'Gratifying': Project 2025 chief celebrates as Trump executive orders overlap with playbook

31 January

On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump repeatedly sought to distance himself from the far-right Heritage Foundation's authoritarian "Project 2025" playbook. But less than two weeks into his second term, he's closely adhered to its proposals.

CNN reported Friday that of the 53 executive orders Trump has signed so far, 36 of them – roughly two-thirds — come from Project 2025's 922-page "Mandate for Leadership" blueprint. Paul Dans, who was the top official behind Project 2025 throughout the bulk of the campaign cycle, is celebrating the dozens of Heritage Foundation proposals that have since become official government policies since Trump began his second term.

"This is exactly the work we set out to do," Dans told CNN. "It’s still in the early first stages of bearing fruit, but we wanted to make sure the president was ready to hit the ground running on day one. The rapidity and the depth of what they’ve rolled out this quickly is a testament to the work done in Project 2025 and other presidential transition projects."

Some of the Trump executive orders that overlap with Project 2025 include ending diversity, equity and inclusion-based hiring practices within federal agencies, repealing environmental regulations on oil and gas drilling and ramping up operations to detain and deport undocumented immigrants, among others. His promise to cut off federal funding for abortion-related initiatives in both the U.S. and abroad also comes from the Heritage Foundation's blueprint.

Some of Trump's other executive actions also borrow heavily from Project 2025, which recommended revoking the security clearances of officials who have come under scrutiny from the far-right, and cutting foreign aid to countries that don't support Trump's agenda. And according to Larry Leavitt — who is the Kaiser Family Foundation's executive vice president for health policy — Trump also followed Project 2025 to the letter in instructing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to cease collecting data on gender identity.

Dans called it "gratifying" to see so much of Project 2025 — which he led before stepping down last summer as the initiative was subjected to a wave of criticism from Democrats and the media — come to fruition. He particularly praised Trump's efforts to purge federal agencies of career civil service professionals in favor of right-wing political loyalists.

“It all comes down to implementation,” Dans told CNN. “And Project 2025 was ultimately about putting in place the people who would come in from outside the swamp and make changes.”

Trump's adherence to most of Project 2025's proposals is a sharp one-eighty from his campaign rhetoric. In a July post to his Truth Social platform, then-candidate Trump said he "knew nothing about Project 2025" and said Democrats' efforts to tie him to it amounted to "pure disinformation on their part." And during a campaign rally in Michigan, Trump derided Project 2025 as a product of the "radical right" and called some of its ideas "seriously extreme."

However, the Lincoln Project — an anti-Trump Republican group — unearthed video of him speaking at a Heritage Foundation event in 2022, calling them a "great group" that would "lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do." Project 2025 was also assembled in part with the help of approximately 140 former Trump advisors. Several of those Project 2025 authors have already been elevated to high-profile roles within Trump's Cabinet.

Heritage itself also undermined Trump's promises that he wasn't involved or affiliated with Project 2025. The group boasted that during his first term in the White House, he implemented nearly two-thirds of its more than 300 policy proposals during his first year in office. He also appointed more than 60 of Heritage's "policy experts" to roles within his first administration.

Click here to read CNN's full report.

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