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A police officer stands guard as preparations for the Republican National Convention are underway in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., July 14, 2024.
As the Republican National Convention kicks off today, there are three big things to watch: how the party responds to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, who the former president picks as his running mate, and the GOP’s platform for his potential second term.
If you’re curious about his potential VP pick, GZERO has broken down all of the top contenders in our Veepstakes series. As for his platform, the prominent conservative think tank Heritage Foundation has some ideas. Having shaped policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan administration, the Heritage Foundation has crafted a 900-page policy plan called Project 2025.
What is it? On its surface, Project 2025 is a transition plan so the right can hit the ground running in the case of a Trump 2.0. “Project 2025 is not a road map to what Trump will do, but rather a menu of what the far right would like to see him do,” says Eurasia Group’s US director Clayton Allen.
But John McEntee – once a Trump White House adviser – has said he was working to integrate Project 2025 with the Trump campaign. “There will need to be coordination and the president and his team will announce an official transition this summer, and we’re going to integrate a lot of our work with them.”
Among a multitude of recommendations, it proposes making it easier to fire federal workers and replace them with loyal appointees, criminalizing pornography, eliminating the Department of Education, ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, restricting access to abortion pills, and limiting climate protections.
It gives legal rationale to erase the Justice Department’s independence from the president, saying that it requires a “top to bottom” overhaul and that the Trump administration should “conduct an immediate, comprehensive review of all major active FBI investigations and activities and terminate any that are unlawful or contrary to the national interest.”
It also proposes the removal of any and all “immigration violators,” ending no-fault divorce, and ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs and the “toxic normalization of transgenderism.”
So, will these and other Project 2025 policies be part of Trump’s plan if he returns to the White House? For now, Trump says “no” and has tried to distance himself from the plan, saying “I know nothing about Project 2025,” on Truth Social. “Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
Many on the left accused Trump of lying, but the former president may purposely be steering clear of policy matters while campaigning. “Putting out specific policy proposals when you are the opposition candidate does little more than give your opponent specific points to attack you,” says Allen. “Trump wants the election to be a referendum on Biden, not his own policy ideas.”
The project has been a godsend for the Biden campaign, giving it fodder to support its main campaign messages that Trump is a threat to the norms of democracy, abortion access, and extremely far-right on social issues. The Democratic National Committee is launching billboards in 10 cities in battleground states linking former President Trump to Project 2025, and Biden’s campaign is seeking influencers to raise the alarm on social media. It is a welcome distraction from the headline-dominating calls for Biden to step down but also spreads the unrealistic fear that everything in the 900-page proposal will come to fruition.
But Project 2025 may be more of a paper tiger. “[It] was crafted by a group taking a maximalist rather than a realist approach to agenda setting,” Allen says, noting that it’s more likely to motivate the Democratic base than anything else.
That’s not to say that Project 2025 won’t have a strong influence on Trump, should he return to the Oval Office. The first day of the RNC is jam-packed with the Heritage Foundation presenting its agenda, and many of Project 2025’s main crafters are Trump allies who are likely to have powerful, policy-shaping roles in his administration.
Where does Trump overlap with Project 2025? Trump’s official policy proposal and campaign rhetoric show that the former president agrees with some, but not all, of Project 2025. Trump has frequently questioned the legitimacy of the Justice Department. In his first term, he made it easier to fire federal career senior executives and replace them with loyalists, and he has made no secret of his plans to conduct a massive crackdown on immigration.
But Project 2025’s aggressive restrictions on abortion are unlikely to jive with Trump, who, despite appointing the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, sees abortion restrictions as a matter for invididual states to determine. That being said, campaign rhetoric can vary drastically from the policy that is implemented once in office.
“Policies on immigration and economic policies are the areas with the most widespread backing within the party and therefore the most likely to influence a second Trump administration,” says Allen. But “social policy programs are more of a wishlist and lack support from many members – and in some cases Trump himself.”