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The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An urgent, topic-by-topic guide to Project 2025, with everything you need to know about how the second Trump administration is remaking America—from a go-to authority at The Atlantic
When President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, news spread about his implementation of Project 2025, a nearly 1,000-page document published by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation. The debates—and anxiety—surrounding this initiative have only increased as authors of the Project assume positions of power in the second Trump administration.
So, what is Project 2025, exactly? Who wrote it, and what does it mean for everyday Americans, across the political spectrum, now and in the years to come?
In The Project, award-winning journalist David A. Graham offers much-needed context and distills the essential elements of this sprawling document. Breaking down the Project’s strategy for transforming—and radically empowering—the executive branch, Graham then explains what the architects behind Project 2025 are doing with that enforcing traditional gender norms, decimating the civil service, performing mass deportations, reducing corporate regulation and worker protections, and more.
Project 2025 is the intellectual blueprint for the new administration, Graham argues, and its tenets should not be legible only to policy wonks. Authoritative yet highly accessible, The Project demystifies it for those whose lives it will affect most.
When President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, news spread about his implementation of Project 2025, a nearly 1,000-page document published by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation. The debates—and anxiety—surrounding this initiative have only increased as authors of the Project assume positions of power in the second Trump administration.
So, what is Project 2025, exactly? Who wrote it, and what does it mean for everyday Americans, across the political spectrum, now and in the years to come?
In The Project, award-winning journalist David A. Graham offers much-needed context and distills the essential elements of this sprawling document. Breaking down the Project’s strategy for transforming—and radically empowering—the executive branch, Graham then explains what the architects behind Project 2025 are doing with that enforcing traditional gender norms, decimating the civil service, performing mass deportations, reducing corporate regulation and worker protections, and more.
Project 2025 is the intellectual blueprint for the new administration, Graham argues, and its tenets should not be legible only to policy wonks. Authoritative yet highly accessible, The Project demystifies it for those whose lives it will affect most.
141 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 22, 2025
364 people are currently reading
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 155 reviews
May 4, 2025
If you're an American -- if you read only one book this year, please let it be this one: The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America by David A. Graham.
This book is short and it clearly explains the "why" behind all The Project's plans, which helps you understand all the seemingly nonsensical, but actually carefully planned, executive orders, firings of fed employees, trashing of things like the Dept of Education, etc.
It also helps you understand what's still coming. This explains the bigger picture of the movement, how the division and the cruelty actually are not only the goal, but the priority. You can clearly see how things have unfolded and will continue to do so.
Many thanks to David A. Graham for getting this book out so quickly.
This book is short and it clearly explains the "why" behind all The Project's plans, which helps you understand all the seemingly nonsensical, but actually carefully planned, executive orders, firings of fed employees, trashing of things like the Dept of Education, etc.
It also helps you understand what's still coming. This explains the bigger picture of the movement, how the division and the cruelty actually are not only the goal, but the priority. You can clearly see how things have unfolded and will continue to do so.
Many thanks to David A. Graham for getting this book out so quickly.
April 13, 2025
“project 2025 is a skeleton key for understanding the second trump presidency— as well as the future of the republican party and the american right.”
before the election, i really wanted to read project 2025 but, due to the length, i never got around to reading it in its entirety. i really appreciated how graham was able to break it down into easy-to-understand sections. with everything going on in the current admin, i found it both helpful (and unsettling) to read through their plans and intentions. i also appreciate having an easy to reference source for the next time my grandma tells me she don’t think they’ll do X, Y or Z.
thank you to david a. graham, random house and netgalley for this arc.
before the election, i really wanted to read project 2025 but, due to the length, i never got around to reading it in its entirety. i really appreciated how graham was able to break it down into easy-to-understand sections. with everything going on in the current admin, i found it both helpful (and unsettling) to read through their plans and intentions. i also appreciate having an easy to reference source for the next time my grandma tells me she don’t think they’ll do X, Y or Z.
thank you to david a. graham, random house and netgalley for this arc.
April 16, 2025
This is a great overview of Project 2025 though this does appear to have been written before Trump took office. The first section is incredibly helpful to understand the general motivations for many of the actions we have already seen in the past months. Highly recommend for anyone uninterested in reading the original document but still wanting an idea of what is to come.
Thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for the eARC.
Thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for the eARC.
August 4, 2025
Nothing more effectively lays bare one’s inherent political insouciance like reading a book that is less than ten percent the length of the other, much longer book whose aims the first book is intended to explicate. Try as I might—and, if you’ve been paying attention lately (no problem if you haven’t), I’ve been trying quite a lot in the last half-year—I just can’t shake my draw toward modern-day political treatises of the tell-me-what-I-ought-to-believe variety. It’s better than a YouTube video, at least in theory—though certainly not nearly as entertaining. For every episode of Last Week Tonight or Some More News that I watch, I feel the wettish concrete of my long-held biases about proper government, as well as those regarding the moral uprightness of those several and serious participants in my country’s much-belabored two-party system, become drier and drier—harder and ever harder. To my credit—just give me this, okay?—the most unwavering aspect of my worldview is something akin to the skepticism of Hume, albeit somewhat less subservient to the whims of nature (i.e., my own survival), and the self-assured self-doubt of Socrates, to which just about everyone—whether philosopher or philistine—is privy. I’ll rarely admit which opinions come naturally to me—which of my convictions, that is, I’ve long since given up putting under the proverbial microscope of inquiry. Instead, I’ll say (and truthfully, mind you) that, despite feeling that some things are true and other things are not, if ever the time comes to ruminate on—as opposed to merely react to—them, I will undoubtedly proceed, irrespective of how confident or convincing I appear to my conversation partner, in a state of near-complete epistemological uncertainty. Hume predates this kind of skepticism, at least to the magnitude that it exists today. And Ayn Rand, to whom anything short of absolute confidence in one’s moral convictions is anathema, lacked the philosophical clout (and, let’s be honest, the situational awareness), despite coming to maturity during WWII, to realize that even the “good guys” make use of propaganda.
So I move, despite succumbing semi-frequently to mostly minor moments of weakness, through this information hellscape both lethargically and hesitantly. During periods of extreme political division, like the one we currently find ourselves in, the centrist is on the shitlist of everyone. And, of course, I understand why. I chalk it up to another concretized belief about myself and my—for lack of a better term—unique skillset. In short, people like me, because we are impervious to radicalization (though I guess we’ll see), perform an essential function in any society—provided we aren’t too much of a minority and/or too demonized to be taken seriously. I maintain that my perpetual uncertainty—which we could without a doubt explain away with psychiatric theories about my lonely childhood and lack, when I needed it the most, of parental guidance—is a highly useful tool of maintaining equanimity across the no man’s land that separates the protest and the counterprotest. I’m not really so much a centrist as I am a conscientious objector. To the claim that such a mindset, because of its expansive “tolerance,” paves the way for either an Orwellian dystopia or its Huxleyian alternative, I can only respond by saying that it’s the only approach to making sense of twenty-first century politics that can prevent both at the same time.
I really am trying to stop talking about my artistic ambitions on this platform, on the perhaps misguided assumption that (1) people are actually reading what I’m writing here and (2) that they are becoming very annoyed by all my incessant talking in lieu of doing. (I am also doing. Don’t worry.) But to hell with it. The would-be fiction writer—at least the inchoate one that exists within the embittered and politically conscious adult they will eventually become—likes to write because they like to read. The process of experiencing artificial worlds with fully, or even partially, fleshed-out characters, whether they’re vehicles of villainy or husks of heroism, is a full-body workout for one’s empathetic apparatus. (There has been at least one academic study on this.) This heartfelt and open-minded affectation necessarily bleeds over into one’s own narrative work. Ask anyone who’s ever made anything. Unless your goals are solely, or predominantly, to effect social change—notwithstanding that works of fiction are known to have been successful in this regard, this is, I’d argue, wholly antithetical to the spirit of the creative act—then odds are you have, even accidentally, implanted a little part of your very self into every character and scenario you’ve ever put to paper. I want to believe that there is a place in today’s world—a world in which conservatives get needlessly up-in-arms about inclusive casting in Hollywood; one in which creatives, who (like myself) tend to the left, feel that their novel needs to telegraph potentially triggering occurrences just as much as, if not more so, it needs to signal the author’s unqualified acceptance of traditionally marginalized identity groups—for art made for the sake of art. My recourse—though I suppose it was for different reasons back then—has always been to hide behind a façade of inanity, complexity, and intellectual elitism.
