Washington — As Project 2025 became a major talking point for Democrats in making the case for why voters should deny President Trump a second term in the White House last year, Mr. Trump repeatedly distanced himself from the initiative spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, saying during the campaign that he had “nothing to do with Project 2025,” had not read it and didn’t intend to read it.
But as Mr. Trump has begun implementing aspects of his second-term agenda through a flurry of executive orders and directives, many of the plans he has rolled out so far closely align with those detailed in Project 2025’s playbook, which lays out ways to overhaul the executive branch.
Overseen by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 was a multi-pronged initiative that was designed to provide a roadmap for the next Republican president, now Mr. Trump. On the campaign trail, the president called some of the proposals detailed in its more than 900-page book “abysmal” and said he knew nothing about it.
But the authors of some of the policy book’s chapters served in the first administration and will be serving in his second. Russ Vought, Mr. Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget, is expected to be confirmed by the Senate soon, and John Ratcliffe is in place as CIA director.
Paul Dans, who served as the director of Project 2025 but left his post in July, said of Mr. Trump’s actions so far that they were a testament not only to the initiative’s efforts, but also the readiness of the conservative movement in preparing for the next administration.
“They’re home runs,” he said of the president’s plans. “They are in many cases more than we could have even dared hope for.”
Some of Mr. Trump’s actions taken in his first days in office reinstate measures he put in place during his first term that were revoked by President Biden. But in other instances, Mr. Trump’s executive actions echo the policies outlined in the pages of Project 2025’s policy blueprint.
Redirecting federal aid under FEMA to the states
After trips to western North Carolina and Southern California last week, Mr. Trump established a review council to advise him on the ability of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, “to capably and impartially address disasters occurring within the United States.” The council will also advise the president on recommended changes related to FEMA, his order states.
Western North Carolina was devastated by Hurricane Helene last fall, and parts of Southern California were destroyed by deadly wildfires that hit the area earlier this month.
Mr. Trump’s action comes after he suggested that he could “get rid” of FEMA and leave disaster response management to the states.
“That’s what states are for, to take care of problems,” he said last week.
Project 2025’s sweeping book of policy proposals calls for “reforming FEMA emergency spending to shift the majority of preparedness and response costs to states and localities instead of the federal government.”
It also urges Congress to change the cost-sharing arrangement so the federal government covers 25% of the costs for small disasters and up to 75% for “truly catastrophic disasters.” Currently, for Public Assistance, which provides financial and direct assistance to state and local governments for disaster response and recovery work, FEMA covers a minimum of 75% of costs, and the president can increase the federal cost-share at his discretion, according to a 2023 report from the Congressional Research Service.
The recommendation follows a warning from Project 2025’s authors that FEMA is “overtasked, overcompensates for the lack of state and local preparedness and response, and is regularly in deep debt.” Additionally, it states that since passage of the Stafford Act in 1988, which gave the president powers to “alleviate the suffering and damage” caused by disasters, the number of declared federal disasters has risen drastically as costs were shifted from state and local governments to the federal government.
Project 2025’s book also calls on Congress to end preparedness grants for states and localities.
“DHS should not be in the business of handing out federal tax dollars: These grants should be terminated,” it states.
Ending diversity, equity and inclusion practices
The president frequently rails against diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, practices, and he signed an executive order on the day he returned to the White House ending all DEI programs within the federal government.
Mr. Trump claimed in his order that DEI policies can violate federal civil rights laws and shut out Americans “who deserve a shot at the American dream” because of their race or sex.
Project 2025’s policy book calls for the next conservative president to delete a variety of terms, including DEI, abortion and gender equality “from every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”
It also calls for the “DEI apparatus” at a variety of agencies to be dismantled.
Targeting PBS and National Public Radio
Brendan Carr, head of the Federal Communications Commission, informed the heads of National Public Radio and PBS in a letter Thursday that the agency had opened an investigation into the airing of their programming across their roughly 1,500 broadcast member stations, according to the New York Times.
Those stations are licensed by the FCC to operate, but are limited to operating as noncommercial educational broadcast stations. These stations, or NCEs, are exempt from licensing fees and operate on a specific “reserved” frequency band. Federal law prohibits these noncommercial educational broadcast stations from commercial advertisements.
In his letter, Carr wrote that he is “concerned that NPR and PBS broadcasts could be violating federal law by airing commercials. In particular, it is possible that NPR and PBS member stations are broadcasting underwriting announcements that cross the line into prohibited commercial advertisements.”
Carr also said that he also does not see a reason for Congress to continue approving federal dollars for NPR and PBS “given the changes in the media marketplace.”
Carr authored the section of Project 2025’s policy book that deals with the FCC, but another portion of the blueprint urges Congress to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides grants to NPR and PBS.
According to Project 2025, “stripping public funding would, of course, mean that NPR, PBS, Pacifica Radio, and the other leftist broadcasters would be shorn of the presumption that they act in the public interest and receive the privileges that often accompany so acting.” The outlets should therefore no longer be qualified as noncommercial educational broadcast stations, according to the book.
