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Project 2025 Is Here.
With Trump’s return to the presidency, Project 2025, a 920-page blueprint for authoritarianism in the U.S., spearheaded by the powerful and extreme far-right Heritage Foundation, is becoming a reality, affecting all Americans and people around the globe.
More than 100 far-right organizations support this plan for autocracy, which is proving to be the source for Trump’s anti-democratic policies, despite his repeated disavowal of Project 2025 during his campaign. Dozens of members of 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 how President Trump’s bullying of Volodymyr Zelenskyy draws inspiration from Project 2025’s playbook, the administration’s continued assault on freedom of the press, and border Czar Tom Homan’s embrace of a white nationalist conspiracy theory and his demonization of Mexican culture.
The Bully’s Pulpit: Project 2025’s Authoritarianism On Display
Ukrainian Ambassador Oksana Markarova buried her face in her hands, a spontaneous gesture of diplomatic mortification now frozen in the amber of political memory.
Before her, President Donald Trump and J.D. Vance publicly berated her president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, transforming what should have been a bilateral meeting into a theater of humiliation. This wasn’t improvisation. It was implementation. The Oval Office — traditionally a sanctuary of statesmanship — became a stage for something darker: the methodical execution of an authoritarian playbook.
As cameras rolled and journalists documented every flinch, what unfolded on February 28 was the deliberate manifestation of a governance philosophy on display in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership — the 922-page blueprint spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation to remake American governance in the image of nationalist conservatism. When Zelenskyy attempted to discuss Ukraine’s existential struggle and strategic needs, Trump interrupted him repeatedly, demonstrating the domination tactics typical of authoritarian governance.
The Heritage Foundation’s vision for American foreign policy has always been more transactional than transformational, but Project 2025 takes this instinct to its logical conclusion. On page 182, the document articulates a stark recalibration: “With respect to Ukraine, continued U.S. involvement must be fully paid for; limited to military aid (while European allies address Ukraine’s economic needs); and have a clearly defined national security strategy that does not risk American lives.”
More than a reconsideration of aid packages, this represents a fundamental reorientation of American priorities — one that views Ukraine as a geopolitical chess piece valuable primarily for its buffer status, rather than a sovereign democracy under assault, with tens of thousands of military and civilian casualties.
James Carafano, Heritage’s national security architect responsible for its defense and foreign policy portfolio, expressed Trump and Project 2025’s perspective in a March 1 social media post. “Ukraine is not a vital interest of the U.S. The U.S. has no obligation to offer a security guarantee and it would be wrong to do so,” he wrote, adding that Trump “Ukraine’s response should be-thank you.”
The Trump administration’s reimagined foreign policy owes intellectual debts to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.
Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts has acknowledged Hungary as “not just a model for conservative statecraft, but the model” for institutionalizing conservative cultural hegemony. This ideological alignment was formalized in 2023 when Heritage announced “a partnership with the Danube Institute, a pro-Orbán think tank.”
Trump channeled this Orbánesque approach when he lectured Zelenskyy: “You’re right now not in a very good position. You’ve allowed yourself to be in a very bad position.” This rhetorical gaslighting — framing a nation’s victimization as a personal failure rather than the result of unprovoked aggression — mirrors how authoritarian leaders typically blame victims while absolving perpetrators.
When Markarova covered her face during that Oval Office spectacle, she was witnessing the dismantling of U.S. diplomacy, replaced by a system where even allied nations must endure humiliation to secure American support. It’s America’s new doctrine, and Markarova’s covered face becomes its silent testament.
Access Denied: Trump’s Press Purge and the New Media Order
On February 25, 2025, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stepped to the podium in the White House press briefing room, which has become the unlikely ground zero for constitutional confrontations,, and delivered an ultimatum to the Associated Press that would have been untinkable under previous administrations: adopt the president’s preferred terminology for a body of water or lose your access to the seat of American power.
The White House will determine which media outlets cover the president at White House briefings, she declared, demolishing decades of tradition in which the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA, founded in 1914) coordinated such access through a rotating press pool system.
