Project 2025: The right-wing wish list for Trump’s second term

It is a 900-page policy “wish list”, a set of proposals that would expand presidential power and impose an ultra-conservative social vision.

During his campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly disavowed Project 2025, after a backlash over some of its more radical ideas.

But he has nominated several of its authors to fill key government positions, and many of his initial executive orders closely follow proposals outlined in the document.

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It also wades deeply into the culture war that has been dividing the country. Project 2025 calls for abolishing the teaching of “‘critical race theory’ and ‘gender ideology’” in public schools, and “deleting” terms such as “diversity, equity and inclusion,” “gender equity,” and “reproductive health” from “every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant … and piece of legislation that exists.”

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It also advocates using an 1873 anti-vice law to block abortion pills from being sent via the mail.

It also calls for ending federal funding for “Planned Parenthood and all other abortion providers and redirect[ing] funding to health centers that provide real health care to women.” Planned Parenthood provides more than abortion services. In its 2022-2023 annual report, Planned Parenthood provided 4.6 million tests and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, 2.25 million contraception services, 464,021 cancer screenings and prevention services (mostly breast exams and Pap tests), and 1.1 million pregnancy tests and prenatal services.

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Government ‘efficiency’: Project 2025 proposes cutting federal spending and firing “supposedly ‘un-fireable’ federal bureaucrats.” Currently, Elon Musk and his DOGE team are implementing this part of Project 2025.

The project recommends privatizing government functions, including the National Weather Service, Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, and the National Flood Insurance Program, as well as eliminating the Department of Education and scores of programs, bureaus and offices throughout government. The project also calls for removing the Biden administration’s expansion of Title IX, which bans sex discrimination in education, to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

As or other departments, the project calls for the “wholesale overhaul” of the Department of Housing and Urban Affairs, the “top-to-bottom overhaul” of the Department of Justice, and a return “to the right mission, the right size, and the right budget” at the Department of Homeland Security. The Justice Department overhaul would include “a plan to end immediately any policies, investigations, or cases that run contrary to law or Administration policies.”

One frequent target for cuts are offices and programs that promote clean energy and monitor or mitigate the effects of climate change.

For example, the project calls for the dismantling of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which conducts research and issues reports on climate change. Project 2025 says “many” of NOAA’s functions can be “eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.”

It also calls to eliminate or overhaul the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations and the Office of State and Community Energy Programs, which works with communities “to significantly accelerate the deployment of clean energy technologies.” Similarly, it recommends the elimination or “reform” of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, calling for an end to the agency’s “focus on climate change and green subsidies.”

Tax policy: Project 2025 calls for “low tax rates” and minimal “interference with the operation of the free market and free enterprise.”

Specifically, the plan calls for abolishing the seven tax brackets for federal income taxes — 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35% and 37% — and creating a “two-rate individual tax system of 15 percent and 30 percent that eliminates most deductions, credits and exclusions.” It doesn’t say what specific deductions, credits and exclusions should be eliminated.

It also calls for reducing the corporate tax rate from 21% to 18%. The corporate tax rate was 35% before Trump signed the Tax Cut and Jobs Act in 2017, which cut the tax rate to 21%. The capital gains tax — which ranges from 0% to 28%, depending on your income and type of asset — would also be cut for a high of 20% to 15%. The IRS says that most taxpayers currently pay 15%

“It’s hard to know who gets hurt by this because they never say what the standard deduction is. For low-income people, moderate-income people standard deductions [are] a big deal,” Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said about Project 2025’s tax proposals in an interview with CBS News. “But, as you say, there are seven rates and three of them — 32%, 35% and 37% are higher than 30%, so it’s pretty clear that high income people who are currently paying a top rate paying higher than 30% would benefit significantly. They are also going to benefit substantially from the lower capital gains rates. Many of them are paying capital gains almost at 25%, and in this proposal, they’d be paying as low as 15%. So, a big deal for high income people. Impossible to know what it means for lower income people.”

Trump has offered his own tax plans, which include making the 2017 tax cuts permanent and further reducing the corporate tax rate.

Immigration: Project 2025 seeks to reinstate “every rule related to immigration that was issued during the Trump Administration,” and calls for new immigration policies and a reorganization of all immigration operations.

The book recommends tightening asylum requirements, reducing the number of refugees, and reinstating Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as Remain in Mexico program, which required immigrants to wait in Mexico during their immigration proceedings.

It seeks “the overturning of the Flores Settlement Agreement,” a 1997 court-approved agreement that serves as a national policy on how to humanely treat minors who enter the country illegally. Among other things, the agreement prohibits the federal government from detaining minors for more than 20 days.

It also includes proposals to “[e]liminate or significantly reduce the number of visas issued to foreign students from enemy nations,” cut the number of guest worker visas and repeal the diversity visa program that awards visas on a lottery basis to countries with low immigration to the U.S.

As president, Trump unsuccessfully sought to repeal the diversity visa program and move from a family-based to a merit-based system for admitting immigrants. Project 2025 also calls for a merit-based system.

The book also labels these two programs as “unlawful”: the Humanitarian Parole Program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which bars the deportation of certain people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Social welfare programs: Project 2025 cites fraud and waste in safety net programs and calls for eliminating or reducing basic benefits for low-income individuals and families.

For Medicaid, Project 2025 proposes adding work requirements for beneficiaries and “time limits or lifetime caps … to disincentivize permanent dependence.” The health insurance program for low-income Americans covered nearly 74 million people in May, according to the latest data.

The conservative plan also calls for tightening work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, and changing the eligibility requirements for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which was created by the overhaul of the welfare system in 1996. New eligibility requirements would also reduce the number of students served by the national school breakfast and lunch programs — which were described in the book as “inefficient, wasteful” programs.

Project 2025 also seeks to incentivize at-home child care. “Instead of providing universal day care, funding should go to parents either to offset the cost of staying home with a child or to pay for familial, in-home childcare,” the plan states.

The plan calls for the elimination of Head Start, a program that funds education, health and social services programs for low-income children under 5 years old.

In a July 22 speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump accused Democrats of trying to falsely tie him to the plan. He said that “the other side is going around trying to make me sound extreme, like I’m an extremist. I’m not. I’m a person with great common sense. I’m not an extremist at all. Like, some on the right, severe right came up with this Project 25, and I don’t even know. I mean some of them, I know who they are, but they’re very, very conservative. … They’re sort of the opposite of the radical left, OK? You have the radical left and you have the radical right, and they come up with this. … I don’t know what the hell it is. It’s Project 25. ‘He’s involved in Project …’ And then they read some of the things, and they are extreme. I mean, they’re seriously extreme, but I don’t know anything about it. I don’t want to know anything about it.”

Trump went even further in his rejection of the plan in an interview on “Fox & Friends” on July 25, claiming Democratic efforts to tie him to it were “pure disinformation.”

Project 2025 does lay out “four goals and principles” for Medicare “reform,” but there is nothing in the book that calls for cutting Social Security, which the authors of the project call a “myth.”