While critics of former U.S. President Donald Trump continue to sound the alarm over Project 2025 and its potential implementation if the Republican nominee returns to the White House, a rival right-wing policy agenda has received far less national attention.
The well-publicized initiative, officially called the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, includes personnel recruitment, training, a 180-day playbook, and a policy agenda that is over 900 pages. Project 2025 is spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, which has been locked in a "shadow war" with the America First Policy Institute (AFPI).
The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) last year released a robust takedown of Project 2025, calling it a "far-right playbook for American authoritarianism." Since then, the group has published periodic updates about the Heritage-led effort to influence the policy and government employees under the next GOP president.
Wednesday's edition has a section on AFPI—or as GPAHE called it, "the Other Project 2025."
"Founded in 2021 by former Trump administration officials Linda McMahon, Larry Kudlow, and Brooke Rollins, AFPI has positioned itself as a formidable rival to the long-established Heritage Foundation, creating a notable divide in conservative policymaking spheres," GPAHE explained. "This conflict stems from both ideological differences and personal rivalries."
Although Heritage has been around for over half a century, GPAHE continued, "it has become a hub for younger, more ardent supporters of the MAGA movement," while "AFPI is generally seen as more sympathetic to the pre-Trump conservative consensus."
As Democrats—including the party's presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz—have campaigned against Project 2025, Trump has tried to distance himself from it, even though at least 140 people who worked in his first administration, including six former Cabinet secretaries, have been involved with the project.
So far, AFPI, a nonprofit that does not disclose its donors and cannot endorse political candidates, "has sought to avoid public attention—or the kind of firestorm that has engulfed the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025," Politico reported Thursday. However, like the widely known initiative, the more covert one has clear ties to Trump.
AFPI is "filled with Trump loyalists and insiders" and "was blessed by Trump before it was founded in 2021," according to Politico. While the think tank said in a statement that it "does not speak on behalf of any officeholder or campaign," the outlet pointed out that "Trump has hosted fundraisers for AFPI at his Mar-a-Lago club, his PAC Save America donated to the group, and his first major speech in Washington since leaving the White House was at an AFPI event."
Additionally, Politico noted, "its CEO, Brooke Rollins, has had a close relationship with Trump for years and has discussed the think tank's transition plans with him, according to two people familiar with the meeting; this month, the former president named the group's board chair, Linda McMahon, to co-lead the official transition team."
Other key leaders on Trump's transition team include his running mate, U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio); his eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump; former Hawaii Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard; and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a conspiracy theorist who just suspended his Independent White House run and endorsed the GOP nominee.
"AFPI is not becoming the transition," an unnamed source reportedly familiar with the Trump campaign's transition prep told Politico. "But by virtue of how they are situated and that we are in a very late timeline for this work, AFPI and the transition may be a distinction without a difference."
GPAHE highlighted that while the rivals have some "differing approaches to key issues like economic policy, foreign relations, and the role of government," there is also overlap. Specifically, the group detailed, "AFPI's policy document, while more concise at 250 pages compared to Project 2025's 900 pages, outlines similar priorities in energy and environmental policy."
One analysis from earlier this month shows that if the Project 2025 energy policies were imposed, climate-wrecking pollution would surge 2.7 billion metric tons by 2030 and cause there to be 1.7 million fewer jobs in that year, compared to the current trajectory. There have also been scathing critiques of its education, healthcare, immigration, and tax policies—other areas where there are some similarities with AFPI.
The AFPI agenda, as Politico summarized, "focuses on deregulation of the federal government, greater rights for religious groups, and an aggressive crackdown on crime, among other issues. It supports greater oil and gas production, the completion of the border wall, and the limitation of federal spending. It has also expressed support for declaring Antifa a domestic terrorist group and making Trump's tax cut legislation permanent."
Trump and Republican lawmakers have openly campaigned on extending reductions from their Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 if elected in November—even though the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said in May that doing so would add $4.6 trillion to the national deficit.
In response to the CBO findings, Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said that "the Republican tax plan is to double down on Trump's handouts to corporations and the wealthy, run the deficit into the stratosphere, and make it impossible to save Medicare and Social Security or help families with the cost of living in America."
