Project 2025: The Shadow Presidency of the Heritage Foundation

From climate rollbacks to baby deportations—how Trump is enacting the Heritage Foundation’s extremist vision

Russell Vought may be the most powerful official you’ve never heard of. As the current head of the Office of Management and Budget—a role he held during Trump’s first term—he now serves as the President’s primary advisor on how the federal government spends its $6.9 trillion budget. And as we all know, spending reflects values.

Vought is also the architect of Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership, the sweeping 900-page policy blueprint released by the Heritage Foundation in 2023. It laid out an ambitious and radical agenda for Donald Trump’s return to power—one Trump publicly dismissed during the campaign. But now, six months into his new term, his administration is following the Project 2025 roadmap almost step-for-step. For Heritage, which spends more than $110 million per year on political influence, this is a triumph unmatched in its 52-year history.

What is Project 2025?

The plan proposes over 300 major policy changes, touching nearly every aspect of American governance—from gutting foreign aid and education funding, to banning transgender people from military service, to expanding fossil fuel production in environmentally sensitive areas. It calls for weakening the Clean Air Act, reversing climate change initiatives, and defunding public broadcasting. Its ideological aim is clear: tear down the administrative state and rebuild it in the image of the far right.

With this document in hand, Trump has issued executive orders, prioritized enforcement measures, and stacked key positions with Project 2025 loyalists. The result has been a dizzying pace of action, leaving the public—and even major news outlets—struggling to keep up. Virtually every headline has its roots in Heritage’s policy machine.

Just recently, for instance, The Washington Post reported: “EPA announces proposal that would end virtually all of its climate regulations.” That includes limits on emissions from vehicles, power plants, and oil and gas operations—currently totaling over 3.5 billion tons annually.

The Cost of Climate Denial

Despite Heritage’s talking points, greenhouse gas emissions are not just an academic issue—they’re an expensive, destructive reality. They trap heat in the atmosphere, driving global temperatures upward. Last year, 2024, was the hottest year ever recorded. Melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels, megadroughts, wildfires, floods, and stronger storms are the result.

The financial toll is staggering. Just protecting Miami from rising seas will cost $4 billion. Meanwhile, disaster recovery spending has exploded. The last two years were the most expensive on record, with over $760 billion spent in just five years.

The Trump–Heritage Merger

Despite disavowing Project 2025 during his 2024 campaign—saying, “I have nothing to do with Project 2025… I haven’t read it purposely”—Trump’s inner circle tells a different story. Over 240 alumni from his first administration helped craft the plan, including Peter Navarro and Stephen Miller, two of his most trusted operatives. Trump may not have read the report himself (he’s famously allergic to long documents), but his top advisors certainly did.

Once elected, Trump admitted, “I don't disagree with everything in Project 2025 … I read enough about it. They have some things that are very conservative and very good.” Since then, he has gone beyond the plan in many areas—especially immigration.

Immigration: Beyond the Blueprint

Project 2025 called for mass deportations, ICE expansion, border wall construction, and asylum restrictions. Trump delivered—and then some.

ICE now arrests about 750 immigrants per day, double the recent average. Enforcement has broadened from undocumented migrants to include asylum seekers, Muslims, and political activists.

In a dramatic escalation, Trump deployed National Guard troops and active-duty Marines to Los Angeles to suppress protests against ICE. Local authorities objected, saying they had the situation under control. After a month of low activity, the Marines left. The Guard followed after 60 days. But the message was clear: Trump will use the military to assert federal dominance.

He’s also building four 10,000-bed detention camps and aims to expand detention capacity from 56,000 to 100,000.

Most controversially, Trump is pursuing one of Project 2025’s boldest goals: ending birthright citizenship. The 14th Amendment explicitly states that all persons born on U.S. soil are citizens. But Trump’s legal team drafted an executive order to deny citizenship to babies born to undocumented parents, despite Supreme Court precedent (U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, 1898) that upheld birthright citizenship.

Other Targets: Trade, Taxes, and Foreign Aid

Project 2025 pushed for aggressive tariffs to protect domestic industries. Trump responded with new tariffs—10–25% on China, Mexico, and Canada—then doubled duties on imported aluminum. Today, U.S. tariffs are at their highest levels since the Great Depression. These hikes function as a hidden tax on American consumers.

On taxes, Trump’s new plan builds on his 2017 law that added $1.5 trillion to the national debt. The current cuts will add two to three times as much, while delivering most of the benefits to wealthy individuals and businesses in “opportunity zones.”

On foreign aid, Trump slashed funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) by 83%—far beyond Project 2025’s recommendations. USAID has saved millions of lives since 1961 by responding to disasters and extreme poverty. One academic estimate says over 300,000 people have died due to these cuts.

The Bigger Picture

The Trump–Heritage partnership has already gutted the Department of Education, ended fuel efficiency standards, and defunded public media. Diversity programs have been dismantled. Transgender athletes are being barred from women’s sports.

This is not a presidency guided by the will of the people. It is a policy regime brought to life by a right-wing think tank. In effect, the Trump White House should hang a banner above the West Wing: “Brought to You by the Heritage Foundation.”

This is not hopeless, while there still will be lasting damage to the nation, much of what Trump has done can and likely will be reversed in the next administration. Will Americans retain the memory of how things could be, or will they just assume that Amerca’s best days have passed?