What is Project 2025 and what are the biggest changes it proposes?

The plan has come under scrutiny at a time when Trump is trying to soften his position in his bid to win the election, with Trump calling parts of the plan “totally ridiculous and terrible” and insisting that he and his campaign have nothing to do with Project 2025.

Still, the contents of the document are a pretty good indicator of what a second term for President Trump might look like. Here’s what Project 2025 is and how it could change America.

At its core is a 900-page plan that calls for extreme policies in nearly every aspect of American life, from mass deportations, to politicizing the federal government to give Trump control of the Justice Department, to cuts across federal agencies, to infusing Christian nationalism into every aspect of government policy by calling for a ban on pornography and promoting policies that encourage “marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood and the nuclear family.”

It didn’t come directly from the Trump campaign, but analysts say it should be taken seriously because of who wrote it. The main organization behind the plan, the Heritage Foundation, has had a rotation of Trump campaign officials (and is also a sponsor of the Republican National Convention, which will present the nomination to Trump next week).

“This is intended as an organizational statement of the conservative movement that is pro-Trump, both on policy and personnel and politics,” said William Galston, director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution.

Politically reshaping the federal workforce: Instead of nonpartisan civil servants implementing policy on everything from health to education to climate, the executive branch would be filled with Trump loyalists. “We must ensure that departments and agencies have strong cadres of political staff,” the plan states. That means nearly every decision made by a federal agency could lead to political advances. Topics range from whether to spend money in Democratic districts to whether to cut LGBTQ health programs, for example.

Cut the Department of Education: Project 2025 would make sweeping changes to the public school system, including cuts to long-standing federal programs for low-income and early childhood education, like Head Start, and the Department of Education as a whole. “Federal education policy should be limited, and ultimately the Department of Education should be abolished,” the plan states.

Give Trump the power to investigate his opponentsProject 2025 would put the Department of Justice and all law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, under direct presidential control. It calls for “top-to-bottom reform” of the FBI and reform of the administration. It would eliminate any investigation the president doesn’t like. This would dramatically weaken the independence of federal law enforcement. “There would be an all-out attack on the Department of Justice and the FBI,” said Galston of the Brookings Institution. “The White House would have tighter control over the Department of Justice and the FBI.”

Making it harder to get reproductive health care, especially abortion pills: While it does not specifically call for a nationwide abortion ban, abortion is one of the most discussed themes in the plan, with proposals throughout urging the next president to “lead the nation in restoring a culture of life to America again.” It would do this by prosecuting those who send abortion pills by mail (“abortion pills are the greatest threat to unborn babies in the post-Roe world,” the plan states), increasing the threat of criminalizing abortion providers by using the government to track miscarriages, stillbirths, and abortions, and making it harder to get insurance coverage for emergency contraception. It would also end federal protections for military members and their families to access abortion care.

Even legal immigration is being cracked down onThe plan calls for creating a new “Border Patrol and Immigration Agency” to restore President Trump’s border wall, building camps to hold children and families at the border, and sending in the military to deport millions of people already in the country illegally, including Dreamers. The deportation effort would be so large-scale that it could cause a major blow to the U.S. economy. The plan states that “illegal immigration should be ended, not mitigated, and the border should be closed, not reprioritized.”

Drastically cut climate change measures: Project 2025 calls for abolishing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which predicts weather and tracks climate change, describing it as “one of the main drivers of the climate alarmism industry.” The project would facilitate increased fossil fuel production while increasing drilling in the Arctic and shutting down the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate change division.

Ban transgender people from serving in the military and consider reinstating conscription“Gender dysphoria is incompatible with mandatory military service,” it reads. The author of this section of the plan led the Pentagon at the end of President Trump’s term and told The Washington Post that the government should seriously consider mandatory military service.

A big part of the project is recruiting and training people on how to move government policy or interpret the law in new ways to bring about dramatic change in federal policy. The project’s website also includes a place for people to submit resumes.

But even if Trump and Republicans take control of Washington next year, they face some big hurdles to getting their big agenda done. First, Trump doesn’t seem to agree with all of the legislation, and while his campaign platform barely mentions abortion, Project 2025 has repeatedly focused on it.

And some of these ideas may be impractical or even illegal — analysts are divided on whether Trump would be able to politicize civilian workers and fire them at will, for example — and the plan includes using the military to carry out the largest-ever mass deportations, which could be constitutionally questionable.

Ominously, one of the project’s leaders has opened the door to political violence to make all this happen. “We are in the process of a second American revolution,” Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts recently warned. “It will remain bloodless if the left allows it.”

It’s not unusual for aspiring politicians to map out how they would govern if they were returned to power, but what is unusual is how dramatic and unashamedly extreme many of these proposals are.

And the Biden campaign, now beset by questions about its candidacy, sees this as an easy target for campaigning.

Democrats have been circulating polling results from liberal groups that suggest talking up Project 2025 as a “takeover” of the U.S. government by Trump supporters will resonate with voters.

“It’s like reading a horror novel,” said Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson. “Every time you turn a page you want to read the next one, but then you finish it and you’re scared and disgusted.”

This is deeply frustrating for the Trump campaign, which does not want such specific — and politically unpopular — ideas associated with its campaign as it seeks to soften some of its positions in order to win the election.

“There’s no point in writing out all the crazy things you’re going to be attacked for during a campaign,” a Trump adviser recently told The Washington Post.

But analysts say it’s fair to consider Project 2025 a pretty good indicator of what a second Trump term might look like.

“It’s not like Trump is going to hand this pamphlet to his cabinet members on his first day in office and say, ‘Here you go,'” said Michael Strain, director of economic and policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, “but it does reflect the real agenda of key members of Trump’s community.”