Reports of the death of Trump’s Project 2025 are greatly exaggerated

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This summer more and more voters have gotten to know the gist of Project 2025, the policy opus intended to guide a second Trump administration, and they thoroughly dislike it. Which explains the project’s purported demise in recent days at the Trump campaign’s hands, just as Democrats have jump-started the presidential contest behind Kamala Harris’ candidacy.

The ruthlessness with which Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his chief campaign lieutenants supposedly severed ties to the agenda-setting endeavor gave me flashbacks to Trump’s presidency, when he’d abruptly announce a policy switch or Cabinet member’s firing with a tweet.

Just like that, someone or something that once had Trump’s favor was dispatched with the press of two thumbs on a smartphone’s buttons.

“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump wrote in a misnamed “truth” on his social media site last month. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.” He reiterated that message several times throughout July, blaming “radical left Democrats” for “pure disinformation” about his ties to the effort.

As usual, that was all lies, but when the right-wing coalition behind the blueprint, including scores of former Trump advisors, continued to promote it, Trump’s enforcers finally brought out the shiv — a no-holds-barred statement on July 30 from senior campaign consiglieri Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita:

“President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way. Reports of Project 2025′s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.”

That same day the once-respected, now MAGA-fied Heritage Foundation, the power behind Project 2025, announced that director Paul Dans was out of his job and that the 2-year-old undertaking would throttle back. The Washington Post reported that some contributing authors, who once saw their involvement as a ticket to a job in Trump 2.0, were asking to have their names scratched from the final product. Theirs isn’t an idle fear: LaCivita had threatened an employment ban if Project 2025 collaborators continued to equate their work with Trump’s agenda.

So that’s the end of that? Be skeptical. Be very skeptical.

For one thing, Trump embraced the effort at its start. In a speech at a Heritage conference in 2022, he said it would “detail plans for exactly what our movement will do … when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.” CNN’s review of the contributors found at least 140 former Trump administration officials, including six Cabinet secretaries.

So, sure, Trump can badmouth the Heritage project now that it’s become a bogeyman. But should he win, he’ll surely make use of Project 2025′s policy prescriptions and its database of 20,000 vetted MAGAts to form a government and execute his stated agenda.

Which gets to the second reason Project 2025 should be considered alive and well: Much of it is Trump’s agenda, just with flesh on the policy bones.

Most of the best known and least popular parts of the project’s 900-plus pages, the ones that media accounts and Democrats have spotlighted — “Can you believe they put that thing in writing?” Harris mockingly asks rally crowds lately — are in fact ideas that Trump himself calls for.

Among them: Abolish the Department of Education. Gut the civil service system and return to a spoils system rewarding MAGA loyalists with federal jobs. Tear down the ethics wall that has blocked White House interference in Justice Department prosecutions and FBI investigations since Watergate so that Trump can deep-six the criminal cases against him and order up new ones against his enemies.

And more: Mount immigration raids nationwide, with the military’s help, and deport millions living and working here without authorization. Repeal climate change mitigation programs and other environmental regulations. End affirmative action. Undo President Joe Biden’s student loan relief program.

Trump has talked about them all. Where he and Project 2025 mainly diverge is on abortion. Like the rest of us, the former president has seen the decisive power of abortion rights voters in every election since his Supreme Court appointees enabled the reversal of Roe in 2022. He’s desperate to duck the talk about further federal abortion restrictions and insists he’d leave the issue to the states. Project 2025, however, proposes a number of federal limits on abortion and contraception and a ban on shipping the pills that account for nearly two-thirds of abortions.

Let’s say Trump, as president, does leave abortion issues to the states. As we’ve seen already, his antiabortion appointees to the federal courts almost certainly wouldn’t hesitate to rule in ways that affect us all. And that still leaves all those other policy areas where Project 2025 reflects his policy wish list.

Get familiar with Project 2025, if you’re not. Trump’s advisors can welcome the reports of its demise, as they say. But the truth is, reports of its death are greatly exaggerated. The only way to put a stake through the thing is to make sure Trump isn’t returned to the White House.

Jackie Calmes is an opinion columnist for the Los Angeles Times in Washington, D.C.