The AP’s sin? Maintaining its internationally recognized nomenclature for the Gulf of Mexico rather than adopting Trump’s rebranded “Gulf of America.”
The global news agency, which has served as an essential fixture in White House coverage since the administration of Woodrow Wilson, found itself unceremoniously barred from briefings, news conferences, and presidential events.
This was just an initial attack in what has become a comprehensive assault on press independence. In short order, the three wire services that have traditionally served as permanent members of the White House pool — AP, Bloomberg, and Reuters — found themselves issuing an unprecedented joint statement warning that the administration’s actions “threaten the principle” of independent news gathering and “harm the spread of reliable information to people, communities, businesses and global financial markets.”
On February 27, the administration enacted its unilateral takeover of the press pool system. Reporters from outlets including Reuters and the Associated Press (AP), who had been listed by the White House Correspondents’ Association, for pool access were physically prevented from entering a presidential cabinet meeting. Staffers from Newsmax and The Blaze — Christian nationalist outlets known for their unflagging support of the administration — were added to the pool in their stead.
The following day, in a development that stunned even seasoned foreign correspondents, a reporter from Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency gained access to an Oval Office meeting between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as they clashed over approaches to ending the Ukraine war.
Though a White House official later claimed the reporter “was not on the approved list” and was “escorted out when discovered,” Reuters reported that its correspondent witnessed White House officials check the TASS reporter’s credentials and permit his entry before the high-stakes diplomatic encounter.
As traditional media outlets find themselves increasingly marginalized, the administration has elevated a new category of messengers to positions of influence and access.
Fox News contributor and Trump daughter-in-law Lara Trump launched a new program called “My View” on February 24, premised explicitly on her familial connections and featuring interviews with White House insiders including Leavitt, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Attorney General Pam Bondi.
On February 25, former ESPN host Sage Steele, who settled a lawsuit against her previous employer over vaccine mandate criticisms, occupied the newly created “new media seat” in the briefing room. That same day, she asked a question about “men in women’s sports” just hours before standing behind Trump at an event where he signed an executive order purporting to “keep men out of women’s sports.”
Two days later, Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski was granted the honor of the same seat, as Leavitt read a prepared statement praising the far-right video platform from the podium. J.D. Vance invested in Rumble in 2021, the same year that Trump Media Group announced a technology-sharing agreement with the platform to provide logistical support to Truth Social. The White House had announced its official Rumble channel earlier that week, featuring content including a video titled “America’s Decline Is Over.”
Even some journalists from outlets generally sympathetic to the administration have expressed concern about the precedent being established. Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich warned administration supporters on social media, “If you think MAGA benefits from this in the long term, you’re dead wrong. You would not have trusted [a] Democratic admin to pick its own pool — but now that door is open”
Peter Baker of The New York Times, who served as a Moscow bureau chief earlier in his career, drew a sobering parallel: “Having served as a Moscow correspondent in the early days of Putin’s reign,” the Trump White House’s pool takeover, he wrote on X, “reminds me of how the Kremlin took over its own press pool and made sure that only compliant journalists were given access.”
Leavitt’s response to Baker’s observation was telling: a clown emoji accompanied by the dismissal of the veteran journalist as a “left-wing stenographer” posing as a journalist.
Blueprint for Banishment: Homan’s Conspiracy Theories Become Policy
A week before last Christmas, a revealing exchange unfolded that would presage America’s new immigration policies. Tom Homan, freshly anointed as the president’s “border czar,” sat across from media provocateur Tucker Carlson and casually discussed his blueprint for what is intended to be the most sweeping deportation campaign in American history. He described an organized invasion of the United States by death worshipping Mexicans to destroy white culture, and his plans to imprison those who offer them sanctuary.
The December 18th podcast offered an unvarnished glimpse into the ideological architecture bolstering Homan’s vision. Here was no mere bureaucrat discussing administrative procedures but rather a true believer articulating a worldview where immigration represents an existential threat to white people and the world as they know it.