“NPR and PBS stations are in reality no longer noncommercial, as they run ads in everything but name for their sponsors,” the blueprint states. “They are also noneducational. The next president should instruct the FCC to exclude the stations affiliated with PBS and NPR from the NCE denomination and the privileges that come with it.”
Whether Carr ultimately decides to take that step as a result of his investigation remains to be seen.
Freezing federal assistance
One of Mr. Trump’s first actions as president was to establish the Department of Government Efficiency, an entity that is housed within the executive branch and run by billionaire Elon Musk. The body aims to cut regulations and spending and restructure federal agencies.
On the heels of that move, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, issued a two-page memo late Monday that ordered a freeze on grant, loan or federal assistance programs implicated by Mr. Trump’s executive orders, which would allow his administration “time to review agency programs and determine the best uses of the funding for those programs consistent with the law and the president’s priorities.”
“The use of federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve,” OMB acting Director Matthew Vaeth said in the memo.
The memo sparked widespread confusion and prompted concerns about whether programs providing meals for the elderly, pre-school funding for low-income children and medical research would be impacted by the order.
On Wednesday, the White House said it was rescinding the memo but maintaining the funding pause “to end any confusion” created by a federal court order temporarily pausing implementation of the freeze.
Mr. Trump’s pick for director of OMB, Russ Vought, authored the section of Project 2025’s policy book covering the Executive Office of the President, which includes the agency he has been tapped to lead.
In it, he likens the budget office to an air-traffic control system for the president “with the ability and charge to ensure that all policy initiatives are flying in sync and with the authority to let planes take off and, at times, ground planes that are flying off course.”
The memo may be aimed at sparking a legal challenge to the Impoundment Control Act, a 1974 law that limits the president’s ability to unilaterally freeze certain funds appropriated by Congress, and in most cases requires the president instead to ask Congress to rescind spending legislation
Vought said during his confirmation hearing last week that Mr. Trump believes the law is unconstitutional, and he agrees with that assessment.
In Project 2025’s policy blueprint, Vought also wrote the director of OMB must have “sufficient visibility into the deep caverns of agency decision-making,” and can achieve this by ensuring political appointees on his staff sign off on apportionments of funding authorized by Congress.
Vought cited a 1870 law known as the Anti-Deficiency Act, which prohibits federal agencies from spending federal dollars in advance and requires funding be doled out in installments.
“This process, whereby agencies come to OMB for allotments of appropriated funding, is essential to the effective financial stewardship of taxpayer dollars,” he wrote. “OMB can then direct on behalf of a president the amount, duration, and purpose of any apportioned funding to ensure against waste, fraud, and abuse and ensure consistency with the president’s agenda and applicable laws.”
Mr. Trump’s pick to lead OMB has advocated for the White House to take aggressive steps to cut federal spending. He wrote the director should not be afraid to wield apportionments “on behalf of the president’s agenda” and be willing to “defend the power against attacks from Congress.”
During Vought’s first stint as OMB director, the agency withheld roughly $214 million in security assistance to Ukraine. The Government Accountability Office later found the budget office had violated the Impoundment Control Act when it withheld the aid, and the House launched impeachment proceedings that accused the president of conditioning the assistance to Ukraine on its president announcing investigations that would benefit him politically.
Mr. Trump was impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate.
Restricting gender-affirming care for minors
Mr. Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday that bars the use of federal funds for gender-affirming care — puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgical procedures — for people under the age of 19.
Called “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” the order directs certain executive agencies to take steps to ensure medical institutions that receive federal grants “end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.”
It also instructs the secretary of defense to take regulatory action to exclude gender-affirming care for minors from insurance coverage provided by TRICARE, the Defense Department’s health care program, and federal employee health benefit programs.
Mr. Trump’s order directs the head of the Department of Health and Human Services to withdraw March 2022 guidance on gender-affirming care.
Project 2025’s chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services calls for its Office of Civil Rights to “remove all guidance issued under the Biden administration concerning sexual orientation and gender identity,” including the March 2022 document.
The book generally criticizes gender-affirming care as causing “irreversible physical and mental harm to those who receive them” and argues there is a lack of evidence surrounding it.
Revoking security clearances for the former intelligence officials who signed a letter on Hunter Biden’s laptop
Mr. Trump took executive action to start the process of revoking the security clearances of dozens of former intelligence officials who signed a letter in 2020 claiming emails found on a laptop owned by Hunter Biden bore the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.
Project 2025 also proposed stripping former intelligence officials of security clearances, in a section on the intelligence community authored by Dustin Carmack, who worked at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence during Mr. Trump’s first term.
“The president should immediately revoke the security clearances of any former directors, deputy directors, or other senior intelligence officials who discuss their work in the press or on social media without prior clearance from the current director,” he wrote.
Stripping civil servants of employment protections
Among the slew of actions Mr. Trump took on his first day back in the White House was to reinstate an executive order issued during his first term that created “Schedule F in the Excepted Service.” The order creates a new employment category for many career civil servants, effectively stripping them of employment protections.
The order states that in recent years, “there have been numerous and well-documented cases of career federal employees resisting and undermining the policies and directives of their executive leadership.”