It’s not that The Project put me off because of its partisanship. Nowadays, when I’m not getting my news from social media, or (as abovementioned) the large collection of liberal comedy shows I watch on YouTube, I listen to (um, also on YouTube) CSPAN’s (in my opinion) competently unbiased forty-odd-minute podcast Washington Today, a show that is so unpopular (and, again, unbiased) that each episode only garners about three to five comments, on average, from people on both sides of the political spectrum. (I’m guessing by how these comments read that these listeners are a few generations behind me.) On one episode, David A. Graham, staff writer at The Atlantic (and author of this book), gave an interview about Project 2025. In this interview, his appraisal seemed a lot more informational than it did agenda-based—in other words more expository than persuasive. So I was, in a way, a little blindsided when I started reading The Project a few weeks later. To be fair, though, Project 2025 (or Mandate for Leadership, as its actually called) is, if what Graham says can be trusted, deeply concerning, but not because it argues for a politically conservative government. The biggest jaw-dropping change that it wants to implement is to make most, if not all, government jobs political appointments as to be determined by the Executive Branch (like the POTUS’s cabinet), removing a—that is, theoretically—sizeable party-neutral workforce from the federal government and replacing it with, in this case, Trump loyalists. (This, of course, would greatly benefit whichever party currently holds the presidency and would introduce a degree of political control whose granularity seems both unfair and, I don’t know, more than a little authoritarian.) What happened to the federal workforce during the first six months of Trump’s 2025 presidency seems like it could be the first step in this process. Ultimately, however, there is no official connection between Project 2025 and the Trump Administration. When Trump was campaigning, for the second time his second term, he denied any involvement in Project 2025, and, for all we know, he may have been telling the truth.
So it's not the partisanship. My problem with this book is, rather, its—or, it is equally possible, the reader’s (i.e., my)—lack of depth. Is it disingenuous of me to complain that the Sparknotes version is too effective at its task of summarizing its source document? When I set out to read The Project, clearly I did so because I wanted to know what Project 2025 contained without having to read the ~1000-page document myself. In this case, I got exactly what I wanted, though for some reason I still feel unsatisfied with the experience. More of the same, it seems. All ambition, no follow through. Too ambitious to be lazy; too lazy to be ambitious. Let that be a lesson to you, me. Either go to the source, or don’t go. You just might find me reading (a book about) the One Big Beautiful Bill Act next.
So I move, despite succumbing semi-frequently to mostly minor moments of weakness, through this information hellscape both lethargically and hesitantly. During periods of extreme political division, like the one we currently find ourselves in, the centrist is on the shitlist of everyone. And, of course, I understand why. I chalk it up to another concretized belief about myself and my—for lack of a better term—unique skillset. In short, people like me, because we are impervious to radicalization (though I guess we’ll see), perform an essential function in any society—provided we aren’t too much of a minority and/or too demonized to be taken seriously. I maintain that my perpetual uncertainty—which we could without a doubt explain away with psychiatric theories about my lonely childhood and lack, when I needed it the most, of parental guidance—is a highly useful tool of maintaining equanimity across the no man’s land that separates the protest and the counterprotest. I’m not really so much a centrist as I am a conscientious objector. To the claim that such a mindset, because of its expansive “tolerance,” paves the way for either an Orwellian dystopia or its Huxleyian alternative, I can only respond by saying that it’s the only approach to making sense of twenty-first century politics that can prevent both at the same time.
I really am trying to stop talking about my artistic ambitions on this platform, on the perhaps misguided assumption that (1) people are actually reading what I’m writing here and (2) that they are becoming very annoyed by all my incessant talking in lieu of doing. (I am also doing. Don’t worry.) But to hell with it. The would-be fiction writer—at least the inchoate one that exists within the embittered and politically conscious adult they will eventually become—likes to write because they like to read. The process of experiencing artificial worlds with fully, or even partially, fleshed-out characters, whether they’re vehicles of villainy or husks of heroism, is a full-body workout for one’s empathetic apparatus. (There has been at least one academic study on this.) This heartfelt and open-minded affectation necessarily bleeds over into one’s own narrative work. Ask anyone who’s ever made anything. Unless your goals are solely, or predominantly, to effect social change—notwithstanding that works of fiction are known to have been successful in this regard, this is, I’d argue, wholly antithetical to the spirit of the creative act—then odds are you have, even accidentally, implanted a little part of your very self into every character and scenario you’ve ever put to paper. I want to believe that there is a place in today’s world—a world in which conservatives get needlessly up-in-arms about inclusive casting in Hollywood; one in which creatives, who (like myself) tend to the left, feel that their novel needs to telegraph potentially triggering occurrences just as much as, if not more so, it needs to signal the author’s unqualified acceptance of traditionally marginalized identity groups—for art made for the sake of art. My recourse—though I suppose it was for different reasons back then—has always been to hide behind a façade of inanity, complexity, and intellectual elitism.
