Is there a playbook for a second Trump administration? Candidate Donald Trump says no.
But Project 2025, a 920-page document filled with input from former Trump administration officials, seeks to be just that.
“It is focused on reinventing government so it serves one person’s will, that being the president,” said Colin Seeberger of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
The conservative policy plan looks at virtually every nook and cranny of government. It proposes cuts to federal civil servants, and programs to make it easier to fire them and shrink pensions, while increasing the number of political appointees.
“Trump picked fights with the bureaucracy his first time around. He was happy to cause some attrition in the ranks of the civil service by people who just didn’t want to work for his administration. He would be happy to push that again,” explained Philip Wallach of the American Enterprise Institute.
Under the plan, the president would more directly control the levers of government, with the Department of Justice and other agencies put directly under the president’s watch.
While there’s no explicit call for an abortion ban, Project 2025 makes avenues to get one much more difficult.
The document proposes eliminating the term itself, along with “reproductive health” and “reproductive rights” from all federal documents, including legislation, as well as banning the federal Gender Policy Council and comprehensive sexual education.
It also pushes to ban mifepristone, a drug the Supreme Court just allowed to stay on the market, and one used in more than half of abortions.
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The plan also tackles a slew of social issues, from imprisoning people who create or distribute pornography, to loosening certain child labor laws, enforcing book bans and ending LGBTQ+ rights initiatives.
It makes changes to tariffs, corporate tax rates, abolishes the Department of Education and severely limits the Federal Reserve.
But Wallach says that even a president who wanted to follow the plan would need congressional backing for much of it, making it a tall order.
“Presumably, some of this would have to go through a Democratic filibuster in the Senate. I think we can’t just, you can’t just imagine that this stuff would all get put into place right away. These would be big fights,” he added.
The former president, notably difficult to pin down on policy even in real-time, has denounced the plan and called parts of it “abysmal.” Still, per his own “Agenda 47” platform, he’s supportive of at least some of the positions both in and out of office.
“He really is a dealmaker, he really likes to keep his options open,” said Wallach.
The Heritage Foundation told Scripps News they don’t speak for any candidate or campaign.
