Long before the disastrous presidential debate that may have seen President Joe Biden hand the keys to the White House back to former President Donald Trump, conservative thinkers were plotting.
In January 2023, the Heritage Foundation began promoting Project 2025, a 922-page “playbook” it compiled with input from dozens of other conservative groups to help guide the next Republican administration.
“Time is short, and conservatives need a plan,” the right-wing Presidential Transition Project’s website states. “This project will develop a roadmap for actions to be taken during the first 180 days of a new administration to bring immediate relief to Americans suffering from the left’s devastating policies.”
Project 2025 priorities include:
Cut federal jobs and shut down “woke propaganda at all levels of government.” Abolish the Department of Education and “the public school system dominated by woke people.” Ban the FBI from fighting misinformation and disinformation. End the “war on fossil fuels” and allow further development on Native American lands. End active FBI investigations “against the national interest.”
The plan is so extreme that President Trump himself has distanced himself from it, writing on Truth Social this week that he “knows nothing about Project 2025.”
“I have no idea who is behind it. I don’t agree with some of the things they say and some of the things they say are totally stupid and disgusting. I wish them the best of luck in whatever they do but I have no affiliation with them,” Trump wrote.
A Project 2025 spokesperson told Business Insider that the playbook “does not represent any candidate or campaign.”
“We are a coalition of over 110 conservative organizations advocating for policy and personnel recommendations for the next conservative president, but ultimately it will be up to the president-elect, who we believe to be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement,” the spokesperson said.