It’s not that The Project put me off because of its partisanship. Nowadays, when I’m not getting my news from social media, or (as abovementioned) the large collection of liberal comedy shows I watch on YouTube, I listen to (um, also on YouTube) CSPAN’s (in my opinion) competently unbiased forty-odd-minute podcast Washington Today, a show that is so unpopular (and, again, unbiased) that each episode only garners about three to five comments, on average, from people on both sides of the political spectrum. (I’m guessing by how these comments read that these listeners are a few generations behind me.) On one episode, David A. Graham, staff writer at The Atlantic (and author of this book), gave an interview about Project 2025. In this interview, his appraisal seemed a lot more informational than it did agenda-based—in other words more expository than persuasive. So I was, in a way, a little blindsided when I started reading The Project a few weeks later. To be fair, though, Project 2025 (or Mandate for Leadership, as its actually called) is, if what Graham says can be trusted, deeply concerning, but not because it argues for a politically conservative government. The biggest jaw-dropping change that it wants to implement is to make most, if not all, government jobs political appointments as to be determined by the Executive Branch (like the POTUS’s cabinet), removing a—that is, theoretically—sizeable party-neutral workforce from the federal government and replacing it with, in this case, Trump loyalists. (This, of course, would greatly benefit whichever party currently holds the presidency and would introduce a degree of political control whose granularity seems both unfair and, I don’t know, more than a little authoritarian.) What happened to the federal workforce during the first six months of Trump’s 2025 presidency seems like it could be the first step in this process. Ultimately, however, there is no official connection between Project 2025 and the Trump Administration. When Trump was campaigning, for the second time his second term, he denied any involvement in Project 2025, and, for all we know, he may have been telling the truth.
So it's not the partisanship. My problem with this book is, rather, its—or, it is equally possible, the reader’s (i.e., my)—lack of depth. Is it disingenuous of me to complain that the Sparknotes version is too effective at its task of summarizing its source document? When I set out to read The Project, clearly I did so because I wanted to know what Project 2025 contained without having to read the ~1000-page document myself. In this case, I got exactly what I wanted, though for some reason I still feel unsatisfied with the experience. More of the same, it seems. All ambition, no follow through. Too ambitious to be lazy; too lazy to be ambitious. Let that be a lesson to you, me. Either go to the source, or don’t go. You just might find me reading (a book about) the One Big Beautiful Bill Act next.
May 6, 2025
Honestly, this is another must read book. Or, actually, listen to it. It is a concise (and frightening) summary of the Republican plan to roll this nation back to the 1950s. It is FULL of fatally flawed thinking that hurts Americans. It particularly singles out minorities, immigrants, and women. The authors, mostly white men, have a vision of America that is distorted and dystopian; and has women and minorities taking a back seat to them. Those white men, and a few white women, can’t seem to understand that women and minorities are smart, hardworking individuals that contribute to the success of this nation. These author’s clearly feel threatened by anyone not male and white.
I was cautioning friends about Project 2025 back in the late spring of 2024 when Trump was just candidate and former President Trump and saying “he’d never heard of Project 2025 and didn’t know the authors”. In fact, many of the authors worked in the White House during his first term, are 2020 election deniers, and have been writing this for the past four years.
Democrats saw it as a threat to Democracy and the American way of life including having a strong growing economy. Not enough people did their homework and understood this to be the threat that it was and is. I’d sure love to have a conversation with a “Conservative Republican” regarding this and how it has been implemented from day one. I just can’t imagine you CR’s really wanted all of this chaos?
This plan is full of:
Presidential power overreach.
Reducing the impact of an elected Congress.
Climate change denial.
