As the 2024 presidential election approaches and discussions of policies and agendas have taken over the news cycle, you’ve probably heard of the controversial proposed conservative agenda, Project 2025.
In short, Project 2025 is a presidential transition plan proposed by right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation, known for its proposals to change how the U.S. government operates with far-right agenda items including dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, pushing to eliminate contraception access, and stripping LGBTQ+ rights.
Putting these extreme measures into place would require a conservative president for the next four years, which is why many assume Project 2025 is closely entwined with the 2024 Republican presidential candidate. But does Donald Trump support Project 2025?
Publicly, Trump has specifically stated that he does not align himself with the movement, despite many of his ideologies that might suggest otherwise.
“It’s a group of extremely conservative people who got together to write a wishlist of things, many of which I disagree with entirely. They’re too severe, like on abortion, for example. They have a strong view of abortion,” he said in a July 13 interview with Fox News, taped before an assassination attempt was made at his rally in Pennsylvania later that afternoon.
Despite efforts to distance himself from Project 2025, Trump has been consistently associated with the movement, and not without reason. His relationship to Project 2025 is complicated, and his public dismissal of the organization still leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
Here’s a breakdown of Trump’s relationship to Project 2025.
Trump Claims He Doesn’t Support Project 2025, But He Has Deep Ties To It.
According to CNN, Trump has claimed that he has no idea what Project 2025 is or who is behind it. However, at least 140 people who once worked for Trump are reportedly involved in the organization. Project 2025’s co-authors include more than two dozen former Trump administration staffers. Additionally, video footage from 2022 shows Trump praising the Heritage Foundation for a set of proposed policies that would eventually become Project 2025.
Trump Has His Own Agenda Of Choice, And There’s A Reason You Probs Haven’t Heard Of It.
The thing is, Trump isn’t best known for his interest in discussing policy.
“I think the press is more eager to see [my policies] than the voters, to be honest,” he said in a 2015 interview with the Washington Post. “I think the voters like me, they understand me, they know I’m going to do the job.”
Though his sentiments may have been true at the time, the demonstration of what one Trump presidential term actually looks like has increased demand to know how his potential second term might play out. And in 2022, when it looked like Trump would be going head-to-head in a race for the Republican nomination with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had been proposing new policies left and right, Trump began to work on a potential agenda of his own.
However, Trump still hasn’t publicly spoken much about what his proposed policies — known as Agenda47 — would entail, likely because he still believes the idea that voters don’t really care what his agenda looks like.
Additionally, Trump appears to prefer flexibility over rigid sets of rules and specific expectations he must meet. By avoiding discussions of agenda and policy, perhaps Trump gets away with avoiding setting those expectations of himself.
However, discussions of Project 2025 and questions of whether Trump supports its extremely detailed plans for the U.S. government have derailed that sense of amorphousness he’s cultivated.
Agenda47 Displays Similarities To Project 2025.
Agenda47 and Project 2025 appear to have quite a few ideological similarities. Among these ideological similarities are Agenda47’s proposed policies about transgender youth and public education, both of which Project 2025 also aims to completely change.
On his campaign website, Trump promises to “protect children from left-wing gender insanity.” He refers to gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth as “child sexual mutilation,” sharing a similar sentiment to Project 2025.
Additionally, in a July 2023 video posted on his website titled “Protecting Students from the Radical Left and Marxist Maniacs Infecting Educational Institutions,” Trump vows to cut funding for schools that teach critical race theory and gender ideologies, as well as to cut funding for colleges and universities that do not remove “all DEI bureaucrats” from their administrations. Project 2025 also aims to remove DEI programs from schools and workplaces, along with all DEI-related language from federal policies, under the belief that equity programs cause “racist policymaking” and “affirmative discrimination.”
These are just some of the similar policy ideas seen between Agenda47 and Project 2025.
Trump’s Running Mate, J.D. Vance, Was Favored By Project 2025.
At the Republican National Convention on July 15, Trump selected Ohio senator J.D. Vance as the vice presidential candidate on his ticket for the 2024 presidential election.
According to AP News, the Heritage Foundation’s President Kevin Roberts said he is “good friends” with Vance and that the Heritage Foundation had been privately rooting for him to be Trump’s VP pick during the RNC.
The admiration seemingly runs both ways. Vance has previously shared somewhat positive sentiments on Project 2025. “I’ve reviewed a lot of [Project 2025],” he said in a Newsmax interview earlier in July. “There’s some good ideas in there, there’s some things that I disagree with.”
Vance holds similar ideologies to those presented by Project 2025. According to the New York Times, Vance has said he would vote against federal protections for gay marriage — a sentiment shared and supported by Project 2025 — though he also stated that he would not pursue any active measures to change it, calling gay marriage “the law of the land.”
Additionally, like Project 2025, Vance holds traditional views on both marriage and women in the workplace. “If your worldview tells you that it’s bad for women to become mothers but liberating for them to work 90 hours a week in a cubicle at the New York Times or Goldman Sachs, you’ve been had,” he wrote in a post on X two days after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Project 2025 Doesn’t Seem Concerned About Trump’s Distance.
As for what the powers that be behind Project 2025 think, the group appears to see Trump’s disavowal of the plan as no more than a temporary setback. Despite Trump referring to some of Project 2025’s talking points as “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” liberals and conservatives alike have expressed belief that his claims are merely attempts to appeal to voters and to avoid giving the Biden campaign something to criticize.
According to NBC News, one person at a conservative think tank on Project 2025’s advisory board said “people weren’t overly worried about” Trump’s statements. “The general sense is this is a PR gesture for him to provide himself maximum room to maneuver and avoid making any commitments at this point,” this unnamed source reportedly said. “He wants to avoid having to answer questions about anything he doesn’t want to answer questions about.”
Additionally, this source reportedly noted that Trump had been open to policy input from outside groups (including the Heritage Foundation) during his first term as president — so, time will tell whether he changes his public stance on Project 2025 in the future.