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Project 2025 Is Here.
With Trump’s return to the presidency, Project 2025, a 920-page plan spearheaded by the powerful and extreme far-right Heritage Foundation, is becoming a reality. More than 100 far-right organizations support this blueprint for autocracy, which now appears to be an important source for Trump’s proposed policies, despite his repeated disavowal of Project 2025 during his campaign. Multiple nominees for the new administration have direct ties to the effort.
Project 2025’s stated goal is to create an “ideal” America that would see women, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, people of color, and others deprived of their hard-won constitutional rights and the erosion of environmental and education protections. It also advocates for a frightening centralization of power in the executive branch, something Trump is keen to achieve. Read GPAHE’s full analysis of Project 2025 and the groups behind it.
GPAHE monitors how Project 2025 is becoming a reality and reports on the ties between the project and the administration, and its impact on the American people and democracy. We track Project 2025 activities at the federal, state, and local levels, and their plans for an authoritarian and Christian Nationalist America.
This week we look at Trump’s inaugural speech and initial executive orders which parrot Project 2025 policies, terms, and language as the United States moves toward the Christian Nationalist oligarchy the Heritage Foundation envisioned when creating its Mandate for Leadership.
By the Playbook: How Project 2025 shaped Trump’s Day One Policies
Inside the Capitol Building on January 20th, 2025, as the temperature outside dropped to 21 degrees, Donald Trump delivered an inaugural address that would transform conservative policy architecture into immediate executive action. The 30-minute speech, noteworthy for its departure from traditional inaugural themes of unity and reconciliation, instead presented a methodical outline of policies that would be implemented within hours through executive orders. What became immediately apparent was the striking alignment between Trump’s words, his subsequent executive actions, and a document he had previously claimed no knowledge of —the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
The relationship between conservative think tanks and presidential administrations has rarely been as direct as what emerged on January 20, 2025. As Trump signed executive order after executive order in the early hours of his presidency, a striking pattern emerged — one that revealed the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 as more than a transition guide. It was, in effect, a precise playbook for executive action as GPAHE predicted in October 2023.
“The injection of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) into our institutions has corrupted them by replacing hard work, merit, and equality with a divisive and dangerous preferential hierarchy. Orders to open the borders have endangered the American people and dissolved Federal, State, and local resources that should be used to benefit the American people,” read Trump’s executive order on rescinding 78 Biden era orders at odds with the Christian Nationalist polices he and Project 2025 organizations share.
From Speech to Implementation
The unprecedented alignment between Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership and the day-one executive orders reveals more than routine transition planning. On immigration, both documents frame the southern border situation as an “invasion.” Project 2025 states bluntly on page 183 that “Mexico is currently a national security disaster… it has functionally lost its sovereignty to muscular criminal cartels that effectively run the country.”
The implementation extends to specific operational details. Project 2025 specifies on page 142 that “ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) should be identified as being primarily responsible for enforcing civil immigration regulations, including the civil arrest, detention, and removal of immigration violators anywhere in the United States.” Within hours of Trump’s inauguration, this vision was transformed into executive orders establishing nationwide Homeland Security Task Forces.
Dismantling DEI and Federal Programs
Trump’s inaugural attack on “woke ideology” in his speech preceded executive orders that precisely matched Project 2025’s vision. In “DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT,” Trump declares that there are only two sexes, male and female.
“These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality,” his order reads. Trump rails against “ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers,” the order reads, describing yet another perceived “woke conspiracy,” this time against biology. “This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts.”
The “ENDING RADICAL AND WASTEFUL GOVERNMENT DEI PROGRAMS AND PREFERENCING” order terminates all government DEI programs and even the mention of the term, requiring federal employees to report any surreptitious attempts to make the workplace diverse, equal and inclusive. Such efforts are now illegal, the order states.
The Heritage Foundation document states on page 4: “The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (‘SOGI’), diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive… out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation.”
The order’s detailed reporting requirements mirror Project 2025’s statement on page 873 that “corporate social advocacy on issues ranging from ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ (DEI) to the ‘environmental, social, and governance’ (ESG) movement also serves to launder corporate reputation and perhaps obtain favorable treatment from government actors.”
