The Heritage Foundation, which, along with over 100 other conservative organizations, created the far right policy document Project 2025, is winding down its policy work for that project following criticisms from the campaign of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The wind-down, however, doesn’t mean the project has been dismantled — or that Heritage or Trump will stop pursuing the policy goals contained in the document.
The announcement of the group’s intention to slow its promotion of the document, which contains hundreds of pages of conservative policy proposals, came abruptly on Monday. It coincided with an announcement that Project 2025’s director, Paul Dans, was stepping down from his position.
While some headlines suggest that the project will no longer play a role in the presidential campaign Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, stated that the organization would “continue [its] efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels.”
Project 2025 contains proposals to rescind protections for LGBTQ people, further deteriorating reproductive rights in the U.S., privatize popular national health care programs like Medicare, and remove the federal civil service program in the hiring process for government workers, allowing a Trump-like president to require employees to pledge loyalty to them instead of to the public. The project also promotes white supremacist ideals, with at least five contributors to Project 2025 espousing such views in the past.
The Trump campaign, which has criticized Project 2025 due to media reports on both its contents and its many connections to the former president, welcomed the announcement of the wind-down, describing the supposed “demise” of the project as “serv[ing] as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.”
Behind the scenes, Trump campaign staffers repeatedly called the Heritage Foundation’s office, demanding that they back off the public rollout and promotion of the policy document. Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita “put the screws” on Project 2025 and its director to shutter down, reported Daily Beast senior political reporter Roger Sollenberger.
Heritage has consistently claimed that it is not affiliated with Trump or his campaign, saying that Project 2025 simply serves as a model for how a future Republican president should govern, and provides a detailed set of policy points that far right groups want to see implemented.
The connection to Trump, however, is undeniable. At least 140 individuals who helped craft the document have worked for Trump before. The document has many similarities to Trump’s own list of stated policy priorities, contained in his Agenda 47, which has been described as “largely borrow[ing]” from the manifesto Heritage and other far right groups created.
Trump was also largely supportive of Project 2025 when it was in its infancy. A video from 2022 that resurfaced last month indicated that Trump wasn’t just aware of Heritage’s plan to create the document, but was openly supportive of it as “lay[ing] the groundwork” for the future of conservatism in the U.S.
Speaking at a Heritage Foundation-sponsored event that year, Trump spoke positively of the project that would become Project 2025, stating that it would provide “detailed plans for exactly what our movement will do.”
But Trump began to deny any involvement in Project 2025 as soon as media reports started pointing out its contents. Earlier this year, for example, Trump claimed he knew “nothing about Project 2025” and said he had “no idea who is behind it” — despite clear evidence to the contrary.
Polling data indeed shows that, the more American voters learn about the document, the less likely they are to support it.
The series of events suggests that Trump isn’t opposed to the proposals in the document, but rather wants to keep his support of the policies hidden, so as not to alienate voters. In fact, earlier this week, people tied to Project 2025 said that Trump’s reticence to embrace the project was a “PR gesture” for him to “maneuver and avoid” making public commitments to the document.
“He wants to avoid having to answer questions about anything he doesn’t want to answer questions about,” an anonymous Project 2025 advisory board member told NBC News. “Most people I know who are involved with it don’t seem overly worried that this actually constitutes a repudiation and is going to mean anything on January 20.
Amid news reports of Project 2025 slowing down, critics warned that the action was merely a ruse — that Trump, if elected president this fall, would still implement some of its harshest proposals.
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California), who has showcased how Project 2025 is intended to help Trump gain authoritarian powers, stated in a press release following the announcement of the slowdown that the “attempts to create the appearance of distance between Trump and Project 2025 are happening because Americans are starting to learn about this extreme takeover plan for Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans.”
Trump’s innermost circle worked with Heritage to write Project 2025,” Huffman pointed out. “They published it in collaboration with 110 leading MAGA groups,” and they “spent more than a year crowing about it as the ‘war plan’ for a second Trump administration.”
No amount of spinning or play-fighting can change the fact that Donald Trump is inextricably intertwined with Project 2025. His inner circle wrote it and published it. His closest allies, from [Trump’s vice presidential running-mate] J.D. Vance to [former Trump policy adviser] Steve Bannon, have promised to use it as the blueprint for a second Trump administration. And we have the receipts.
Observers on social media expressed similar sentiments.
“Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people doesn’t make it less real – in fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding,” read a statement from the campaign for Democratic candidate for president Kamala Harris.
“Trump is distancing himself from Project 2025 because people finally found out about how bonkers it is,” former Labor Secretary and frequent Trump critic Robert Reich said. “But at least 140 people who worked for Trump in the past were involved in crafting the platform. It embodies everything he stands for.”
Politicus USA’s Sarah Reese Jones agreed that the document was being purposely hidden to conceal Trump’s aims of becoming an authoritarian leader.
“Fascists don’t shut their unpopular ideas down. They hide. They lie. They dissemble. They rebrand. But they do not under any circumstances stop trying it,” she said.
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