Project 2025 aims for conservative transformation of US

Even before he's inaugurated in January, President-elect Donald Trump can begin implementing a hard-right conservative plan for government and set the stage for his second presidency.

"Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project," aims to reshape the United States by appointing conservative officials across government who would implement the right-wing policy set out in a manifesto entitled "Mandate for Leadership." 

The roughly 900-page document, whose foreword calls it "the work of the entire conservative movement," raised concerns and outrage among Democrats and their supporters over the summer, who said the project would push the US further to the right and consolidate power in Trump's hands. 

Who is behind Project 2025?

Project 2025 sets out a right-wing, conservative action plan for the next Republican presidential administration.The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, created the concept with the support of many other conservative groups. The Heritage Foundation has been drafting similar policy wish lists for decades, all aimed at possible Republican presidents.

This isn't unusual for the US, according to political scientist Hans Noel of Georgetown University in Washington. "In general, pundits, thinkers and other analysts tend to develop the ideological direction in those kinds of spaces before it is adapted by parties and politicians," he said.

Though Trump denied knowledge of the recommendations in Project 2025 while on the campaign trail, over 100 individuals associated with the once and future president were involved in the agenda, including his former colleague and ally Russell Vought, Trump's former White House budget chief.

What are the main aims of Project 2025?

The recommendations claim to revolve around "four broad fronts that will decide America's future": restoring the traditional family, dismantling the administrative state, defending national sovereignty and securing "our God-given individual rights to live freely."

Here are some of the main proposals:

• The president should acquire significantly more power. Replacing federal employees with party loyalists should be simplified. Numerous federal authorities, such as the Justice Department and the Department of Education, should be reformed or scrapped. "This would considerably reshape bureaucracy in a way that undermines both expertise and independence," Noel explained.
• There should be a U-turn on energy and economic policy. Oil and gas should be promoted instead of renewable energy, and there should no longer be a focus on reducing emissions or green subsidies.
• Terms like sexual orientation, gender identity and reproductive rights would be removed from all regulations and legislation. Moreover, the "noxious tenets of 'critical race theory' and 'gender ideology' should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country." Concerning abortion, the next conservative administration "should push as hard as possible to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction in America" and should ban the use of mifepristone, a legal drug approved by US regulators over 20 years ago to terminate pregnancy. 
• The "glaring loopholes in our immigration system" should be fixed. More money should be spent on a wall, technology and personnel on the border with Mexico, and asylum laws should be tightened to place a higher burden of proof on asylum-seekers when documenting their persecution. 
• Supranational obligations should not have priority over domestic US interests. The NATO military alliance should be restructured so that US allies take on greater responsibility. The US should station fewer troops in Europe, and military funding should increase.
• Two contrasting positions on Ukraine are presented. One argues for continued US involvement and continuing to provide military and economic aid. The other denies that support for Ukraine is in the US' national security interest. The second opinion adds that Ukraine is not a member of NATO, and contends it is among "the most corrupt nations in the region."

What is the significance of the manifesto?

In interviews, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, said Project 2025 would pave the way for a "second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be."

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, in July, outgoing President Joe Biden said Trump and his allies were "dreaming of a violent revolution to destroy the very idea of America."

The breadth of Project 2025 has set it apart from other plans for a potential government, according to Noel.

"First, it lays out the agenda of the current conservative movement," he said. "Second, it prepares those appointees with arguments and a common mission so they will come into office prepared to implement this agenda."

When it was first revealed, the plan was widely regarded as a way to prevent a repeat of Trump's early days in office in 2017, which were marred by confusion regarding policy and personnel — criticism that dogged his administration until the end.

Why did Trump distance himself from Project 2025?

Trump publicly attempted to distance himself from Project 2025 after it was released earlier this year.

"I have no idea who is behind it," he wrote on his own social network, Truth Social, in early July. "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."

Many of Trump's opponents, however, remain skeptical. Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, a Democrat, said Wednesday that they will "have to see if he makes good on what he promised and ran on in terms of Project 2025."

This article was originally written in German.