Donald Trump shunned Project 2025 as a candidate, but is adopting its ideas in office
Some of President Donald Trump's executive orders have mirrored proposals outlined in the much-debated Project 2025 book. Above, he holds up a memorandum he signed in the Oval Office of the White House on Jan. 30. Credit: Getty Images / Chip Somodevilla
WASHINGTON — On the presidential campaign trail, candidate Donald Trump consistently distanced himself from Project 2025, a conservative think tank initiative that proposed sweeping changes to the federal government.
“I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it,” Trump said in a July social media post days before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, as national polls showed a majority of voters were unsupportive of the book’s proposals.
Now as president, Trump is trying to put many of the proposals into place, through his growing list of executive orders and actions in his first weeks back in office.
He is working at shrinking the federal workforce, eliminating diversity programs, stepping up the military’s role in immigration enforcement — all initiatives laid out in the 900-page "Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise," an initiative funded by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation.
WHAT NEWSDAY FOUND
- President Donald Trump’s growing list of executive orders and actions in his first weeks back in office mirror many of the proposals outlined in the conservative Project 2025 policy book, which he previously disavowed on the campaign trail.
- The more than 900-page book, titled "Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise," became a flash point of last year's presidential race, as Democrats asserted the book was a blueprint for Trump's second term.
- Trump's early actions include tapping one of the book's authors, Russell Vought, as White House Office of Management and Budget director.
Released in April 2023, the Project 2025 policy guidebook was the latest volume released by Heritage, which has put out "Mandate for Leadership" books since 1981, before each Republican president assumed office. The latest book was released earlier in the election cycle than past editions, which likely led to it becoming such a focal point of the campaign, said Nick Beauchamp, an associate professor of political science at Northeastern University.
"One of the questions is — how much of this is following the Project 2025 playbook, and how much of it is just kind of a convergent evolution of various things that various branches of the conservative movement have wanted to do for a long time," Beauchamp told Newsday in a phone interview.
In addition to enacting several of the proposals laid out in the book, Trump has tapped several of the book’s writers to join his administration, including Russell Vought as White House Office of Management and Budget director.
Vought was confirmed to lead the powerful office by the Republican-controlled Senate Thursday despite a long-shot attempt by Senate Democrats to derail his confirmation. Democrats staged a marathon 30-hour session of floor speeches objecting to his nomination.
"I caution my Republican colleagues — voting to place the chief architect of Project 2025 in charge of White House policy will come back to haunt them," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a floor speech Thursday morning.
Senate Republicans have embraced Vought, one of the lead writers of the project, with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) describing him as "a lean, mean, budget-cutting machine."
Here is a look at some of Trump’s latest actions that mirror proposals outlined in the Project 2025 book:
Federal workforce
Trump established the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by his ally, billionaire Elon Musk, who has since been leading efforts to gut federal agencies, including shuttering the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the agency tasked with leading humanitarian efforts overseas.
More than 60,000 federal workers have accepted a voluntary buyout offer that was emailed out to more than 2 million eligible federal employees on Jan. 28, according to The Associated Press.
The buyouts were set to go into effect on Thursday, but a federal court judge in Massachusetts extended the deadline for workers to apply until Monday as the court weighs a lawsuit by three federal employee unions seeking to delay implementation of the buyouts. The unions argue there are questions about the legality of the plan.
The Project 2025 policy manual asserts that "the surest way to put the federal government back to work for the American people is to reduce its size and scope."
Diversity programs
On his first day in office Trump signed an executive order calling for the termination of all "diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear."
Trump also signed an executive order rolling back a series of decades-old executive orders aimed at promoting diversity in the federal workforce, including one dating back to President Lyndon B. Johnson, that barred federal contractors from discriminatory hiring practices.
The orders match a call in Project 2025’s policy book to delete the terms "diversity, equity and inclusion or 'DEI,' gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive ... out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists."
Immigration enforcement
Trump, on his first day in office, declared a "National Emergency at the Southern Border of the United States" and called for the deployment of U.S. troops to the border.
The Department of Defense on Jan. 22 announced plans to deploy "an additional 1,500 active-duty service members to the border" to join "more than 2,500 active-duty troops and National Guardsmen already in the region."
Trump also designated the Guantánamo Bay naval base as a site to house detained migrants.
The moves align with passages in the Project 2025 book that encourage the Pentagon to "Provide necessary support to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) border protection operations."
Department of Education
Project 2025’s section on the Department of Education calls for the elimination of the agency, formed in 1979.
"Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated," states the policy book.
Trump has yet to sign an executive action abolishing the agency, but asked about reports that he is considering signing such an order, he acknowledged that he would like to see the agency gone and let "states run the schools."
Asked whether he had the authority to dismantle the agency, Trump said "there are some people that say I could," before adding that he would work with Congress and the teachers unions to get rid of the agency.
Public media
Trump’s appointee to lead the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, a contributor to the Project 2025 guidebook, recently declared plans to investigate the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio.
Carr’s move appears to be aimed at stripping federal funding from PBS and NPR, in alignment with Project 2025’s calls to "stop public funding" for the public broadcasters.
In a Jan. 29 letter to the heads of PBS and NPR, Carr wrote he was launching an investigation into their use of commercials and sponsorships, asserting that the probe would help Congress determine if they should continue funding the programs "with taxpayer dollars."
The heads of NPR and PBS in separate statements asserted that they are in compliance with all federal laws and act as nonpartisan broadcasters.
Political appointees
On his second day in office, Trump signed an executive order aimed at giving him more authority to hire and fire federal employees. Trump reinstated "Section F," a class of federal workers he created late in his first term — later rolled back by President Joe Biden — who are subject to hiring and firing from the executive branch.
"Any power they have is delegated by the President, and they must be accountable to the President, who is the only member of the executive branch, other than the Vice President, elected and directly accountable to the American people," Trump wrote in the order, referring to federal workers in policymaking positions.
Federal worker unions argue the move undercuts efforts to depoliticize the hiring of hundreds of thousands of career civil servants from health inspectors to federal researchers.
In the Project 2025 manual, the book’s writers state: "More fundamentally, the new administration must fill its ranks with political appointees."
Laura Figueroa Hernandez is the White House correspondent and previously covered New York City politics and government. She joined Newsday in 2012 after covering state and local politics for The Miami Herald.
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