Project 2025

Overview

Project 2025 is a political plan created by the activist conservative think tank Heritage Foundation in conjunction with other Republican lawmakers and political advocates that is reported to be put into action if Donald Trump wins the 2024 United States Presidential Election. The plan is called Project 2025 because it is believed to go into effect as soon as Trump is reinaugurated in January 2025. Project 2025 first emerged online in 2023 and became increasingly discussed as a controversial concept throughout the year, drawing backlash and concern from many online, particularly from more liberal-minded social media users.

Background

According to a New York Times^[5] article published on April 20th, 2023, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts originally established Project 2025 sometime in 2022 to provide the 2024 Republican Party presidential nominee with a personnel and ideology framework.

On April 21st, 2023, the Heritage Foundation uploaded the framework under the title "Comprehensive Policy Guide- Mandate For Leadership: The Conservative Promise" to the official Project 2025 website^[1] in the form of a 920-page paperback book that could be bought for $35.

A month before the book release, Project 2025 was another arm of the Heritage Foundation that helped fund and organize events for CPAC, as seen in the tweet by CPAC^[2] on March 1st, 2023, thanking Project 2025 for their assistance and calling them it "Presidential Transition Plan" (shown below).

On April 28th, 2023, the Heritage Foundation then uploaded a video to its YouTube channel discussing Project 2025, which accumulated over 9,300 views in roughly five months (seen below).

Developments

As increased campaigning and news started to swirl around the 2024 Presidential Election, talk of Project 2025 increased in mid-2023, receiving additional attention from the media and appearing in various discussions online.

For example, on July 23rd, 2023, the Political show host Mehdi Hasan uploaded a segment from his MSNBC show to X^[3] in which he goes over Project 2025 in more detail and his issues with it (shown below).

I spoke of Project 2025 yesterday. Here’s another take on it.

This is NOT liberal scaremongering this is simply reporting what the right is now saying out loud.#DemsAct #DemVoice1 #wtpBLUE #ONEV1 #FAM46

pic.twitter.com/P7YfVroxH7

— 𝔗𝔯𝔲𝔱𝔥 𝔐𝔞𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔰 (@politicsusa46) July 24, 2023

Online Reactions

After the entire document was leaked online, it started to spread as people uploaded videos of themselves reading passages from it and giving their reactions. For example, on September 12th, 2023, TikToker CoyoteAnnie^[4] uploaded a TikTok of herself reading different passages from it off a downloaded PDF copy, pointing out their personal issues with the plan and what it could mean for single mothers if enacted. This TikTok helped to popularize further readings and scrutiny of the source material while earning over 75,000 likes and getting over 500,000 views in 20 hours (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References