“I have no idea what it is Project 2025“; “I have no idea who is behind it”; “I have nothing to do with it. I haven’t read it; I’m not going to read it.” In the last presidential campaign it was common to hear Donald Trump phrases like that, trying to put distance between him and that roadmap for his Administration prepared from 2022 by the ultraconservadora Heritage Foundation, who presides Kevin Roberts.
Already in that last campaign, the democratsand anyone who had been politically attentive to the republicanthey questioned whether he could be believed. They warned of a radical project which they saw as a threat to the democracy and the rule of law, civil rights and the separation of church and state.
Although Trump and his allies despised how “hysteria“those alerts about USA heading towards an authoritarian and Christian nationalist state, as soon as the president returned to power White House It was seen that the supposed distance was, to a large extent, fiction and the symbiosis was authentic.
Dozens of executive orders, directives and other actions taken by Trump have led to, and even surpassedobjectives set in the political guide that was the main pillar of Project 2025. It was a 920 page manifestotitled “Mandate for Leadership”, in which dozens of people from Trump’s orbit participated as authors and collaborators, including people who were in his first government and have returned to the second.
US Vice President JD Vance upon arrival at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv this Tuesday. / NATHAN HOWARD / AP
Between 47 and 61% completed or underway
Although it is not easy to quantify the exact compliance with a text that proposed structural changes and politicians In practically all areas of government, it is estimated that between 47 and 61% of the goals are already achieved or underway.
One of the web pages dedicated to monitoring progress, which studies 319 objectives set in 34 agencies, speaks of 39% achieved and 21% more or less launched. Another database that focuses on 532 proposals from the national policy project, from the Center for Progressive Reform, stated in the last update in October that more than 47% of the Project 2025 measures have been proposed or completed.
These are lower percentages than the 64% that Heritage calculated that Trump met in the first year of his first presidency with respect to the objectives that were set then. But Project 2025 was more than a list of goals and was a proposal of greater and deeper scope than previous ones. And already in March Paul Dans, the architect of the project and one of its editors (who was forced to resign when the campaign became interested in distance, and who is now going to challenge the senator in primaries Lindsey Graham), used a graphic image to talk about achieving goals: “Beyond my wildest dreams.”
Steve Bannon, during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). / EFE
Vought, “the shadow president”
If anyone embodies and remembers the link between Trump and Project 2025 it is Russell Voughtdirector of the Office of Management and Budget, where he was already in Trump’s first term and who signed a chapter advocating the application, as is being done, of the theory of the unitary executive, which accumulates unprecedented power in the presidency.
To Vought, proud representative of christian nationalism that permeates the entire Heritage document, Susie Wiles he defined it in the explosive statements to Vanity Fair as a “complete right-wing fanatic“. The investigative website ProPublica has come to present him as ““the shadow president” and has described him as a “technocrat with encyclopedic knowledge of the ins and outs of government.” And although they were Elon Musk y DOGE who initially captured the attention and the headlines for the cuts in government agencies and personnel, it was he, who despises the federal bureaucracy and has become a champion of the “dismantling of the administrative state“, who from the first moment undertook the effort, and with remarkable ferocity.
Vought was not content with Project 2025’s proposals to weaken and cut international aid and managed not only to “deradicalize” USAID but close it. It also managed to fulfill another of the objectives of the manifesto: eliminate the Consumer Protection Office. With brute force, ignoring the law and jumping to Congress has frozen budget items already appropriated by the Chambers. And during the recent operational shutdown even Trump, who once portrayed him in a video with artificial intelligence as ‘The Grim Reaper’ in reference to his lethal clippingspromised that they would take the opportunity to eliminate “Democratic agencies” and recalled Vought’s “fame” for Project 2025.
Russell Vought, White House budget director / Agencies
Immigration, environment, gender…
Other goals outlined in this manual are also much closer thanks to the Trump presidency, including in terms of health policy. immigration and borderin matters environmental or in policies gender or social rightswhere the current government of USA is implementing extreme conservative values.
Project 2025 advocated withdraw the right of citizenship by birth in the country, for the use of military on the borderfor giving local and state authorities powers to enforce immigration laws, for suspend refugee programs or by rremove temporary protections that had been given to some immigrants. Trump has done all of this, although some measures are still being litigated in court.
The document also set the objective of reversing policies of the Administration of Joe Biden in climate matter, including requirements on vehicle fuel efficiency. This same month, Trump, who also follows the script when it comes to fighting against wind energy or against what he calls “mandate” of electric cars (which never existed), to reshaping the Environmental Protection Agency, eliminating climate justice jobs, and allowing more drilling.
The attack against programs Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) has been another of the central routes in this roadmap that the Trump Administration has followed, just like the fight against everything they define as woke or what they call “gender ideology,” which is an unprecedented assault on the transgender community. And although the most radical proposals of Project 2025 in reproductive health areas such as the withdrawal of abortion pill mifepristone, the decline in access to this health continues, at the national and international level, and the assault on abortion (which is mentioned in the manifesto directly 37 times, but indirectly up to 150 more).
Goals such as eliminate funding for public media and steps are being taken towards others like dismantle the Department of Educationlimit rights of vote or reduce access to social programs and benefits, including aid for food or access to public healthcare for the poorest that Trump has implemented with his tax law. And although there are visible ways of disagreement on issues such as China or the relationship with the large technological (issues where the Heritage Foundation would like a tougher hand than that shown by the president) the inseparable link between its project and the Trump Administration has been demonstrated.
Another element that has proven that the roadmap was much more than a generic conservative plan unrelated to Trump is that part of the lawsuits that have been presented against actions of his second presidency could have been prepared in advance. You just had to read Project 2025.
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