Last time, because too many vacancies and a lack of training limited Trump’s ability to implement his policies, Project 2025 has been recruiting and training thousands of loyal soldiers to carry out those policies. “Our goal is to build an army of conservatives that is united, vetted, trained and prepared to dismantle the administrative state from day one,” said Paul Danz, director of Project 2025 and a former chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management under Trump.
Trump has denied any involvement with the project, claiming in a social media post on Friday that he “knows nothing about Project 2025” and has “no idea who is behind it.”
Besides Dans, hundreds of Trump appointees and aides are involved in the effort, including Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget and now policy director for the Republican National Committee, and Stephen Miller, Trump’s top immigration adviser. And one of Trump’s top aides, John McEntee, recently told a conservative podcast that Project 2025 will be “integrating many of our efforts with the Trump campaign later this year.” Meanwhile, Trump’s super PAC has run ads promoting Project 2025.
So why do Trump and his campaign want to distance him from the Heritage Foundation’s projects? One reason is disturbing comments made last week by the foundation’s chairman, Kevin Roberts. Speaking on the War Room, a podcast launched by Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, Roberts declared, “We are in the process of a second American revolution, and it will remain bloodless if the left lets it.”
But this dire threat isn’t the only problem. The bigger problem is that Project 2025 is pretty much everything Trump says it will be. do That’s because his presidency is full of unpopular and sometimes dystopian policies.
For example, the bill states that “pornography should be illegal” and that “those who produce or distribute pornography should be jailed,” but does not define “pornography.” Given the ongoing library wars, which have seen gay penguins and books about puberty deemed obscene, this seems like a dangerous and criminal campaign for a president to launch. Project 2025 also seeks to infuse Judeo-Christian values throughout the government, including a proposal to officially recognize the Sabbath.
On health care, the platform would cut funding for Medicaid, end Department of Health programs that promote “LGBTQ+ equality,” and direct the Food and Drug Administration to revoke approval of the abortion pill. On climate and energy, it would slash federal funding for renewable energy research and investment and block the expansion of the power grid for wind and solar power.
Among his unpopular immigration proposals is one that would effectively end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which gives illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children work permits and protections from deportation. Legal Immigration policy, for example abolishing visas for seasonal workers.
More broadly, the strategy describes how the president will purge the country of bipartisan career civil servants and experts (the so-called “deep state”) and replace them with political appointees, a project that Trump actually began when he left office in 2020 but failed to complete.
The platform also lays out how the president will gain direct control over independent agencies like the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission, conveniently allowing Trump to use the power of the state to benefit his friends and punish his foes, as he has promised to do (and tried to do many times during his last presidency).
Presumably when Trump says he knows nothing about Project 2025, he means he doesn’t know its finer details. That may be true: Few would mistake him for a policy expert.
But he delegated major executive decisions to subordinates last time, and will likely do so again in a second term, which is why this latest playbook, written by the same subordinates, should be taken seriously, whether or not you believe Trump’s professed ignorance of the evil to come.
