓ Gender-affirming care causes “irreversible physical and mental harm”
On Insurance
✓ Turn Medicare into a free market program
✓ Make people pay for some care under Medicaid
✓ Put lifetime caps on Medicaid benefits
Chapter 15. – Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Key Points:
✓ Non-citizens may not live in any federally assisted housing (including mixed status
families
✓ Time allowed for receiving housing benefits will be limited
✓ Married couples will be prioritized for housing
✓ Some responsibility for public housing will be moved to the private sector (via vouchers)
Chapter 16. – Department of the Interior.
Key Points:
✓ Reverse Biden policies to achieve ‘energy security’ by allowing more fracking and
drilling for oil and gas, especially in Alaska
✓ Give states and Indian tribes more power to decide about energy production and land use
✓ Stop supporting the use of electric vehicles
✓ Keep federal land open for grazing
Chapter 17. – Department of Justice.
Key Points:
✓ Replace career civil servants with a “vast expansion” of political appointees
✓ Overturn the current “politicization and weaponization” of the DOJ
✓ Enact a complete review of FBI
✓ Deny Russian election interference and the constant flow of misinformation
✓ Secure the border, rigorously enforce immigration laws, help DHS pursue criminal aliens
✓ Ban all DEI initiatives as “racist”
✓ Prosecute voter fraud (transfer this responsibility to the criminal division)
✓ Halt investigations of groups engaging in lawful (and often constitutionally protected activity
✓ Execute all 44 remaining prisoners on federal death row and pursue the death penalty for
violence and sexual abuse of children
Chapter 18. – Department of Labor and Related Agencies.
Key Points:
✓ All labor regulations would prioritize traditional, Christian families only
✓ Protections for LGBTQ+ employees would be eliminated
✓ The impact of race could no longer be considered in discrimination cases
✓ Regulations to protect the environment would be reduced
Chapter 19. – Department of Transportation.
Key Points:
✓ Increased dependence on fossil fuel
✓ Change concepts of “public transit” away from current “transit provided by a public
municipality” to “transit provided for the public” — opening the door to the private sector
✓ Expand public transit to include “micro mobility” solutions, ridesharing, and possible future
autonomous vehicles
✓ Less federal support for large infrastructure projects
✓ Deregulation of major industries (especially airlines)
Chapter 20. – Department of Veterans Affairs.
Key Points:
✓ On Day One, eliminate Biden VA policies new administration
✓ On Day One, remove all senior Biden appointees/federal appointees
✓ Act early to be ready for Day One labor reform implementation and legal challenges
✓ Eliminate VA support for abortion, gender reassignment surgery, diversity initiatives, and
align all policies with conservative pro-life values
✓ Increase private sector delivery of VA health services, administration of benefits
SECTION FOUR. – THE ECONOMY
Chapter 21. – Department of Commerce.
Key Points:
✓ Reform the DOC by privatizing its functions and roles where possible
✓ Take actions to “counter the malign influence of China and other US adversaries.”
✓ Via the BIS, use the Entity List to make Chinese app providers such as WeChat and
ByteDance/TikTok non-operational in US
✓ Downsize NOAA agencies that raise alarms about climate change
✓ On the Census, add a citizenship question, despite a 2020 finding that this violated the
Administrative Procedures Act, and
✓ Promote the benefits of free trade, no taxes and deregulation, for minority businesses
Chapter 22. – Department of the Treasury.
Key Points:
✓ Reverse US government financial policies that promote climate protection, equity,
diversity, accessibility
✓ Withdraw from the World Bank and IMF; evaluate USG participation in IFIs
✓ Simplify the Tax System and Tax Code; decrease IRS enforcement of taxpayers
✓ Repeal Title I, Title II, Title VIII of Dodd–Frank Act regulating financial firm activities
✓ Wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; boost private investment in the housing market
Chapter 23. – Export-Import Bank.
Anti-Bank position:
✓ Eliminate the Bank: it’s a protectionist agency that stymies economic growth
✓ Conservatives want to lower the federal government’s role in economic markets
Pro-Bank position:
✓ The Bank helps US industries compete in critical markets against foreign companies who
are backed by export subsidies — leveling the playing field and protecting US interests
Failure to support the Bank gives China a “wide open field” to control ocean and shipping lanes,
expand its economic influence and global power
Chapter 24. – Federal Reserve.
Key Points:
✓ The Federal Reserve is outdated and needs significant reform or elimination
✓ Overly influenced by political pressures
✓ Hazardous “printing of money” fuels government spending and debt
✓ Return to the gold standard as a way to control government spending
Chapter 25. – Small Business Administration.
Key Points:
✓ Supercharge the SBA Office of Advocacy to reduce regulations for small businesses
✓ Punish Planned Parenthood for COVID-19 business loans given to affiliates
✓ Allow religious organizations to receive certain SBA loans
Chapter 26. – Trade.
