“I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” Donald Trump said during last September’s presidential debate. “I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it purposely. I’m not going to read it.”
Such disavowals were common on the campaign trail. But just 100 days into his second term, Trump has enacted many of the key policies laid out in the Heritage Foundation’s 922-page blueprint for a far right takeover of the federal government. Of the 53 executive orders and actions Trump issued during his first week in office, more than two-thirds aligned with proposals in Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership,” a CNN analysis found. The parallels have only continued from there. As we take stock of the past 100 days and brace for Trump’s remaining time in office, Project 2025 will help us not only understand where we’ve been — but also offer a chilling roadmap of what may still lie ahead.
Expanding Executive Power
Central to Project 2025’s agenda is the expansion of presidential power, the appointment of Trump loyalists to federal office, and the downsizing of the federal workforce and privatization of government functions.
In “Mandate for Leadership,” Russell Vought — who Trump has since tapped to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) — characterizes the aggressive use of executive power as an “existential need” and argues that a successful conservative president will need to evince a “boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will.” This approach, Vought notes, will likely run into some legal challenges, so the OMB’s director should appoint a general counsel who is “creative and fearless in his or her ability to challenge legal precedents.”
Trump has certainly taken this directive to heart — and then some. Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) has embarked on a chaotic and unlawful crusade to lay off hundreds of thousands of federal workers and eliminate agencies wholesale. Some of these efforts pulled straight from Project 2025’s playbook, such as freezing federal hiring — which Trump did on day one — and reclassifying government personnel as “at-will” employees to make them easier to fire — something he ordered this month. But DOGE and Trump have gone even further; for instance, while Project 2025 recommended scaling back and “deradicalizing” the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the administration moved to shut the agency down entirely and freeze all federal foreign aid.
Trump’s aggressive approach to consolidating power is instructive: While he’s embraced the ethos of Project 2025, we can expect to see actions that will continue pushing beyond the document’s bounds.
Enacting Mass Deportations
Trump promised mass deportations on the campaign trail, and Project 2025 maps out various ways for the administration to fulfill that pledge: expanding expedited removal programs, increasing detention center capacities, militarizing the border, sanctioning countries that do not accept deported immigrants, penalizing U.S. sanctuary cities, suspending the country’s refugee assistance program and enlisting local law enforcement agencies for immigration enforcement. All of these tactics have appeared during Trump’s first 100 days. However, some of the president’s immigration actions, such as declaring a national emergency at the southern border and using a 1798 law called the Alien Enemies Act to speed up deportations, go beyond Project 2025’s pages. His blatant disregard of federal judicial orders to halt deportation flights and facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia have thrust the country into a constitutional crisis. On April 28, Trump signed a new executive order to bolster the police state, providing increased resources for the legal defense of officers accused of wrongdoing and furnishing local law enforcement agencies with military equipment.
Project 2025 laid the groundwork for Trump’s immigration crackdown. Now, he’s using the pretext of secure borders to broaden his authoritarian assault on civil liberties.
Anti-LGBTQ+ Policies and Attacking Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Programs
Trump’s attacks on DEI programs and LGBTQ+ people have closely mirrored Project 2025’s recommendations. The playbook calls on the president to start his term by “deleting” words like sexual orientation, gender identity, diversity, equity, inclusion, gender equality, gender awareness, and even just “gender” from “every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.” Then, it demands that the federal government cease collecting data on gender identity, prohibit funding for gender-affirming care for military members and expel transgender troops, rescind Biden-era Title IX protections for LGBTQ+ students, reverse regulations that prohibit LGBTQ+ discrimination in health care, ban “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” from public school curricula and formally recognize only two biological sexes under federal law. Trump has either enacted or taken steps toward implementing all of these policies during his first 100 days.
There are at least two concerning Project 2025 recommendations that we have yet to see play out. The playbook recommends rescinding Medicare coverage for gender-affirming surgery, claiming there is “insufficient scientific evidence to support such coverage in state plans.” Trump has banned the use of federal funds for gender-affirming care for people under the age of 19, slowly expanding the boundaries to define 18-year-olds as children for the purposes of this order; the proposed language in Project 2025 appears to apply more broadly to all adults as well. The document also outrageously characterizes “transgender ideology” as pornography and suggests classifying trans-affirming educators as “sex offenders.”
Abortion
Trump’s administration has followed much of Project 2025’s guidance on reproductive rights, including banning federal aid to international groups that provide abortion education and dropping Department of Justice lawsuits that aim to protect emergency abortion care at hospitals. Trump has frozen tens of millions in funding for Planned Parenthood and withdrawn Biden-era privacy protections for abortion care under HIPAA.
He has not, however, moved to reverse FDA approval of mifepristone, an abortion medication, or ban its prescription via telehealth, some of Project 2025’s key proposals. Last year, the Supreme Court unanimously decided to throw out a lawsuit challenging the FDA’s approval of mifepristone. Project 2025 also endorses a federal bill that calls for states receiving Medicaid funding to implement abortion surveillance requirements — a dangerous proposal that could bolster the nationwide criminalization of reproductive health care.
Climate and Environment
If the Inflation Reduction Act was the crowning achievement of Biden’s presidency, it has quickly been decimated by Trump’s first 100 days in office. Many of the president’s attacks on climate and the environment were foretold as policy recommendations in Project 2025. The administration has paused the disbursement of Inflation Reduction Act funds, expanded offshore drilling and oil drilling in Alaska, eliminated energy efficiency standards for appliances, withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement (again), and moved to restart federal coal leasing. But Trump has once again taken up the mantle of Project 2025 and pushed it even further: He declared a national energy emergency to boost domestic fossil fuel production and circumvent regulations, moved to roll back more than 100 environmental rules and signed an executive order blocking states from passing their own climate change laws. And while Project 2025 called for “meaningful reform” of the Endangered Species Act, the Trump administration recently proposed rescinding the act’s current definition of “harm,” which would essentially gut the rule’s enforcement.
The parallels continue: Trump’s push to overhaul the Federal Emergency Management Agency and offload its costs to the states was proposed by Project 2025. So was his recent memo instructing Congress to defund public media, including NPR and PBS.
But while much of Trump’s first 100 days followed the script laid out in the Project 2025 playbook, it’s also clear that his goal isn’t just to empower the conservative movement — it’s to consolidate power for himself. Project 2025 already offered a chilling vision of a far right takeover of the federal government. The agenda Trump is implementing is even more disturbing: blatant disregard for court rulings, direct attacks on higher education and the press, moves toward changing constitutional protections for birthright citizenship, and state-backed disappearances without due process. And it’s only the first 100 days.
In the face of Trump’s threats, we’ll never capitulate.
At this moment, we are witnessing a terrifying array of anti-democratic tactics to silence political opposition, increase surveillance and expand authoritarian reach.
Truthout is appealing for your support as Trump and his sycophants crack down on political speech. Nonprofits like Truthout could be caught in Trump’s crosshairs as he attacks dissenting groups with bad faith lawsuits and targeted harassment of journalists.
As well, these attacks come at a time when independent journalism is most needed. The right-wing corporate takeover of media has left reliable outlets few and far between, with even fewer providing their work at no cost to the reader. Who will be there to hold the fascists to account, if not media like Truthout?
We ask for your support as we doggedly pursue justice through our reporting. Truthout is funded overwhelmingly by readers like you. Please make a tax-deductible one-time or monthly donation today.