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Why Project 2025 is getting so much attention at the DNC
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, shares his perspective on US politics from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
What we're watching in US Politics: Project 2025 is getting a lot of attention at the DNC, and you're probably going to hear a lot more about it even after the convention in Chicago ends.
You may have heard a lot about Trump’s Project 2025 in this election cycle, and you're probably going to hear a lot more about it in the coming weeks. And one of the reasons these kinds of Democratic activists have spent a lot of time educating the public through paid media and also some sessions they are holding inside about what's in the 2025 platform. And the point they want to make is that the Project 2025, which is a project of The Heritage Foundation, designed to be sort of a governing guide for President Trump and anybody filling out the executive branch agencies in a second Trump term, is also the Trump agenda. Trump himself has, of course, distanced himself from Project 2025, but there's all kinds of overlap between former Trump administration officials and people who are writing this thing, people who are likely to serve in a second Trump administration. Why are the Democrats spending so much time talking about this? Because it's not that popular. The individual items in 2025 don't poll that well, and it's actually become a major liability for President Trump. So much so that the person at the Heritage Foundation who ran the project actually stepped down from his job because it had become such a liability for the Trump campaign, which is not exactly what The Heritage Foundation donors were hoping for when they launched this project. So stay tuned for a lot more on Project 2025. It's going to be a message every night here at the Democratic National Convention, and there's going to be a lot of fodder for attack ads to draw a policy contrast with former President Trump
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Former U.S. President Donald Trump leaves Manhattan Criminal court after a hearing in the upcoming hush money trial, in New York City, U.S., March 25, 2024.
Project 2025 head steps down as Trump distances himself from policy blueprint
On Tuesday, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 leader Paul Dans resigned, likely in response to Donald Trump’s attempts to distance himself from the conservative think tank’s controversial policy agenda.
On its surface, Project 2025 aimed to provide a transition plan for a second Trump administration, but it was never officially part of Trump’s campaign. In fact, the former president has intentionally downplayed the significance of the project as Democrats gained traction in raising awareness about it (here’s a primer on its policy proposals). Trump has expressed annoyance at the negative press around Project 2025 and resents the notion that the group is ghostwriting his policies or choosing candidates to fill his administration.
But this doesn’t mean Project 2025 is finished. While Trump likely played a role in the resignation, Dans explained that “this project was due to wrap up with the nominating conventions of the political parties.” The team is now shifting focus to building a database of conservative officials who could fill policy-making roles in a potential Trump administration.
“It was never going to be the blueprint for Trump,” says Eurasia Group’s US director Jon Lieber. “But it was (and still will be) the maximalist plan for a whole lot of conservatives who will be staffing the administration and will be able to get a lot done with the tacit approval of the White House.”
A police officer stands guard as preparations for the Republican National Convention are underway in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., July 14, 2024.
Will Project 2025 become Trump’s 2.0 playbook?
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.”