Project 2025’s prominence as a master plan for a Trump administration continues to gain prominence—and weaponized ridicule. “Google Project 2025,” President Joe Biden posted on X (formerly Twitter) Tuesday morning. The Democratic National Committee on Tuesday also put up several billboards fusing Donald Trump to Project 2025 in Doral, Florida, where Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in the evening.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump claimed on Friday. “I have no idea who is behind it.” Yet, the Republican Party’s platform—adopted from a proposed platform crafted by Trump’s campaign—has clear ties to Project 2025. Russ Vought, the RNC platform committee’s policy chair, and Ed Martin, RNC deputy policy director, were installed in their RNC roles in coordination with the Trump campaign. Vought, a former Trump appointee, wrote a chapter of Project 2025, and both men are on Project 2025’s advisory board, according to ABC News. Trump’s attempts to distance himself from the project has provoked ire from far-right pundits such as Alex Jones and white supremacist Nick Fuentes, who both insinuated Trump is being controlled by the establishment of the Republican Party.
“Donald Trump is lying again now,” Biden said in a statement released on Saturday in response to Trump denying affiliation to Project 2025. “He’s trying to hide his connections to his allies’ extreme Project 2025 agenda. The only problem? It was written for him, by those closest to him. Project 2025 should scare every single American.”
Project 2025, or the Presidential Transition Project, is a massive 900-page planning document offering pathways to dramatically overhaul the federal government in line with Trump’s aspirations and to pursue extreme policies Trump has floated. It’s the work of former Trump staffers and led by right-wing hate groups and top conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, whose president Kevin Roberts stated last week, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless—if the left allows it to be.”
As the BBC notes, Project 2025 echoes Trump’s own policy agenda, dubbed Agenda 47 on the basis of Trump becoming the forty-seventh president if he wins in November. While Trump’s campaign has denied Project 2025 as a policy platform endorsed by Trump, the document in actuality functions as a high-speed pathway to institute the policies he desires. When Trump stated he wants to deport 20 million people, for example, Project 2025 released a portion of the document that details exactly how he could do that. As Trump faced multiple federal investigations, Project 2025 crafted and released a plan for how he could turn the Department of Justice and FBI into his personal attack dogs.
Some aspects of Project 2025, such as a nationwide abortion ban, stray significantly from Trump’s stated positions. But as Rolling Stone notes, Trump’s “softened” position on abortion adopted by the RNC is nothing more than a gambit to dupe voters.
Similarities between much of the Project 2025 plan and Trump’s own campaign ambitions continue to spoil Trump’s efforts to distance himself from the extreme agenda. According to The Free Press, sources close to the Trump campaign have tried signaling to Project 2025 to stop pitching itself, saying, “The message we are sending to Heritage and others is the same as it was in December: You’re not helping.” An ex-adviser to Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence this week decried Trump’s efforts to distance himself from Project 2025 as “ludicrous.”