Free Speech and Federal Censroship
The “RESTORING FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND ENDING FEDERAL CENSORSHIP” order represents one of the most direct implementations of Project 2025’s vision for dismantling what it views as government-driven online content moderation. The order’s declaration that “over the last 4 years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms” precisely mirrors Project 2025’s assessment on page 135 that, “The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is a DHS component that the Left has weaponized to censor speech and affect elections at the expense of securing the cyber domain and critical infrastructure.”
The order’s specific focus on dismantling what it terms “government-driven censorship” implements Project 2025’s directive on page 155 that “a conservative Administration should return CISA to its statutory and important but narrow mission.” Both documents frame current content moderation practices as government overreach, with the order’s criticism of efforts to combat “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “malinformation” directly echoing Project 2025’s statement on page 687 that, “CISA has rapidly expanded its scope into lanes where it does not belong, the most recent and most glaring example being censorship of so-called misinformation and disinformation.”
Energy and Environmental Policy
The “UNLEASHING AMERICAN ENERGY” and “DECLARING A NATIONAL ENERGY EMERGENCY”orders seeks to “eliminate the electric vehicle mandate” and “safeguard the American people’s freedom to choose from a variety of goods and appliances, including but not limited to lightbulbs, dishwashers, washing machines, gas stoves, water heaters, toilets, and shower heads.”
Project 2025’s language on page 286 is virtually identical . “Under the next President, the Department of Energy should end the Biden Administration’s unprovoked war on fossil fuels, restore America’s energy independence, oppose eyesore windmills built at taxpayer expense, and respect the right of Americans to buy and drive cars of their own choosing,” it reads, vowing “to safeguard the American people’s freedom to choose from a variety of goods and appliances, including but not limited to lightbulbs, dishwashers, washing machines, gas stoves, water heaters, toilets, and shower heads.”
The order’s focus on Clean Water Act Emergency Provisions aligns with Project 2025’s statement on page 430: “While the overall goal is certainly to reduce government spending, there is one very targeted area where increased spending would be in the nation’s interest. The Clean Water Act needs survey is the entire basis for how congressionally appropriated funds directed to state revolving funds are distributed by EPA across the country.”
Trump’s executive order “UNLEASHING ALASKA’S EXTRAORDINARY RESOURCE POTENTIAL” represents another direct implementation of Project 2025’s resource development vision. The order’s aggressive reversal of environmental protections and emphasis on resource extraction mirrors Project 2025’s detailed prescriptions for Alaska’s federal lands, particularly regarding the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
The connection between Heritage Foundation policy and executive action is particularly evident in the order’s approach to the ANWR’s Coastal Plain. Project 2025’s mandate specifically calls for compliance with the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act to “establish a competitive leasing and development program in the Coastal Plain,” describing it as an area “set aside by Congress specifically for future oil and gas exploration and development.” Trump’s order implements this vision precisely, directing immediate resumption of oil and gas leasing in the region while simultaneously denying indigenous sacred site protections.
The executive order’s broad scope — touching everything from Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) development to hunting access — closely tracks Project 2025’s comprehensive approach to Alaska resource management. The Mandate for Leadership‘s 103 references to Alaska underscore the state’s centrality to the Heritage Foundation’s vision for natural resource policy. The order’s provisions for expediting transportation infrastructure and removing regulatory “delays” directly echo Project 2025’s emphasis on streamlining development processes.
Immigration and Border Security
The suite of Day One immigration–focused executive orders, represents perhaps the most comprehensive implementation of Project 2025’s border security vision. On page 135, the blueprint demands homeland security must “return the department to the right mission, the right size, and the right budget.” The orders’ emphasis on mandatory detention and rapid processing aligns precisely with Project 2025’s demand on page 150 for Congress to “eliminate ambiguous discretionary language in Title 8 that aliens ‘may’ be detained and clarify that aliens ‘shall’ be detained.”
