Despite Trump’s distancing, Project 2025 looms large at RNC

MILWAUKEE — Visitors arriving at the Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport for this week’s Republican National Convention are greeted with the welcome signs. They are everywhere.

“Heritage welcomes you to the RNC Convention in MKE,” the signs read.

The Heritage Foundation — a group that says its mission “is to build and promote conservative public policies” — is a co-sponsor of the event. Its influence in GOP philosophies is arguably much deeper, especially with the group’s controversial Project 2025.

Project 2025 is the term for the Heritage Foundation’s nearly 1,000-page handbook for the next Republican presidential administration, which has become a cudgel Democrats are wielding against former President Donald Trump, who on Monday became the GOP’s presidential nominee.

That’s because Project 2025 proposes sweeping changes in the federal government, including altering personnel rules to ensure government workers are more loyal to the president.

Hundreds of conservatives filed into the Milwaukee Symphony on Monday to hear a parade of luminaries talk about policy and the handbook. Heritage’s President Kevin Roberts called it “unprecedented in the history of the conservative movement.”

“How many of you are ready to very steadily, calmly and peacefully take our country back?” Roberts asked the crowd Monday at a “Policy Fest,” an event hosted by the foundation to detail the policies.

Detractors of the plan often attribute the project’s restrictive goals to Trump, even as the former president has said that he knew “nothing” about Project 2025 and had “no idea” who was behind it. And despite Trump’s distancing from the project, its deep ties to former aides and the convention in Milwaukee leave little room for him to do so.

The plan is described as a “presidential transition project” created by more than 110 conservative organizations — many members of whom previously served in Trump’s administration — designed to create a comprehensive plan for a conservative president when they take office.

Despite Trump saying he hasn’t read the foundation’s work, his own Agenda47 — a package of policies he says he will institute if elected in November as the nation’s 47th president — shares many philosophies as Project 2025.

The campaign stresses Agenda47 — and not plans from the Heritage Foundation — is the roadmap for policy implementation. The platforms have significant similarities, including canceling President Joe Biden’s green emissions policies, cutting funding for schools teaching critical race theory and expanding presidential powers.

The primary goal of Project 2025 is to dismantle regulatory agencies like the Department of Education and Federal Aviation Administration, which multiple speakers at Monday’s event likened to the “deep state” and a “shadow government.”

“Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the administrative state,” says Paul Dans, the Project 2025 director.

To do this, Project 2025 is separated into four major “pillars” all intended to streamline policy implementation the moment Trump is elected to office. The first pillar — and much of what proponents and detractors of the project have focused on — is the “Mandate for Leadership,” a roughly 900-page guide outlining goals for every government branch and agency.

The second pillar is a private database of conservative coalition members, allowing members to connect with one another and to create an easy-to-use guide for potential appointees for a potential Trump administration. The third pillar is an online educational tool intended to prime members for how to implement the project’s goals.

The final pillar, which is still being created, is a 180-day “playbook” that will aggregate all the policies and personnel from the first three pillars into specific actions, streamlining changes quickly.

“I think that’s what’s really gotten under the left’s collar is that this is a way for us to make sure when we ultimately get in the driver’s seat, we’re ready to move out,” Dans said.

Nuclear Nevada

Nevada is mentioned twice in the mandate, both concerning the state’s role in the nation’s nuclear capabilities.

It recommends nuclear weapons testing be restarted at the Nevada National Security Site in central Nevada. While nuclear research still occurs at the facility, the last tests occurred in 1992.

More than 900 nuclear tests were conducted from 1951 and 1992 at the Nevada site and are attributed to giving thousands of Nevadans cancer because of nuclear fallout.

It also recommends restarting the licensing process for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository site, a long-standing sore spot for Nevadans — regardless of political party — because dangerous nuclear waste would be stored 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas in Nye County.

Nevada Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Sam Brown received public scrutiny for a 2022 recording where he appeared to support relicensing Yucca Mountain before backtracking in May.

Project 2025 also takes heavy aim at abortion, mentioning it almost 200 times throughout the mandate. While a federal ban on abortion is not explicitly mentioned in the guide, it does advocate for total removal of federal support for abortion and more restrictions on the practice.

Project 2025’s goal for a federal crackdown on abortion access could potentially clash with Nevada’s current abortion protections, as well as the abortion ballot initiative in Nevada headed to voters in November.

“I think as the state party chair, I also have a responsibility to make sure that people know what’s in Project 2025,” Nevada Assemblywoman Daniele Monroe-Moreno, D-North Las Vegas, said last week, before the Republican convention. “It would make my job as a lawmaker in this state even harder and take away the rights of the decision-making of state legislatures.”

Monroe-Moreno, chairwoman of the Nevada Democratic Party, said state lawmakers have little recourse to stop a potential Trump presidency from instituting Project 2025 goals. And that, she bluntly says, is troublesome.

“A lot of it hangs on that election between President Biden and Trump and, you know, the decisions that the Supreme Court makes,” Monroe-Moreno said. “The last decisions before they ended their session gave our president, whoever that person he or she may be, rights that no president has ever had.”

Project 2025 has enhanced the already-high stakes for November, she stressed.

“The most important thing we can do this election cycle is to vote,” Monroe-Moreno said.

— The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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