Project 2025, also called the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, is a comprehensive plan by the Heritage Foundation to fundamentally reshape the federal government and eliminate checks and balances, allowing the President to freely implement far-right policies. Project leaders have called it the “blueprint” for President Donald Trump’s second term.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts described the organization’s goal as “institutionalizing Trumpism.” At least 144 contributors worked for Trump during his first term, and several of the project’s lead architects are now part of Trump’s new cabinet.
Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, claiming he had “nothing to do” with it. But he praised the Heritage Foundation’s policy work in the past, saying the organization would “lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”
A review from CBS News identified at least 270 Project 2025 proposals that match Trump’s agenda, and he’s already started implementing some of them through a series of Executive Orders signed after his inauguration on Monday, January 20.
Here are some of the Project 2025 initiatives his administration has already begun to tackle.
Creating Unchecked Executive Power
Project 2025 lays out a plan for the president to seize control of the entire federal bureaucracy by eliminating or downsizing certain government agencies, and removing job protections from federal workers so that Trump can stack his loyalists in all levels of government.
This has already become a major priority for Trump’s administration, through an executive order he signed on his first day in office reviving the Schedule F initiative. Trump originally implemented Schedule F shortly before the 2020 election, revoked immediately by former President Joe Biden.
Schedule F removes job protections from about 50,000 federal workers, and gives the President and his appointees more leeway in firing and hiring their replacements based on loyalty. The new executive order states that employees must “faithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability.”
Trump’s team has prepared to fill these positions with employees handpicked from Project 2025’s personnel database of about 10,000 job candidates who have all been vetted for loyalty.
Russell Vought — one of the major architects behind Project 2025 and Schedule F, and Trump’s nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for the second time — said he is planning for “mass layoffs and firings, particularly at some of the agencies that we don’t even think should exist.”
The government agencies under threat of downsizing include the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The ones that would be eliminated entirely are the Department of Education, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The Department of Justice (DOJ) would also lose its independence and be subject to the control of the President. Project 2025 states that DOJ decisions should “always be consistent with the President’s policy agenda and the rule of law.” Trump has made similar statements, indicating he would try to use the DOJ to go after his political rivals.
Restricting Immigration
Project 2025’s immigration section, co-authored by Trump’s incoming “border czar” Tom Homan, calls for a major crackdown on all kinds of immigration, legal and illegal.
Trump started implementing many Project 2025 suggestions on day one, declaring a national state of emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border. His order seeks to deploy troops from the National Guard to the region, and “immediately take all appropriate action… to construct additional physical barriers.”
His other actions include suspending resettlements from the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, reinstating the “Remain in Mexico” policy that ends a program to release asylum seekers into the U.S. while their cases are still being considered, and ending birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to undocumented parents.
Project 2025 also calls for expanding immigrant detention centers, eliminating popular relief programs and certain types of legal visas, and punishing states that do not fully cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
Revoking Environmental Protections and Clean Energy Initiatives
Project 2025 offers many proposals to slash federal funding for renewable energy in favor of oil and gas, which Trump echoed with a National Energy Emergency. His day-one orders include expanding U.S. fossil fuel production, halting large wind farms, and scrapping Biden-era clean air initiatives and environmental protections.
Trump’s new orders allow oil companies to drill on public lands and waters that Biden sought to protect, including Alaska’s coastal areas and 2.8 million acres in the Arctic Ocean. The orders also suggest he will repeal Biden’s electric vehicle tax credits, limits on vehicle greenhouse gas emissions, and non-binding goal to have EVs make up half of new cars sold by 2030.
He also signed an order withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement for the second time. As the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter and top oil and gas producer, a U.S. withdrawal would leave a major hole in international efforts to curtail planet-warning greenhouse gas emissions.
Imposing Higher Tariffs
Peter Navarro, Trump’s nomination for Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing, authored the Project 2025 chapter that advocates for higher tariffs and increased restrictions on international trade, a major part of Trump’s campaign.
Trump has taken the first step to implement his “America First” international trade policy with a presidential memorandum that directs multiple federal agencies to investigate potential measures to carry out these plans.
Trump’s proposed tariffs include 10% on global imports, 60% on Chinese goods, and a 25% import surcharge on Canadian and Mexican products, which economists predict could raise costs for consumers and risk a global trade war.
Eliminating DEI and Federal Protections for LGBTQ+ People
Project 2025 seeks to eliminate any mention of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender-affirming care from “any piece of legislation that exists,” and cut federal funding for anything deemed “pro-LGBT.”
“Unfortunately, family policies and programs under President Biden’s HHS are fraught with agenda items focusing on ‘LGBTQ+ equity,’” the project states. “These policies should be repealed and replaced by policies that support the formation of stable, married, nuclear families.”
Trump fully supports this agenda, signing an Executive Order that declares the U.S. government will only recognize two sexes, male and female. He also rescinded a Biden-era provision that allowed transgender people to serve in the military, lifting Trump’s ban from his first term.
Trump also ordered the dismantling of all federal programs, offices, and initiatives related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) for the second time, and the termination of equal opportunity hiring practices. He also eliminated a policy that widened sex discrimination protections to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
Limiting Reproductive Care
Trump announced he would pardon anti-abortion activists convicted of blockading abortion clinic entrances, calling it “a great honor to sign.” His executive order to only recognize two genders also includes language to suggest that life begins at conception, the legal doctrine pushed by the anti-abortion movement.
“‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell,” the executive order states. “‘Male’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”
These actions worry pro-choice activists, who cite Project 2025’s detailed plans to defund and severely limit access to reproductive care. Rather than advocating for an explicit nationwide abortion ban, which Trump said he wouldn’t support, Project 2025’s plans include revoking FDA approval of the abortion pill and criminalizing the shipping of any materials used in abortions.
The abortion chapter was written by Roger Severino, who ran the Department of Health and Human Services’s (HHS) Office of Civil Rights during Trump’s first term. His suggestions include rebranding the HHS to “the Department of Life” and requiring that each state report “exactly how many abortions take place within its borders” at the risk of losing Medicaid funds.
Trump has indicated he would support restrictions to abortion, promising his administration “will protect innocent life” and saying he has “pretty strong views” on the abortion pill that he plans to unveil in the future. Vice President JD Vance also said that Trump would defund Planned Parenthood, another goal of Project 2025.