Looming Project 2025 goals may ‘become reality’ in Trump’s next year: report
Several remaining Project 2025 goals could "become reality" in the new year as President Donald Trump begins his second year since his return to the White House.
The Heritage Foundation's playbook for new policies — once viewed as "a campaign trail boogeyman" ahead of his second term — still has some looming components that could be enacted in 2026, Axios reported Thursday.
"From reshaping the federal government to his push to recognize only two genders, Trump spent much of 2025 ticking off items from the conservative wishlist. However, the plan has dozens more action items awaiting his attention in 2026," according to Axios.
Some of those items include changes to education, abortion access and health care, in addition to immigration and other areas. Project 2025 calls for eliminating the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, which Republicans have accused of "weaponized for domestic political purposes," plus a new cabinet-level border and immigration agency, a "Parents' Bill of Rights," additional moves to block federal funding for disabled students, along with new requirements for school districts that receive federal funding.
"The Project 2025 authors also want to require that every student in schools that receive federal funding take the military's Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test," Axios reported.
The plan also entails "eliminating the 'week-after-pill' from the Health Resources and Services Administration's women's preventive services guidelines" and removing the FDA's "chemical abortion drugs," in addition to outlawing pornography, pushing the National Weather Service agency to "fully commercialize" its forecasting operations and requiring time and half hours for workers on the Sabbath (Sunday) under the Fair Labor Standards Act with Congress.
Trump had previously rejected the measures outlined in the sweeping roadmap for implementing conservative priorities, yet many of the policies were either underway or had been enacted after his nearly first year in office.
"I know nothing about Project 2025," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform in July 2024. "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."
Project 2025, formally titled "Mandate for Leadership," is a comprehensive policy blueprint developed by the Heritage Foundation that outlines a detailed conservative agenda for a Republican presidential administration, encompassing more than 920 pages of policy recommendations across federal agencies. The project was coordinated by Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, and drew input from more than 100 conservative organizations, policy experts and former Trump administration officials. It includes controversial proposals such as expanding Schedule F to reclassify federal employees, dismantling the administrative state, restricting reproductive rights, limiting LGBTQ+ protections and centralizing executive power through the "unitary executive" theory, representing one of the most ambitious attempts by the conservative movement to reshape the federal government.