What is Project 2025? A look at the conservative presidential wish list

(WASHINGTON) — Project 2025, a 922-page playbook of controversial policy proposals intended to guide the next conservative administration, is gaining attention as the presidential election campaigns heat up.

Project 2025 has been authored by at least two dozen members of Donald Trump’s administration and allies, organized by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation and is backed by more than 100 additional groups.

Democrats say the plan is a warning of what is to come under a second Trump term, while Trump has tried to distance himself from the policy proposals: “They are extreme, seriously extreme,” said Trump in a July 20 rally. “I don’t know anything about it. I don’t want to know anything about it.”

Project 2025 officials told ABC News that it does “not speak for any candidate or campaign.” However, Trump’s official campaign plan called Agenda47 aligns with several proposals in Project 2025.

So, what is in Project 2025?

Some of Project 2025’s goals

The project suggests disbanding federal agencies like the Department of Education — an idea Trump has supported — and the Department of Homeland Security. It recommends privatizing others, including the Transportation Security Agency, and would expand presidential control over the executive branch.

“The modern conservative president’s task is to limit, control and direct the executive branch on behalf of the American people,” the project reads in its first section titled, “Taking the Reins of Government.”

On health care, the project recommends withdrawing the abortion pill mifepristone from the market and stopping the drug from being mailed, eliminating mandated insurance coverage for the week-after pill, prohibit funding for patients traveling across state lines for reproductive health care and prohibit funding for health care centers that provide abortions.

Additionally, the project suggests that the Department of Health and Human Services should “maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family.”

On climate change, Project 2025 suggests cutting federal money for research and investment in renewable energy, and instead calls for the next president to “stop the war on oil and natural gas.”

The project aims to repeal and eliminate preventive climate change initiatives. The project calls for replacing carbon-reduction goals to instead increase the use of fossil fuel energy production and “energy security.”

This aligns with Trump’s official Agenda47, in which Trump said he plans to make America the “No. 1 producer of oil and natural gas in the world.”

On economics, the proposals recommend cutting and restricting the use of food stamps and social welfare programs, creating more eligibility requirements for Medicaid, creating a two-rate individual tax system of 15% and 30%, reducing the corporate income tax rate, cutting rates for high-income investors and canceling federal student loan forgiveness programs.

On housing, the project recommends that it reverse several Biden administration policies, including the Housing Supply Fund, which states that it provides funding and low-income housing tax credits to “address market gaps, increase housing supply and help to stabilize housing prices over the long term … [and] remove barriers to affordable housing development.”

It also would remove Biden-backed programs aimed at addressing housing discrimination, including the Property Appraisal and Valuation Equity program and affirmatively furthering fair housing.

Trump’s Agenda47 broadly calls for new home construction, tax incentives and cutting housing regulation.

On diversity, the project proposes eliminating several terms from “every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists” including: “sexual orientation,” “gender,” “gender equality,” “gender awareness,” “gender-sensitive” “abortion,” “reproductive health,” “reproductive rights,” “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and more.

On immigration, the project advocates for immediately deporting unaccompanied children, increased funding for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, for the implementation of fees for asylum seekers and speedier processing at a premium price, pause funding for nongovernmental immigration groups and more.

Project 2025 also advocates for a “merit-based immigration system,” and urges the next president to get rid of the existing employment visa process, the family-based chain migration process and lottery systems, replacing it with a system “to award visas only to the best and brightest.”

In Trump’s Agenda47, he states he plans on carrying out “the largest deportation operation in American history” as well as reinstated Trump-era policies including increased focus on the border wall.

On education, the document calls for increased school choice and parental control over schools — limiting federal school accountability and encouraging every parent to direct their child’s share of public education funding “to choose a set of education options that meet their child’s unique needs” — which has been embraced by several conservative leaders through ESA programs.

It also bars public education employees from using a name or pronoun other than what is listed on a student’s birth certificate without a parent’s permission, and it would not require a school employee to use a name or pronoun for someone “that does not match a person’s biological sex if contrary to the employee’s or contractor’s religious or moral convictions.”

Trump similarly backs school choice policies, eliminating tenure for teachers, defund schools that “promote gender transition,” and plans to “promote love of country” in education.

He also states on his website that he plans to sue large private universities and “use that money to endow a new institution called the American Academy.”

Separately, the project recommends that pornography be “outlawed” and criminalize its distribution.

Is Trump tied to Project 2025?

While Trump has said that he doesn’t know anything about Project 2025, several of the former president’s current and former advisers and appointees have authored or supported the project.

They include:

Christopher Miller — who served as Acting Secretary of Defense and Special Assistant to the President under Trump — is credited with the project’s Department of Defense recommendations.

Ben Carson — who served as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under Trump — is credited with the project’s (HUD) recommendations.

Brendan Carr — who was appointed to serve as a member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) — is credited with the project’s FCC recommendations.

Adam Candeub — who served under the Trump administration as Acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Telecommunications and Information — is credited with the project’s Federal Trade Commission recommendations

Bernard L. McNamee — who was nominated to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by Trump — is credited with recommendations on the Department of Energy and Related Commissions.

Additionally, the RNC platform committee’s policy director, Russ Vough, authored a portion of the Project 2025 plan.

The RNC platform committee’s Deputy Policy Director Ed Martin is also president of the Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund, which is listed on the project’s advisory board.

Others connected to Trump, including Trump’s United Nations Commission on the Status of Women appointee Lisa Correnti, are listed among the contributors.

Some conservatives are distancing themselves from Project 2025, including former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who is requesting the removal of his organization, America First Legal, from the website’s list of advisory board members, sources familiar with the situation told ABC News.

However, Trump’s official Agenda47 and the proposals uplifted by the Republican National Committee align in part with some of Project 2025’s goals.

President Joe Biden’s campaign has used Project 2025 in its efforts to motivate voters away from Trump.

“Project 2025 is the plan by Donald Trump’s MAGA Republican allies to give Trump more power over your daily life, gut democratic checks and balances, and consolidate power in the Oval Office if he wins,” Biden’s campaign states on its website.

ABC News’ Will Steakin and Soo Rin Kim contributed to this report.

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