Key Points:
✓ Transfer power for making trade agreements from Congress to the president
✓ Ensure that personnel are dedicated to carrying out the president’s vision
✓ Recognize the threat of China — current trade deficits and potential military actions
✓ Encourage cultural connections to draw Chinese youth to Western ideas
SECTION FIVE. – INDEPENDENT REGULATORY AGENCIES
Chapter 27. – Financial Regulatory Agencies.
Key Points:
✓Abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Agency
✓ Prohibit all DEI programs
✓ Loosen regulations on businesses and entrepreneurial activities
✓ Prohibit the SEC from noting whether companies are socially responsible (e.g., on climate
change)
Chapter 28. – Federal Communications Commission.
Key Points:
✓ Rein in Big Tech to prohibit presumed liberal bias
✓ End free speech protections of “illegal content” – notably “indecent, profane, or similar
categories of speech” that for conservatives would include gender, LGBTQ topics
✓ More aggressive stance enabling commercial exploitation of airwaves
✓ Protect against national security threats from China and TikTok as a platform and other
foreign adversaries
Chapter 29. – Federal Election Commission.
Key Points:
✓ Ensure FEC appointees are loyalists prepared to execute the president’s agenda
✓ Limit DOJ enforcement action of FECA violations
✓ Authorize the DOJ to defend public lawsuits against the FEC
✓ Propose Congressional action to reduce FEC independence, weaken campaign finance
and reporting laws.
Chapter 30. – Federal Trade Commission.
✓ Reform FTC policies and consumer protection laws, with a focus on eliminating ESG and
DEI policies in companies — particularly in private equity
✓ Give FTC the “authority, interest, and duty” to censor the Internet and Big Tech platforms
under the guise of protecting children from exposure to “Leftist” and “liberal” content on
social media
✓ Promote the idea of tech company “contracts” with children, possibly with parental
consent, to limit what children can access on the Internet – a social control goal
✓ Using Attorneys General to push anti-monopoly enforcement measures to break up Big
Tech, hospital, and supermarket mergers
According to VOX here are the three main features of Project 2025.
1) Concentrating power in the presidency:
Trump’s allies believe that his first term failed because he couldn’t get enough “loyal” appointees in place and because the “deep state” bureaucracy sabotaged him. So a main recurring theme of Project 2025 is how to bend the executive branch to a conservative president’s will.
Specifics include:
- The “Schedule F” plan to reclassify tens of thousands of civil servants as political appointees, so they could be fired and replaced with Trump cronies. (This would eliminate the Civil Service competency examination and replace hiring criteria with loyalism)
- Reconsidering the traditional separation between the White House and the Justice Department (something that could give the president more direct control over criminal investigations)
- Installing a “vast expansion” of political appointees at the DOJ in particular
- Expanding White House review of military promotions to ensure promoted officers aren’t too focused on “climate change” or “manufactured extremism” (that is, domestic right-wing extremism)
2) Longtime conservative priorities:
The vast majority of Project 2025’s policy plan is focused on longstanding conservative priorities — with some tweaking for the Trump era.
Specifics include:
- Education: Eliminate the Department of Education, give every parent a voucher-like option they could use to send their child to private school, zero out federal funding to low-income schools over the next decade, greatly cut “wasteful” school meal programs, and end Biden’s student loan forgiveness programs
- Energy and environment: Deprioritize fighting climate change, repeal Biden’s clean energy subsidies, further unleash oil and natural gas production, roll back various environmental regulations
- Health care: Majorly cut and overhaul Medicaid, roll back the recent law banning surprise medical billing
- Immigration: Deny loan access to students at “schools that provide in-state tuition to illegal aliens,” ban non-citizens from living in federally assisted housing (even if they live with a citizen), reinstate and expand the horseback-mounted Border Patrol
3) A hardline religious-right agenda:
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.
Specifics include:
- Revoking FDA approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, which is used in about half of US abortions (“Abortion pills pose the single greatest threat to unborn children in a post-Roe world,” the document states)
- Using an old law known as the Comstock Act to prosecute people who send abortion pills through the mail
- Ending the mandate for insurance to cover the “week-after” contraceptive pill Ella (which the document argues is a “potential abortifacient”)
- Crack down on “abortion tourism” in liberal states by requiring states to report where women seeking abortions live and cutting federal funds if they refuse
- Ending subsidies for stem cell or fetal cell research.
The entire document here https://www.project2025.org/about/about-project-2025/
Also keep in mind that Project 2025, in addition to giving the Presidency unprecedented powers, the Supreme Court recently ruled that the President is immune to prosecution for breaking laws committed while President.
Does Project 2025 reflect the thinking of Trump’s previous administration?
Overall, 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. The number is likely higher because many individuals’ online résumés were not available.
In addition to people who worked directly for Trump, others who participated in Project 2025 were appointed by the former president to independent positions. For instance, Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr authored an entire chapter of proposed changes to his agency, and Lisa Correnti, an anti-abortion advocate Trump appointed as a delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, is among the contributors.
SOURCE: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/11/politics/trump-allies-project-2025/index.html