They call it the U.S. conservative movement's "mandate for leadership," a 900-plus-page blueprint backed by dozens of right-wing groups and designed to guide a second term for former U.S. president Donald Trump, should he win this November's election.

While Trump has publicly distanced himself from , critics describe the platform as a doomsday scenario for American democracy, a whole-of-government capture designed to rid the federal system of its nonpartisan staff and replace them with an army of MAGA loyalists, transforming the United States as they know it, forever.

Meanwhile, the project鈥檚 proponents say it stands as a plan to 鈥渦nite the conservative movement and the American people against elite rule and woke culture warriors,鈥� and represents 鈥渢he best effort of the conservative movement 鈥� and the next conservative President鈥檚 last opportunity to save our republic,鈥� as described by foundation President Kevin Roberts.

But what's actually going on in the voluminous pages of this election cycle's most controversial theory of the case? Here's what to know:

What is Project 2025?

by right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 is a policy guidebook built to "assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State," as described on its website.

Policy recommendations are far reaching, targeting thousands of unelected, non-partisan public servants at federal departments and agencies such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the view of the project, such career administrators should be replaced with political appointees that stringently adhere to the will of the government of the day, as elected by the voters.

"The next Administration must not cede such authority to non-partisan 'experts,' who pursue their own ends while engaging in groupthink, insulated from American voters," the project reads.

"When it comes to ensuring that freedom can flourish, nothing is more important than deconstructing the centralized administrative state. Political appointees who are answerable to the President and have decision-making authority in the executive branch are key to this essential task."

The campaign to re-elect U.S. President Joe Biden says the plan would "gut governmental checks and balances" and "," following his 2020 election loss.

"Donald Trump and his [Make America Great Again] allies will empower themselves to fire and replace independent civil servants across the government with extreme MAGA loyalists 鈥� turning independent government employees with specialized technical expertise, such as the people who keep our food safe, working for the American people into political creatures implementing his extremist agenda," the Biden campaign's website charges.

The foundation, for its part, says that Project 2025鈥檚 vision is in the best interests of the country as a whole.

"We do this not to expand government, grow its largesse for some special interest, or centralize more control in Washington," reads the policy agenda's conclusion, penned by Heritage Foundation founder Edwin J. Feulner.

"Instead, we do this to build an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish for all."

Beyond the personnel overhaul, Project 2025 features a great deal of modern conservative talking points, from , to , to , to major reversals of , to .

Further, a second Trump administration adhering to Project 2025 would , collapse and , roll back , and for members of the LGBTQ2S+ community, pass , outlaw the , restrict the acts of misinformation, rein in the and potentially , among many other changes.

Trump has not formally adopted the foundation鈥檚 policies, and instead supports the Republican Party鈥檚 , dubbed "" by the Trump campaign.

But as lengthy as the policy agenda is, its authors say Project 2025 is only getting started. As election day approaches, The Heritage Foundation is expected to release three more "pillars" of its plan, including a personnel database of , a bespoke "" program to train them in the project's vision for the future and a "playbook" of agency-level .

Who wrote Project 2025?

The Heritage Foundation's roots lie in the conservative political dynasty of the 1980s.

As , the foundation's first "mandate for leadership" came as a guidebook for then-president-elect Ronald Reagan, focused on, in Feulner's words, "reducing the size and scope of the federal government 鈥� freeing the private sector from overblown government interference and regulation" to "reassert America鈥檚 leading role in the world鈥檚 economy."

To hear him tell it, Feulner's mandate was taken seriously in the Reagan White House, with copies distributed at its first-ever cabinet meeting, Heritage Foundation members recruited into the administration to assist with implementation and, in Reagan's first year in office, nearly half of the original mandate's recommendations put to policy.

"The conservative movement had found in Ronald Reagan a President who shared that vision and who had the will to go against the established political grain in Washington," Feulner writes.

Since his emergence on the Republican political scene in the mid-2010s, Trump has become another such conduit of the foundation's work, Feulner says.

"Soon after President Donald Trump was sworn in, his Administration began to implement major parts of the 2016 Mandate. After his first year in office, the Administration had implemented 64 percent of its policy recommendations," he writes. "President Trump had implemented more recommendations in his first year than Ronald Reagan did in his."

As for Project 2025, the foundation touts the work of "more than 400 scholars and policy experts" from across the United States, self-styled as "the work of the entire conservative movement."

A review by CNN in mid-July found , with 20 pages of the platform focused on the White House credited to Rick Dearborn, his former deputy chief of staff.

"Donald Trump has lately made clear he wants little to do with Project 2025," the CNN report reads. "Many people Trump knows quite well are behind it."

Does Donald Trump support Project 2025?

Despite the foundation's support for the former U.S. president, Trump himself has remained distant from the project.

In a post to Truth Social last week, Trump wrote, "I know nothing about Project 2025. I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it"

 

But a closer look suggests more familiarity with the think tank behind it than that post lets on.

In April 2022, the foundation posted a video to the social media platform Rumble featuring what it described as a , wherein Trump is shown praising the foundation's work ahead of the 2024 election.

"The critical job of institutions such as Heritage is to lay the groundwork and Heritage does such an incredible job at that," Trump said. "They're going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America, and that's coming 鈥� Already, we know a very big part of our agenda."

Trump鈥檚 own public statements and platform, released in the time since Project 2025鈥檚 publication, contrast in a few notable areas, including pledging to protect the U.S. Medicare program, which the project would modify, and to avoid increasing taxes on tips, which the project advocates hiking.

What does Joe Biden say about Project 2025?

In recent weeks, the Biden campaign has launched a website attacking the plan, breaking out planks of the 920-page platform it calls "some of the ways in which Donald Trump is planning to reach into your daily life and how his extreme MAGA allies are planning to to get it done."

Biden has also spoken directly on the project, imploring voters to familiarize themselves with what his campaign says is a premonition of what's to come, should Republicans retake the White House.

"Project 2025 will destroy America," Biden said in a video clip posted to X on July 10. "Look it up."

 

 

With files from The Associated Press