(NewsNation) — Controversial conservative blueprint Project 2025 has a wish list regarding how the first 180 days of a president’s term should run, but it’s unclear if President-elect Donald Trump will follow it.
Project 2025 is a nearly 1,000-page handbook from conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, written as a guide on what the next president needs to do to undo the “damage” to America the group claims has been caused by liberal politicians.
It acts as a manual for the next Republican president, detailing ways to reshape and give the executive branch more power.
The controversial project has come under fire not only by Democrats but also by Trump and his campaign during his bid for office.
What Trump has said about Project 2025
But after his win, a key figure of the group behind Project 2025 offered the president-elect well wishes.
“We look forward to this historic term, during which President Trump has an opportunity to make America great, healthy, safe and prosperous once again,” Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, said in an online statement on Election Day.
“The entire conservative movement stands united behind him,” he added.
Many of Trump’s former aides have authored parts of the document, although Trump said during his campaign that he did not know about it.
Project 2025 lists four pillars as part of its plan, and the fourth pillar is an unpublished 180-day “Transition Playbook.”
“The time is short, and conservatives need a plan. The project will create a playbook of actions to be taken in the first 180 days of the new Administration to bring quick relief to Americans suffering from the Left’s devastating policies,” Project 2025 states on its website.
While specifics are not public, the group calls this 180-day plan a “comprehensive, concrete transition plan for each federal agency” and adds that “only through the implementation of specific action plans at each agency will the next conservative presidential Administration be successful.”
Paul Dans, the former director of Project 2025, said in reference to the “Playbook,” “We are forming agency teams and drafting transition plans to move out upon the President’s utterance of ‘so help me God.'”
What is Project 2025?
Dans stepped down from his position at Heritage amid escalating criticism of the plan by Trump and his campaign.
Much of the criticism launched against Project 2025 has been in relation to the plan’s first pillar, called “Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise.”
That 900-page mandate hinges on the election of a Republican president and uses Trump’s “Schedule F” policy, which was ended by Biden, to reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers as political appointees to try and enable mass dismissals.
A main component of Project 2025 is the firing of as many as 50,000 federal workers who conservative groups say will get in the way of his agenda. Under Project 2025, agencies such as the U.S. Department of Education would be “eliminated,” and others, like the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission, and Justice Department, would be put under the president’s control.
A so-called top-to-bottom “overhaul” of the Department of Justice would end FBI efforts to stop misinformation. The Pentagon would “abolish” diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives if Project 2025 is adopted, and service members discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine would be reinstated.
When it comes to social issues such as abortion, Project 2025 calls for restricting the procedure through a limit on mail-order pills and penalizing providers; other health care services and social services like Medicare and Social Security would be scaled back and privatized as well.
Many of the Biden administration’s climate change policies would be reversed through Project 2025, and more focus would be placed on the fossil fuel industry.
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Project 2025’s authors have praised Trump’s cabinet choices thus far as well as the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“DOGE is a welcome and long-overdue step toward addressing government waste and restoring fiscal discipline to the federal budget,” said David Ditch, senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, in a news release.
Trump appointed tech entrepreneurs and billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head DOGE.
The organization also praised Trump’s appointments of Tom Homan as border czar, cable news commentator Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as secretary of state and former national intelligence director John Ratcliffe as CIA chief.
NewsNation’s Cassie Buchman and Ashley Soriano contributed to this story.
