What Is Project 2025, Really? A Straightforward Look
You’ve probably heard about Project 2025 floating around the news or on social media. Maybe you’ve caught a few headlines, maybe you’ve heard it’s tied to Trump, or maybe you’re wondering if it’s just another political buzzword.
I just read an early copy of a new book called “The Project: How Project 2025 is Reshaping America” by David A. Graham, and it lays it all out in plain English—and it’s honestly eye-opening.
Here’s the short version:
Project 2025 is a 900-page document (yes, 900 pages) put together by the Heritage Foundation, a big conservative think tank that’s been around for decades. It was written by about 70 different authors, many of whom worked directly in the first Trump administration—including four at the Cabinet level.
If you remember, Trump tried to distance himself from Project 2025 during his campaign, saying he didn’t know much about it.
David’s take? That’s a stretch. After Trump won, he appointed a lot of the people involved with Project 2025 into key government positions—like border czar, CIA director, and head of the Office of Management and Budget. Bloomberg even reported that 37 out of Trump’s first 47 executive actions matched recommendations from Project 2025.
So what is it actually about?
David explains that Project 2025 is part game plan, part job board, part political bootcamp.
• It lays out policy goals.
• It builds a huge database of potential hires.
• It trains people to step into government jobs.
• And it gives Trump (or any other conservative president) a ready-to-go roadmap to reshape government from day one.
In Trump’s first term, one of his biggest problems was staffing—he didn’t have enough loyalists ready to take over the government agencies. Project 2025’s goal is to fix that: stack the system with “true believers” who won’t get in the way.
There’s a saying in politics: Personnel is policy.
This time, they want to make sure they have both locked down before they even show up.
What’s in the Agenda?
The big idea behind Project 2025 is to dramatically expand the power of the president. Here’s what they want to do:
• Fire civil servants at will (even career professionals who are supposed to be nonpartisan)
• Take political control over agencies like the Justice Department, FCC, and SEC
• Pull more power away from Congress and give it directly to the executive branch
And if they get that control, what’s next?
Here’s a quick rundown of their policy goals:
• Families: Ban abortion nationwide; promote a traditional 1950s-style household where men work and women stay home.
• Immigration: Cut back sharply on legal immigration (student visas, work visas, H-1Bs—you name it).
• Education: Shut down the Department of Education and push all funding and decision-making to the states.
• Taxes: Cut taxes for the super wealthy and corporations; introduce a national consumption tax (which tends to hurt lower- and middle-income families the most).
• Social Safety Net: Shrink federal aid programs and shift the responsibility for helping the poor to churches and charities.
• The Federal Reserve: They’re not fans. They want major changes—or possibly to sideline it altogether.
On trade policy, the document is weirdly split: some parts argue for tariffs and protectionism, others for free trade. (Basically, they couldn’t agree.)
Why It Matters
David makes a really important point:
The authors of Project 2025 see government as a problem—so their solution is to concentrate even more power into the hands of one person.
If they think government agencies have been “politicized,” their answer isn’t to fix them—it’s to politicize them even more, just with their own people.
For many of them, Trump is simply the vehicle to get their agenda done. Whether he agrees with every point or not, they have a full-blown vision ready to go.
And even the changes they’re making behind the scenes right now—changing how government jobs work, rewriting the rules—could shape our country for decades to come, no matter who’s in charge later.
Final Thought
Look, ideologues don’t usually make great leaders. When the goal is total control rather than collaboration, things tend to get ugly fast.
Whether you lean left, right, or somewhere in between, it’s worth understanding what’s happening—not just the headlines, but the bigger play underneath.
David’s new book gives a clear window into what Project 2025 is—and why it could change the country in a big way.
It’s something we all need to keep an eye on.