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

It is a 900-page policy "wish list", a set of proposals that would expand presidential power and impose an ultra-conservative social vision.

Donald Trump repeatedly disavowed Project 2025, after a backlash over some of its more radical ideas.

But dozens of former officials from the last Trump administration - including many who might now be called to serve in the next one - contributed to the proposals.

Here's your guide to the document, which lays out one vision of how Trump might govern in his second term.

Who wrote Project 2025?

Project 2025 is a product of the Heritage Foundation, 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 first 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 first 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 it went largely unnoticed outside of policy circles until earlier this year, when Democratic opposition to the document ramped up.

Democratic politicians launched a "Stop Project 2025 Task Force" and even set up a tip line to collect insider information on Heritage's activities, claiming there is a "secret" part of the agenda pushing a list of executive orders that Trump could implement.

The Harris campaign and its surrogates consistently brought up the project in interviews and speeches.

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."

But 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 later left the project.

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

The Heritage Foundation's president, Kevin Roberts, oversaw Project 2025 and is close to the vice-president elect, JD Vance, who wrote a forward for his new book Dawn’s Early Light. The book's publication was originally scheduled for September but was delayed until after the election.

Additionally, more than 100 conservative organisations contributed to the document, Heritage says, including many that will now be hugely influential in Washington.

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 the agency and several others, as well as the complete elimination of the Department of Education.

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

It includes a proposal to "declassify government records, root out wrongdoers, and fire corrupt employees". The platform pledges to slash regulation and government spending, and explicitly calls for closing the Department of Education - an idea Trump has endorsed.

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 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.

The document proposes new data collection efforts on abortion and more generally 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, a view that Trump has largely stuck to.

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

• Seven states expand abortion protections as Florida ballot fails

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 suggests 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".

That idea was one of Donald Trump's top pitches to voters.

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

Trump himself has come out strongly 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 to it 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".

Trump regularly repeats such themes, although he has not proposed a ban on pornography. His views on the tech industry have regularly shifted, and don't appear to have much to do with sexual content.

The plan's uncertain future

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

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

With Trump and his campaign distancing themselves from the project, he's unlikely to implement the document wholesale.

On the other hand, given the clear areas of agreement and overlapping personnel, it's likely that many Project 2025 ideas will influence policy in the second Trump administration.

It's also a safe bet that Democrats will continue to oppose the proposals, and that many of the policies will face political and legal challenges if the Trump White House tries to implement them.