Analysis details 37 ways Trump exec orders reflect Project 2025 agenda
During his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly insisted that he knew nothing about Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation's far-right 922-page blueprint for a second Trump Administration. Trump's campaign viewed Project 2025 as a political liability, and he made a concerted effort to distance himself from it.
Democrats hoped that Project 2025 would seriously damage Trump's campaign. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, before her debate with Trump, warned, "What you're going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025 that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected again."
But Trump narrowly defeated Harris, winning the popular vote by roughly 1.5 percent (according to the Cook Political Report) and prevailing in key swing states like Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan. And on January 20, 2025, he returned to the White House — where, according to Politico, he has issued many executive orders reflecting Project 2025's agenda.
READ MORE: There's an emerging blue-state nightmare
In a report published on February 5, five Politico journalists (Liset Cruz, Ali Bianco, Megan Messerly, Abhinanda Bhattacharyya and Anna Wiederkehr) lay out 37 ways in which Trump's executive orders mirror the Heritage Foundation's recommendations in Project 2025.
"A side-by-side review by Politico found dozens of cases where the president's early executive actions have aligned with portions of the 922-page policy document, including some instances with nearly verbatim language lifted from the report to the White House," the journalists explain. "Several of the ideas, such as energy policies expanding U.S. oil and critical minerals production, are longtime conservative policy priorities that did not originate with Project 2025. But some of the more unconventional strategies outlined in the document, such as reclassifying federal employees to make them easier to fire and installing loyalists in senior government positions, have also shown up in Trump's executive orders."
Politico cites a variety of examples of Trump's executive orders mirroring Project 2025, from "ban transgender troops" to "enforce the death penalty" to "restrict federal funds from supporting abortion access abroad under the 'Mexico City' policy."
Project 2025 proposed ending DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs, and Trump, Politico notes, called for their "termination" in an executive order.
READ MORE: What should Democrats in Congress be doing about Trump's coup?
Project 2025 called for U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), and a Trump executive order reads, "The United States intends to withdraw from the WHO."
Project 2025 recommended a "hiring freeze for career officials," and a Trump executive order, according to Politico, declared, "I hereby order a freeze on the hiring of Federal civilian employees, to be applied throughout the executive branch.
READ MORE: 'Bar lowered quite a bit': How a Trump appointee went from pariah to prominence
Read the full Politico article at this link.