“Principles of good administration, therefore, necessitate action to restore accountability to the career civil service, beginning with positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character,” Mr. Trump’s order reads.
The order makes some minor changes to the president’s prior measure from October 2020. But it notably adds a section that states that while employees in these new “Schedule Policy/Career Positions,” are not required to personally or politically support the current president or his policies, they are “required to faithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability, consistent with their constitutional oath and the vesting of executive authority solely in the president.”
Failure to do so is grounds for termination of employment, Mr. Trump’s executive order states.
Project 2025 repeatedly calls for Mr. Trump’s Schedule F proposal to be reinstated.
Reinstating service members who refused COVID-19 Vaccines
The president earlier this week issued an order directing the secretaries of Defense or Homeland Security to reinstate all service members, both active-duty and reserve, who were discharged after refusing to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. His order also states they should be reverted to their former rank and receive full back pay, benefits, bonus payments or compensation.
The Project 2025 blueprint’s section on the Defense Department, authored by Chris Miller, calls for the next administration to “reinstate servicemembers to active duty who were discharged for not receiving the COVID vaccine, restore their appropriate rank, and provide back pay.”
Miller served as acting defense secretary in the final weeks of Mr. Trump’s first term. His chief of staff, Kash Patel, has been tapped by the president to lead the FBI.
Transgender military ban
During his first four years in the White House, Mr. Trump prohibited transgender people from serving in the military. President Biden repealed that ban, but the president earlier this week issued an order that effectively bars transgender people from serving in the armed forces and withdraws his predecessor’s order.
Mr. Trump’s executive order states that “expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.”
Identifying as transgender, it continues, “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”
“It is the policy of the United States Government to establish high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity. This policy is inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria,” the president’s order states. “This policy is also inconsistent with shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex.”
Project 2025 calls for a reversal of policies “that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military. Gender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military service.”
A hiring freeze
On his first day in the White House, Mr. Trump issued a memorandum freezing hiring of federal civilian employees. Positions that were vacant as of his inauguration at noon on Jan. 20 should also not be filled, he said.
The order was part of his plans to reduce the size of the federal workforce, also a recommendation made in the Project 2025 policy roadmap.
The book, though, warns that while “reducing the number of federal employees seems an obvious way to reduce the overall expense of the civil service,” prior attempts to do by presidents of both parties “did not lead to permanent and substantive reductions in the number of nondefense federal employees.”
Instead, Project 2025 suggests a “freeze on all top career-position hiring to prevent ‘burrowing-in’ by outgoing political appointees.”
Withdrawing from World Health Organization
Mr. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in 2020 due to what his first administration said was a mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Biden reversed that decision when he took office, and Mr. Trump rolled back that move on his first day back in the White House.
His latest order directed the secretary of state to inform the secretary-general of the United States and World Health Organization leadership of the U.S. decision to withdraw from the group.
Project 2025, too, criticized the World Health Organization of its handling of the pandemic.
“The manifest failure and corruption of the World Health Organization (WHO) during the COVID-19 pandemic is an example of the danger that international organizations pose to U.S. citizens and interests,” its book states.
It said that when institutions act contrary to U.S. interests, the government “must be prepared to take appropriate steps in response, up to and including withdrawal.”
Sending active-duty troops to the southern border
Immigration was the topic of several executive actions taken by Mr. Trump on the first day of his presidency, including one order that assigns troops “the mission to seal the borders and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of the United States.”
The chapter of Project 2025’s blueprint that covers the Department of Homeland Security was authored by Ken Cuccinelli, who served in the first Trump administration, and it, too, sees a role for the Defense Department in securing the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Pentagon, Cucinelli writes, should “explicitly acknowledge and adjust personnel and priorities to participate actively in the defense, including using military personnel and hardware to prevent illegal crossings between ports of entry and channel all cross-border traffic to legal ports of entry.”
A section on the Justice Department urges the next administration to “take a creative and aggressive approach” to tackling criminal organizations at the southern border.
“This could include use of active-duty military personnel and National Guardsmen to assist in arrest operations along the border — something that has not yet been done,” Project 2025’s chapter on the Justice Department states.
Limiting refugee admissions
As of Monday, entry into the U.S. by refugees under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program was suspended in accordance with an order by Mr. Trump on Jan. 20.
His directive also orders the secretary of Homeland Security to suspend decisions on applications for refugee status.
Mr. Trump has claimed that during the Biden administration, the U.S. has been “inundated” with high levels of migration, including through the Refugee Admissions Program.
Project 2025, too, blames the Biden administration for overseeing what it says was a “collapse” of U.S. border security and immigration enforcement.
To address this “crisis,” Project 2025 calls for “rightsizing refugee admissions.”
“The federal government’s obligation to shift national security–essential screening and vetting resources to the forged border crisis will necessitate an indefinite curtailment of the number of USRAP refugee admissions,” its chapter on the State Department reads.
The policy book calls for the State Department bureau that administers the Refugee Admissions Program to shift resources to challenges “until the crisis can be contained and refugee-focused screening and vetting capacity can reasonably be restored.”
Jacob Rosen
contributed to this report.
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