“It is the policy of the United States to ensure that public safety and national security are paramount considerations in the administration of the [U.S. Refugee Assistance Program], and to admit only those refugees who can fully and appropriately assimilate into the United States, ” the refugee program suspension executive order reads. Trump’s directive to close American borders to refugees implements Project 2025’s vision outlined on page 145 for “immediate submission of notices of proposed rulemaking for the Trump Administration’s public charge rule, temporary work visa reform, employment authorization reform rules, asylum bars rule, and a third-country transit rule.”
Perhaps most revealing is how the “DESIGNATING CARTELS AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS AS FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS” order demonstrates Project 2025’s broader conceptual framework. The order’s declaration that “The Cartels’ activities threaten the safety of the American people, the security of the United States, and the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere” directly implements Project 2025’s stark assessment on page 183 that “Mexico is currently a national security disaster. Bluntly stated, Mexico can no longer qualify as a first-world nation; it has functionally lost its sovereignty to muscular criminal cartels that effectively run the country.”
This framing of cartels as existential threats extends beyond drug trafficking organizations. Project 2025 employs the term “cartel” systematically across multiple policy domains — from Fish and Wildlife Service “species cartels” to university “accreditation cartels,” from USDA “government-blessed cartels” to the Treasury Department’s “international tax cartel.” This linguistic pattern reveals how Project 2025 conspiratorially views various institutions as operating through similar mechanisms of consolidated power and market control, whether in the physical or regulatory space.
The executive order’s emphasis on cartels’ “proximity to, and incursions into the physical territory of the United States” as an “unacceptable national security risk” mirrors Project 2025’s warning that “the perfect storm created by this cartel state has negative effects that are damaging the entire hemisphere.” Both documents frame cartel activity not just as a law enforcement issue but as a fundamental threat to national sovereignty.
International Relations and Aid
The WHO withdrawal order, “WITHDRAWING THE UNITED STATES FROM THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION,” implements Project 2025’s critique on page 191 that “the manifest failure and corruption of the World Health Organization (WHO) during the COVID-19 pandemic is an example of the danger that international organizations pose to U.S. citizens and interests.”
TRUMPS’s executive order “REEVALUATING AND REALIGNING UNITED STATES FOREIGN AID” states that helping other countries is not “aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values. Supporting other nations serves to “destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.” Project 2025 agrees, stating on page 254: “Under the Trump Administration, USAID focused on ending the need for foreign aid… The Biden Administration has deformed the agency by treating it as a global platform to pursue overseas a divisive political and cultural agenda that promotes abortion, climate extremism, gender radicalism.”
The “HOLDING FORMER GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS ACCOUNTABLE FOR ELECTION INTERFERENCE AND IMPROPER DISCLOSURE OF SENSITIVE GOVERNMENTAL INFORMATION” order punishes former intelligence officials by revoking the security clearances of those who signed a letter “discrediting the reporting that President Joseph R. Biden’s son had abandoned his laptop at a computer repair business,” and John Bolton, who Trump claimed published classified information in his memoir “for monetary gain.” Bolton has previously been targeted for assassination by Iran and his Secret Service protection was also revoked.
Project 2025’s statement on page 212 that “the IC [Intelligence Community] must restore confidence in its political neutrality to rectify the damage done by the actions of former IC leaders and personnel regarding the claims of Trump–Russia collusion following the 2016 election and the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop investigation and media revelations of its existence during the 2020 election,” also weighs in on that subject.
Looking Forward
This unprecedented alignment between conservative think tank recommendations, inaugural rhetoric, and executive action suggests a new chapter in the relationship between conservative policy development and presidential governance. Project 2025’s transformation from policy proposal to executive action represents more than routine transition planning – it demonstrates the successful translation of extreme conservative policy architecture into immediate governmental action.
Trump’s inaugural address, delivered in the unusual setting of the Capitol’s interior, served not just as a speech but as a preview of immediate executive action. His closing words, promising to “make America great again, greater than ever before,” were followed within hours by executive orders that implemented, often word for word, the vision laid out in Project 2025. As these executive orders face inevitable legal challenges and implementation hurdles, their precise alignment with Project 2025 provides insight into both the mechanics and implications of authoritarian governance.
