We’ve all heard about Project 2025 from sensationalist Instagram posts and outraged TikTokers — but what is it really?
In their own words, Project 2025, created by conservative think-tank The Heritage Foundation, “dismantles the unaccountable Deep State, taking power away from Leftist elites and giving it back to the American people.” It suggests solutions to problems regarding immigration, the economy, crime, foreign affairs, and education, among other things. The policy ideas are published in the 922-page book “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” which is part of a book series titled Mandate for Leadership that has been published regularly since 1981. It provides a playbook for the first 180 days of the next conservative presidential administration, which happens to be now. Despite what much of social media has said, President-elect Donald Trump did not create this plan, though it is likely he may take some ideas from it. Just one year into his first term, The Heritage Foundation reported that the Trump administration adopted “nearly two-thirds of the policy recommendations” from the Mandate for Leadership including exiting the Paris Climate Accord, increasing military spending, and shrinking national monuments.
Whether you support Project 2025 or not, it is important to be educated on exactly what it is, who it is, and what it claims to it. Here is what Mandate for Leadership has to say about three very pressing topics in today’s political climate.
Education
Chapter 11 of Project 2025 is about the Department of Education — or rather, the elimination of it. Project 2025 proposes that the functions of the Department be moved to other departments, such as the Department of Labor, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Commerce.
Perhaps the most important part of this chapter for us college students recommends reforming the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA). It calls “to end the abuse of FSA’s loan forgiveness programs” and to return “to a system in which private lenders, backed by government guarantees, would compete to offer student loans, including subsidized and unsubsidized, loans.” Under Project 2025, earned forgiveness programs for teachers, nurses, and other public service workers could disappear. The policies call for allowing private lenders to “compete” for borrowers, allowing “market prices and signals to influence educational borrowing.” Parent PLUS and Grad PLUS loans would be eliminated. Pell grants would remain untouched, however.
Project 2025 also strives to make some curriculum changes and strengthen a parent’s right to have oversight over what their child is learning. This would include eliminating critical race theory or teaching about gender ideology. Project 2025 says that educators should not be allowed to call a student anything other than their birth name and should only use the pronouns that match a student’s biological sex.
Project 2025 also suggests that the president sign an executive order that says that a college degree should not be required for a federal job unless the job requirements specifically demand it. They also want to eliminate GEAR-UP, which provides help for students going through the high-school-to-college transition.
Healthcare
Chapter 14 of Project 2025 is about the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), whose work should be “rooted in a deep respect for innocent human life from day one until natural death,” Mandate for Leadership says. HHS should seek to promote the nuclear family: a married mother and father and their children. This, they said, is the “foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society.” Despite what social media claims, there is no mention of ending no-fault divorce in Project 2025.
According to Project 2025, abortion should not be considered healthcare, though they are not seeking a national abortion ban. Instead, they want to ban funding for those traveling out of state for abortion care. It also seeks to stop Planned Parenthood from getting taxpayer funding through Medicaid. Specifically, it aims to pass the “Protecting Life and Taxpayers Act,” which will defund Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers. It also says that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should “reverse its approval of [the abortion pill],” claiming the decision has failed to keep women safe and that the drug was not properly studied before it was approved. Mandate for Leadership does not mention a contraceptive ban or a ban on in vitro fertilization (IVF). Some of their policies like defunding Planned Parenthood, however, could make it harder for people to access contraceptives.
Project 2025 does not seek to end the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), however, it does seek to “curb the abuses” of it. Some methods of this include “remov[ing] barriers to direct primary care” in which doctors and patients directly contract with each other for healthcare, rewarding patients for cost-saving insurance choices, and strengthening hospital price transparency.
Mandate for Leadership proposes paying damages to medical personnel who were directly dismissed for not following the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services COVID-19 vaccine mandate and proposes revoking any regulations regarding masks and vaccines.
immigration
Chapter 5 of Project 2025 supports stricter immigration laws. Some of their suggestions include mass deportation of illegal immigrants, more money to construct the border wall, and more funding for bed space for detainees. It also seeks to repeal or amend the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA) which provides help and “benefits” to unaccompanied minors that come across the border, which “only encourages more parents to send their children across the border illegally and unaccompanied.” If a repeal is not possible, it should be amended so that unaccompanied minors are returned to their home countries safely, regardless of nationality. Project 2025 also wants to eliminate or reduce the amount of student visas given to citizens of “enemy nations” in order to prioritize national security. It suggests that Congress contribute more funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which would allow ICE to employ at least 20,000 Enforcement and Removal Operations officers, who are in charge of deportation efforts.
This, of course, is not a comprehensive list of everything that Project 2025 seeks to accomplish. Other things include outlawing porn and jailing those who make and distribute it (pg. 5), protecting American interests in the Arctic through shipping lanes, military expansion, and drilling (pg. 190), enforcing and expediting the federal death penalty (pg. 554), and more.
It is important to note that these policies will not immediately take effect once Trump is inaugurated. Most of these suggestions will still have to pass lengthy congressional processes. However, seeing as Trump’s administration took ideas from the Heritage Foundation once before, it is very possible that they might do it again.