In the past few months, Project 2025 has become a major trigger word in the 2024 presidential election, mentioned in political ads, news channels and even in the presidential debate. However, many people aren’t quite sure of what this project entails.
Project 2025 is a proposal created by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, and reviewed by nearly 100 other conservative organizations. Over the course of roughly 900 pages, the proposal presents out an ‘ideal’ policy game plan for the next Republican president. Within its pages, the project proposes solutions to major political problems, ranging from abortion to border security.
“Project 2025 is a proposed plan put out by a conservative think tank,” Dr. Sara Johnson Ph.D., a political scientist at Southern Methodist University, said. “So from a conservative viewpoint, it’s the policies, the plans that they would like implemented by the next president.”
While the Heritage Foundation is not synonymous with the Republican party, Project 2025 is based on conservative values.
“As a precinct chair, I went out and studied the Texas GOP platform and initiatives, and I think that Project 2025 seems to address those,” Republican party precinct chair Bruce Dunai said. “They’re intended to align with conservative values, policies.”
For Dunai, many of the issues addressed by the plan are important to him as a Republican voter.
“One [of the issues] is to secure the border, and unleash American energy,” Dunai said. We’ve got a serious problem with our national debt, Social Security. The economy is important, the cost of groceries really hits home to anybody, any family.”
While the plan has become a frequent talking point, it is far from unique, as many political organizations publish similar documents outlining similarly motivated plans. In fact, Project 2025 is not even the first document of its kind put out by the Heritage Foundation.
“This is something that the Heritage foundation has done for a really long time, and this is actually really normal behavior for a think tank,” Johnson said. “This is really something that think tanks normally do, conservative, liberal, of all stripes, is create these proposals for what their preferred policies would be.”
The reason for why Project 2025 has stood out from other documents of its kind likely has to do with its creators, specifically Paul Dans, who recently stepped down from the project, and Spencer Chretien. Dans and Chretien both worked in former President Trump’s administration, as Chief of Staff of Personnel Management and Special Assistant to the President, respectively.
“This one has received more attention because we do have an individual running for president, who was a former president,” Johnson said. “So we have people from his former administration that have spent the last four years in different jobs, and some of them are associated with the Heritage Foundation, with the development of this project 2025. So that’s why it’s gotten maybe more attention than usual.”
A significant part of the Project 2025 document is the database of people who should be hired by the next conservative president.
If people who have been influenced by the Heritage foundation happen to get hired by an administration or to work on a legislative staff, then they may have more influence,” Johnson said. “A lot of political influence is about relationships.”
Additionally, some of the attention paid by the Democratic campaigns to the project may be intended to paint the Republican party as extreme and radical.
“I think that when Democrats say that Trump is supporting Project 2025, what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to paint him as someone who’s extreme on policy,” Dr. Curtis Bram Ph.D., a political scientist at the University of Texas Dallas, said.
Since the launch of the project, the Trump campaign has denounced Project 2025, and disavowed several of the policies and ideas within.
“Trump disavowing this policy document to the extent that he has, he’s trying to signal to more moderates that he is not on board with right wing policies,” Bram said.
Project 2025 has become a frequent talking point in the upcoming election, but similar documents are often published, and its influence may be in question as the Trump campaign has already disavowed many aspects of the project 2025 blueprint.
“We have a lot of different think tanks or interest groups that that’s their job, to come up with ideas and to write proposals and to write plans from their perspective of what an ideal policy would be or what an ideal government would be,” Johnson said. “Normally they tend to not kind of come across our radar.”
