After only 6 months, Project 2025 is already 47 percent complete
On July 5, 2024, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that he had “no idea who is behind Project 2025,” the nearly 900-page manifesto published in April 2023 by the conservative Heritage Foundation for use by “the next conservative president” to reshape the federal government. Trump went on to say that “some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” and that “anything they do, I wish them luck, but have nothing to do with them.”
Many voters presumably believed Trump when he said he knew nothing about Project 2025 and disavowed its objectives. Others — including non-MAGA voters — ignored Project 2025 or simply waved it away as hyperbolic fuel for the base, assuming that such a hellscape could never actually take hold in America, even under Trump 2.0.
Now, over six months into Trump’s second term, Project 2025’s roadmap for dismantling American government is 47 percent complete. That’s according to the website Project 2025 Tracker, which bills itself as a “comprehensive, community-driven initiative to track the implementation of Project 2025’s policy proposals.”
The website counts 317 proposals in total. So far, 115 are “complete,” including eliminating the U.S. Agency for International Development, banning transgender individuals from serving in the military and funding ICE for 100,000 detention beds.
An additional 64 proposals are “in progress,” such as cutting off government contracts to entities that enforce a “woke agenda,” ending a settlement agreement establishing basic standards for immigrant children in federal custody, downsizing the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (too focused on “climate alarmism”), privatizing TSA airport screening (so constitutional guarantees do not apply to traveler searches), cutting off Justice Department and FEMA grants to states and localities that balk at Trump’s immigration policies, prosecuting local prosecutors who exercise discretion in deciding whether to prosecute immigration cases, reducing the corporate income tax rate, “fully commercializ[ing]” the National Weather Service and eliminating the Department of Education.
The other 53 percent — or 138 proposals — remain on the Trump administration’s “to do” list.
In 1997, civil rights activist and author Maya Angelou warned the graduating class at Wellesley College that, “when someone shows you who they are, believe them.” Although the news coming out of the White House can feel relentless and exhausting, it remains imperative that every American in this moment become informed — and brace themselves — for what’s coming. If we don’t even know what is going on, there’s no way to slow it down, let alone stop it.
According to the Project 2025 tracker, the list of policies still in the works includes requiring schools that receive federal funding to give all students the military entrance test; adding a citizenship question to the census; focusing census outreach on “conservative groups;” rescinding regulations implementing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; phasing out federal funding aimed at schools serving low-income children; passing the “Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act;” repealing protections for unaccompanied minors encountered near the border; mandating time-and-a-half compensation on a “sabbath;” classifying teachers and librarians as sex offenders if they discuss “gender ideology” with minors; repealing child labor laws to allow teenagers to work “inherently dangerous jobs;” allowing companies to evade paying overtime; prohibiting the intelligence community from monitoring “so-called domestic disinformation;” and abolishing the Federal Reserve to move to a “free banking” system.
Some people reading this partial list will understandably balk, thinking that Trump cannot do some of these things without Congress or point out that some seem obviously unconstitutional. But those arguments mean very little anymore. The Republican-led Congress has abdicated its constitutional prerogatives in deference to Trump. The far-right majority on the Supreme Court has repeatedly flouted bedrock legal principles (often with no explanation) in furtherance of Trump’s agenda. Neither of those branches will save us.
Other readers might fall back on shoulder-shrugging, disbelief, denialism or even fear. Many will assume that, however horrific things get, they won’t affect “me.” A perusal of the Project 2025 tracker might change some of those minds. It certainly should.
On September 17, 1787, a Philadelphia socialite named Elizabeth Willing Powell reportedly asked Benjamin Franklin after the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
In a speech to the convention that day, Franklin stated that the new American system “can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government.” So here we are.
Increasingly, regular Americans seem to be waking up to the urgent constitutional crisis but have no idea what to do about it. That’s a sobering, but eminently understandable, response.
But this is for certain: Doing nothing guarantees that nothing will change. Zero plus zero is still zero. We all have to at least try.
Kimberly Wehle is author of the book “Pardon Power: How the Pardon System Works — and Why.”