Project 2025

Project 2025 (also known as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project) is a political initiative published in April 2023 by the Heritage Foundation with the goal of reshaping the U.S. federal government by consolidating executive power in favor of right-wing policies. It constitutes a policy document that suggests specific changes to the federal government, a personnel database for recommending vetting loyal staff in the federal government, and a set of proposed executive orders for the U.S. president to implement those policies.

The project's policy document Mandate for Leadership calls for the replacement of federal civil service workers by people loyal to "the next conservative president" and for taking partisan control of the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Commerce (DOC), and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Other agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Education (ED), would be dismantled. It calls for reducing environmental regulations and realigning the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with conservative priorities. The blueprint seeks to reduce taxes on corporations, institute a flat income tax on individuals, cut Medicare and Medicaid, and reverse as many of President Joe Biden's policies as possible. It proposes banning pornography, removing legal protections against anti-LGBT discrimination, and ending diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs while having the DOJ prosecute anti-white racism. The project recommends mass deportation of illegal immigrants. The plan also proposes enacting laws supported by the Christian right, such as criminalizing the sending and receiving of abortion and birth control medications and eliminating coverage of emergency contraception.

Project 2025 is based on a controversial interpretation of unitary executive theory according to which the executive branch is under the president's complete control. Analysts note that the approach would further reduce agency independence and centralize presidential control. PBS News Hour reporting has linked these ambitions to discussions of domestic military involvement, pointing to Trump's deployment of the National Guard to Washington, D.C., as a potential precedent. The project's proponents say it would dismantle a bureaucracy that is unaccountable and mostly liberal. Critics have called it an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan that would steer the U.S. toward autocracy. Some legal experts say it would undermine the rule of law, separation of powers, separation of church and state, and civil liberties.

Most of Project 2025's contributors worked in either Trump's first administration (2017−2021) or his campaign for the 2024 presidential election. Several Trump campaign officials maintained contact with Project 2025, seeing its goals as aligned with their Agenda 47 program. Trump later attempted to distance himself from the plan. After he won the 2024 election, he nominated several of the plan's creators and supporters to positions in his second administration. Four days into his second term, analysis by Time found that nearly two-thirds of Trump's executive actions "mirror or partially mirror" proposals from Project 2025.