This summer more and more voters have gotten to know the gist of Project 2025, the policy opus intended to guide a second Trump administration, and they thoroughly dislike it. Which explains the project’s purported demise in recent days at the Trump campaign’s hands, just as Democrats have jump-started the presidential contest behind Kamala Harris’ candidacy.
The ruthlessness with which Donald Trump and his campaign supposedly severed any ties to the agenda-setting endeavor gave me flashbacks to Trump’s presidency, when he’d abruptly announce a policy switch or firing of members of his Cabinet with a tweet.
Just like that, someone or something that once had Trump’s favor was dispatched with the press of two thumbs on a smartphone’s buttons.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump wrote in a misnamed “truth” on his social media site last month. “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 reiterated that message several times throughout July, blaming “Radical Left Democrats” for “pure disinformation” about his ties to the effort.
As usual, that was all lies, but when the right-wing coalition behind the blueprint, including scores of former Trump advisers, continued to promote it, Trump’s enforcers finally brought out the shiv:
“Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.”
So that’s the end of that? Be skeptical. Be very skeptical.
For one thing, Trump embraced the effort at its start. In a speech at a Heritage conference in 2022, he said it would “detail plans for exactly what our movement will do … when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.” CNN’s review of the contributors found at least 140 former Trump administration officials, including six Cabinet secretaries.
So, Trump can badmouth the Heritage project now that it’s become a bogeyman. But should he win, he’ll surely make use of Project 2025’s prescriptions and its database of 20,000 vetted MAGA followers to form a government and execute his stated agenda.
Which gets to the second reason Project 2025 should be considered alive and well: Much of it is Trump’s agenda, just with flesh on the policy bones.
Most of the best known and least popular parts of the project’s 900-plus pages, the ones that media accounts and Democrats have spotlighted — “Can you believe they put that thing in writing?” Harris asks rally crowds lately — are in fact ideas that Trump himself calls for.
Among them: Abolish the Department of Education. Gut the civil service system and return to a spoils system rewarding MAGA loyalists with federal jobs. Tear down the ethics wall that has blocked White House interference in Justice Department prosecutions and FBI investigations since Watergate so that Trump can deep-six the criminal cases against him and order up new ones against his enemies.
Trump has talked about them all. Where he and Project 2025 mainly diverge is on abortion. Project 2025, however, proposes a number of federal limits on abortion and contraception, and a ban on shipping the pills that account for nearly two-thirds of abortions.
Let’s say Trump, as president, does leave abortion issues to the states. As we’ve seen already, his antiabortion appointees to the federal courts almost certainly wouldn’t hesitate to rule in ways that affect us all. And that still leaves all those other policy areas where Project 2025 reflects his policy wish list.
Get familiar with Project 2025, if you’re not. Trump’s advisers can welcome the reports of its demise, as they say. But the truth is reports of its death are greatly exaggerated. The only way to put a stake through the thing is to make sure Trump isn’t returned to the White House.