“The time for talk is over,” Homan had predicted in July. “They ain’t seen shit yet. Wait until 2025.”
Animating Homan’s perspective is the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory — a white supremacist, xenophobic, and anti-immigrant concept that posits white people are being replaced by immigrants, Muslims, and other people of color in their so-called “home” countries. The conspiracy often blames the “elite,” at different times meaning Democrats or Jews, or both, for orchestrating these changing demographics, often referring to them as an unidentified “they.”
When Carlson prompted Homan about the Biden administration’s immigration approach, Homan’s response was unequivocal: “I think they see a future political benefit. I think they think these people will be future Democratic voters.” He elaborated that Biden’s census rules allowed “all these illegal aliens to be counted in sanctuary cities, which is going to result in more seats in the house for the Dems.”
This conspiratorial lens extends beyond domestic politics. “Certainly the United Nations were south of our border, working on this global illegal immigration to the United States,” he asserted without evidence, conjuring images of international cabals undermining American sovereignty. “This was by design,” Homan insisted. “Do I think Joe Biden had the expertise to do it? No, I think someone’s pulling his strings.”
Homan has been steeped in anti-immigrant rhetoric and routinely spouts Christian nationalist talking points. As a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Homan contributed significantly to Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership” — effectively drafting the very anti-immigrant, antidemocratic policies he now implements with governmental authority.
Perhaps most revealing was the conversation’s descent into cultural demonization. When Carlson characterized Mexican cartels as emerging from “cultures that have practiced human sacrifice for thousands of years,” Homan eagerly concurred, claiming to have a video on his phone showing cartel members “skinning a man alive.”
“They worship death,” Homan declared, with Carlson pressing, “Formally worship it?” Homan affirmed, describing “statues” and “memorabilia worshipping death” allegedly discovered in cartel territories.
This distorted view of Latin American cultural heritage — ignoring experts who note that the Santa Muerte folk tradition referenced is practiced by many Mexicans unconnected to criminal activity, including law enforcement and attorneys, as part of their unique relationship with death — transforms policy deliberation into the condemnation of an entire culture and civilization.
Equally troubling is Homan’s repeated assertion that elected officials opposing his deportation agenda should face imprisonment. “I, as an agent… have arrested United States citizens for knowingly harboring an illegal alien in their home,” Homan explained to Carlson. “If I can arrest a U.S. citizen for violating those crimes, why can’t I arrest a mayor or a governor who has given their staff explicit instructions to impede us and to hide from us?”
This perspective has persisted into his official tenure. When Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office hosted a “Know Your Rights With ICE” webinar in February 2025, Homan warned ominously that “maybe AOC’s gonna be in trouble now.” Similarly, he threatened Denver Mayor Mike Johnston after pledges to protect migrants: “All he has to do is look at Arizona v. U.S. and he would see he’s breaking the law…He’s willing to go to jail, I’m willing to put him in jail.”
His characterization of “the border is our theater of war” reconfigures immigration enforcement from administrative procedure into existential conflict, potentially justifying measures typically reserved for wartime emergencies.
Beyond ideology lie questions about Homan’s financial relationships. The Border911 Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit founded by Homan in 2023, operated alongside Border911 Inc, a 501(c)(4) organization permitted to engage in electoral advocacy. Both emerged as offshoots from the America Project, an election-denial non-profit founded by Michael Flynn and funded with $27 million from Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne.
As Homan’s ideology materializes into federal policy, so does Project 2025’s broader vision of an American identity where ethnic and cultural purity supersedes democratic values. His approach exemplifies this marriage of religious fervor with state authority, evidenced by his attendance at the MAGA Rod of Iron Freedom Festival hosted by a Christian gun cult, where the leader wore a crown of bullets and proclaimed “Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, is an assault weapons manufacturer.”
With cheerful belligerence, Homan threatens non-compliant officials revealing an authoritarian temperament increasingly normalized within the administration. Homan’s crass promise to be “up [the NYC mayor’s] butt” if cooperation isn’t forthcoming mirrors the broader, Trumpian approach to governance challenges.
