Project 2025
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Navy
FS7Alpha
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Lobo
Purpose
Plan to purge and reshape the U.S. Federal Government in support of Trumpism
Headquarters
214 Massachusetts Avenue Northeast, Washington, D.C., U.S.
Location
Paul Dans
Website
https://www.project2025.org/
Project 2025 is a far-right plan to purge and reshape the U.S. Federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 United States presidential election.[1][2]
Established in 2022, the project seeks to recruit thousands to come to Washington, D.C. to replace existing employees to restructure the federal government in the service of Trumpism, the personal ideology of Donald Trump.[3] The plan would perform a rapid takeover of the entire U.S. federal government under a maximalist version of the unitary executive theory – a theory proposing the president of the United States has absolute power of the executive branch – upon inauguration. The development of the plan is led by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative U.S. think tank.
The plan includes widespread changes across the entire government. With regards to climate policy, Project 2025 specifically plans to undo the Inflation Reduction Act, shut down the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office, and increase the extraction and use of fossil fuels, among other measures.
Project 2025 is shaped by Trumpism, Donald Trump's ideology.Project 2025 seeks to place the entire U.S. federal government under direct presidential control, eliminating the independence of the Department of Justice, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission and other agencies. The plan bases its presidential agenda on a maximalist version of the unitary executive theory, arguing that Article Two of the United States Constitution vests executive power solely to the president. The concept of personal presidential power is central to the thinking of Donald Trump, the current front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, who falsely stated in 2019 that Article Two of the United States Constitution granted him the "right to do whatever as president". A similar remark was echoed in 2018 when he claimed he could fire special counsel Robert Mueller.[4]
Project 2025 establishes a personnel database shaped by the ideology of Donald Trump. Throughout his presidency, Trump has rooted out individuals who he considers disloyal regardless of their ideological conviction, such as former attorney general William Barr, calling them "snakes" and "traitors" in his post-presidency. In the final year of Trump's presidency, White House Presidential Personnel Office employees James Bacon and John McEntee developed a questionnaire to test potential government employees on their commitment to Trumpism; Bacon and McEntee joined the project in May 2023.[5] Project 2025 is aligned with Trump's plans to fire more government employees than allocated to the president using Schedule F, a job classification established by Trump in an executive order in July 2020. Although the classification was rescinded by Joe Biden in January 2021, Trump intends to restore it. The Heritage Foundation plans on having 20,000 personnel in its database by the end of 2024.[4] Former Trump administration official Russell Vought and Project 2025 advisor stated that the project would be "a wrecking ball for the administrative state".[6]
Project 2025 does not provide strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change; Heritage Foundation energy and climate director Diana Furchtgott-Roth has suggested Americans should use more natural gas, a cleaner burning fossil fuel. Project 2025's blueprint includes repealing Inflation Reduction Act—a landmark law that offers US$370 billion to clean technology, shuttering the Loan Programs Office at the Department of Energy, eliminating climate change from the National Security Council agenda, and encouraging allied nations to use fossil fuels. The blueprint supports Arctic drilling and declaring that the federal government has an "obligation to develop vast oil and gas and coal resources". Notably, Project 2025 would reverse a 2009 finding from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that determined that carbon dioxide emissions are harmful to human health, preventing the federal government from regulating greenhouse gas emissions. The climate section of the report was written by several authors, including Mandy Gunasekara, the former chief of staff of the EPA who considers herself principal to the United States's withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Agreement. The role of the Department of Energy was drafted by Bernard McNamee, who has advised several fossil fuel companies. Four of the top authors of the report have publicly doubted the extent of humanity's role in causing climate change.[7]
The Heritage Foundation's headquartersHeritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts established Project 2025 in 2022 to provide the 2024 Republican Party presidential nominee with a personnel and ideology framework[4] after civil servants refused to support Trump during his attempt to institute a Muslim travel ban, install a new attorney general to assist him in attempting to overturn the 2020 election, and calling for lethal force against George Floyd protestors.[8]
In April 2023, the Heritage Foundation published a 920-page blueprint written by hundreds of conservatives, most prominently former Trump administration officials.[9]
Numerous commentators see Project 2025 as a path to the ending of American democracy, which would replace it with an undemocratic authoritarian regime, possibly led by Trump as dictator.
Chauncey DeVega of Salon.com and Spencer Ackerman in The Nation have characterized Project 2025 as a plan to install Trump as a dictator, warning that Trump could prosecute and imprison enemies or overthrow American democracy altogether.[10][11] The Atlantic's Tom Nichols considered the project a threat to democracy but expressed hope that it might still be defeated.[12] David Corn, writing in Mother Jones, described it as "an authoritarian danger that threatens American democracy", which if undefeated "would place the nation on a path to autocracy."[13]
Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, the author of Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity, criticized Project 2025 in an MSNBC article for appealing to Christian nationalism. In particular, Graves-Fitzsimmons critiques Roger Severino's chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services and his opposition to the Respect for Marriage Act, a landmark law that repealed the Defense of Marriage Act and codified the federal definition of marriage to recognize same-sex and interracial marriage.[14]
Project 2025 has been criticized by LGBTQ+ writers and journalists for its removal of protections for LGBTQ+ people and declarations to outlaw pornography by claiming it as an "omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children".[15] Brynn Tannehill, for Dame magazine, argued that the 902-page document "The Mandate for Leadership" in part "makes eradicating LGBTQ people from public life its top priority", while citing passages from the playbook linking pornography to "transgender ideology", arguing that it related to other anti-transgender attacks in 2023.[16] In September 2023, Ari Drennen, LGBTQ program director for media watchdog group Media Matters for America, tweeted out the passage and similarly argued that "[t]hey’ve put it quite vividly – declare trans content porn, imprison those who make it, put teachers who discuss it on the sex offender registry, and force companies that host it to close."[17][18]
Republican climate advocates have disagreed with Project 2025's climate policy. Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy president Sarah Hunt considered supporting the Inflation Reduction Act crucial, and Utah representative John Curtis stated it was vital that Republicans "engage in supporting good energy and climate policy". American Conservation Coalition founder Benji Backer noted growing consensus for human-induced climate change among younger Republicans and called the project wrongheaded.[7]