Project 2025: The right-wing wish list for another Trump presidency

It is a 900-page policy "wish list" for the next Republican president, a proposal that would expand presidential power and impose an ultra-conservative social vision.

"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," Vice-President Kamala Harris said early in the ABC News presidential debate.

Donald Trump, who has repeatedly disavowed the document, responded: "I have nothing to do with Project 2025".

Dozens of former Trump administration officials have however contributed to the think tank's proposals, providing Democrats with an attack line against the former president.

The backlash against some of the more radical proposals in Project 2025, conceived by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, has been intense.

The project's director stepped down after criticism of the plan from Democrats and anger from the Trump campaign, which accused Heritage officials of trying to exaggerate their influence over the former president.

And despite Trump distancing himself from Project 2025, it continues to remain a key election talking point.

Here's your guide to what the document contains.

Who wrote Project 2025?

The Heritage Foundation is one of Washington's most prominent right-wing think tanks. It first produced policy plans for future Republican administrations in 1981, when Ronald Reagan was about to take office.

It has produced similar documents in connection with subsequent presidential elections, including in 2016, when Trump won the presidency.

That's not unusual - it's common for US think tanks of all political stripes to propose policy wish lists for future governments.

And Heritage has been successful in influencing Republican administrations. A year into Trump's term, it boasted that the White House had adopted nearly two-thirds of its proposals.

The Project 2025 report was unveiled in April 2023, but Democratic opposition to the document has ramped up as this year's race has intensified.

Trump began pushing away from the document in early July.

"I know nothing about Project 2025," he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social. "I have no idea who is behind it.

"I disagree with some of the things they're saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal."

During the presidential debate with Harris, he was more nuanced, and said the ideas in the document included "some good, some bad".

"But it makes no difference," he said. "I have nothing to do (with it)."

The team that created the project was chock-full of former Trump advisers, including director Paul Dans, who was chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management while Trump was president.

Dans left the project in late July, clearing the way for Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts to take over. He said he was leaving during the presidential election season in order to "direct all my efforts to winning, bigly".

Russell Vought, another former Trump administration official, wrote a key chapter in the document and also serves as the Republican National Committee’s 2024 platform policy director.

More than 100 conservative organisations contributed to the document, Heritage says, including many that would also be hugely influential in Washington if Republicans took back the White House.

The document itself sets out four main policy aims: restore the family as the centrepiece of American life; dismantle the administrative state; defend the nation's sovereignty and borders; and secure God-given individual rights to live freely.

Government

Project 2025 proposes that the entire federal bureaucracy, including independent agencies such as the Department of Justice, be placed under direct presidential control - a controversial idea known as "unitary executive theory".

In practice, that would streamline decision-making, allowing the president to directly implement policies in a number of areas.

The proposals also call for eliminating job protections for thousands of government employees, who could then be replaced by political appointees.

The document labels the FBI a "bloated, arrogant, increasingly lawless organization". It calls for drastic overhauls of this and several other federal agencies, as well as the complete elimination of the Department of Education.

The Republican party platform has absorbed many - but not all - of these ideas.

It includes a proposal to "declassify government records, root out wrongdoers, and fire corrupt employees". It pledges to slash regulation and government spending, and explicitly calls for closing the Department of Education.

But it stops short of proposing a sweeping overhaul of federal agencies as outlined in Project 2025.

Abortion and family

The mentions of abortion in Project 2025 - there are about 200 of them - have sparked some of the most contentious debate.

The document does not call for a an outright nationwide abortion ban - and Trump says he would not sign such a law.

However, it proposes withdrawing the abortion pill mifepristone from the market, and using existing but little-enforced laws to stop the drug being sent through the post.

Harris said during the presidential debate: "Understand, in his Project 2025 there would be a national monitor that would be monitoring your pregnancies, your miscarriages."

That appears to be a reference to proposals in the document to bolster data collection on abortion.

More generally, the document suggests that the department of Health and Human Services should "maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family".

On abortion at least, the document differs fairly substantially from the Republican platform, which only mentions the word "abortion" once. The platform says abortion laws should be left to individual states and that late-term abortions (which it does not define) should be banned.

It adds that that access to prenatal care, birth control and in-vitro fertilisation should be protected. The party platform makes no mention of cracking down on the distribution of mifepristone.

• What are abortion laws in US states?

Immigration

Increased funding for a wall on the US-Mexico border - one of Trump's signature proposals in 2016 - is proposed in the document.

Project 2025 also proposes dismantling the Department of Homeland Security and combining it with other immigration enforcement units in other agencies, creating a much larger and more powerful border policing operation.

Other proposals include eliminating visa categories for crime and human trafficking victims, increasing fees on immigrants and allowing fast-tracked applications for migrants who pay a premium.

Not all of those details are repeated in the Republican party platform, but the overall headlines are similar - the party is promising to implement the "largest deportation programme in American history".

Climate and economy

The document proposes slashing federal money for research and investment in renewable energy, and calls for the next president to "stop the war on oil and natural gas".

Carbon-reduction goals would be replaced by efforts to increase energy production and energy security.

The paper sets out two competing visions on tariffs, and is divided on whether the next president should try to boost free trade or raise barriers to imports.

But the economic advisers suggest that a second Trump administration should slash corporate and income taxes, abolish the Federal Reserve and even consider a return to gold-backed currency.

The GOP party platform does not go as far as Project 2025 in these policy areas. The platform instead talks of bringing down inflation and drilling for oil to reduce energy costs, but is thin on specific policy proposals.

And Trump himself has come out in favour of raising tariffs on imported goods.

Tech and education

Under the proposals, pornography would be banned, and tech and telecoms companies that allow access would be shut down.

The document calls for school choice and parental control over schools, and takes aim at what it calls "woke propaganda".

It proposes to eliminate a long list of terms from all laws and federal regulations, including "sexual orientation", "gender equality", "abortion" and "reproductive rights".

Project 2025 aims to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs in schools and government departments as part of what it describes as a wider crackdown on "woke" ideology.

The proposals in this policy area are broadly reflected in the Republican platform, which in addition to calling for the abolishing the Department of Education, aims to boost school choice and parental control over education and criticises what the party calls the "inappropriate political indoctrination of our children".

The plan's uncertain future

Prior to the swirling controversy around the proposals, Project 2025 was backed by a $22m (£17m) budget.

It includes strategies for implementing policies immediately after the presidential inauguration in January 2025, such as the creation of a database of conservative loyalists to fill government positions, and a programme to train those new workers.

But with the Trump campaign seeking to distance themselves from the project, its future is in doubt - even if many of its core ideas seem likely to shape policy in a hypothetical second Trump administration.

At the same time, many of the proposals would likely face immediate legal challenges from Trump's opponents if implemented.