2020 election results denial.
A commitment to return to fossil fuel usage; drilling on public lands.
An end to individual rights regarding body autonomy.
Reducing taxation on the wealthiest of this nation.
Increasing military spending while reducing our involvement in NATO.
Ending the Department of Education
Weaponizing the Department of Justice against ANYONE that doesn’t believe as Trump does.
An end to the Rule of Law
Denying science
and SO MUCH MORE!!!
Every day I listened to this there were examples from the current news cycle reinforcing its implementation.
These policies and Republican politicians who bend the knee and pledge their fealty to Trump are on the wrong side of reality. Trump is a habitual liar and continuing to support such an unqualified person in the Presidency feels like actual treason.
Do Democrats have work to do? Yes! There is no perfect party but the Democrats don’t tank the economy, piss off our allies, deny science, and intentionally hurt veterans and families.
I was cautioning friends about Project 2025 back in the late spring of 2024 when Trump was just candidate and former President Trump and saying “he’d never heard of Project 2025 and didn’t know the authors”. In fact, many of the authors worked in the White House during his first term, are 2020 election deniers, and have been writing this for the past four years.
Democrats saw it as a threat to Democracy and the American way of life including having a strong growing economy. Not enough people did their homework and understood this to be the threat that it was and is. I’d sure love to have a conversation with a “Conservative Republican” regarding this and how it has been implemented from day one. I just can’t imagine you CR’s really wanted all of this chaos?
This plan is full of:
Presidential power overreach.
Reducing the impact of an elected Congress.
Climate change denial.
2020 election results denial.
A commitment to return to fossil fuel usage; drilling on public lands.
An end to individual rights regarding body autonomy.
Reducing taxation on the wealthiest of this nation.
Increasing military spending while reducing our involvement in NATO.
Ending the Department of Education
Weaponizing the Department of Justice against ANYONE that doesn’t believe as Trump does.
An end to the Rule of Law
Denying science
and SO MUCH MORE!!!
Every day I listened to this there were examples from the current news cycle reinforcing its implementation.
These policies and Republican politicians who bend the knee and pledge their fealty to Trump are on the wrong side of reality. Trump is a habitual liar and continuing to support such an unqualified person in the Presidency feels like actual treason.
Do Democrats have work to do? Yes! There is no perfect party but the Democrats don’t tank the economy, piss off our allies, deny science, and intentionally hurt veterans and families.
June 17, 2025
I knew a lot of this already from reading portions of the full document pre-election, but this is an easy-to-read and very digestible summary. Already, many of the goals in this “project” have already been put into motion or accomplished. If you care about the direction the country is moving in, read this.
May 13, 2025
It's a fine, concise synopsis, but I'm not sure I learned anything I didn't already know.
May 7, 2025
Overview
Project 2025 is a policy proposal document created by The Heritage Foundation which wants to promote a steroid-infused neoliberalism in American and make this more palatable to the various strands of American right-wingers by simultaneously promoting white Christian nationalism. To do this they set out to use Trump as a Bonapartist figure that the right can coalesce around, and in turn he can help put Hertigate-approved right-wingers in positions of power throughout various government offices. This is not the first important blueprint the Heritage foundation has created for a conservative president; in 1980 they wrote a proposal called Mandate for Leadership which was widely implemented by the Reagan administration. This “manifesto of the Reagan Revolution” apparently had 60% of its recommendations implemented by Reagan’s government during his first year in office.
To regain its influence on presidential policy today, the Hertiage Foundation intentionally looked outside its organization to gather a wide range of converservatives that contributed to the Project 2025 document. Most authors of the blueprint have held or currently hold positions of power within one of the Trump administrations, further proving that Project 2025 could very well be implemented to a certain degree (and in some respects it already has). This isn’t just a policy proposal document, however, but a blueprint for a coherent and thorough political strategy to put MAGA-conservatives into power and keep them there. At the highest level, this strategy seeks to move more power into the executive branch to circumvent congress and any checks on Trump’s power. To do so, it seeks to staff the federal government with appointees who are ideologically committed to the MAGA movement, then properly train them into more effective political operatives. The Heritage foundation created a database of tens of thousands of potential candidates for this process and then produced around 30 training sessions to better train these candidates (courses included “Conservative Governence 101” and “The Administrative State and Regulatory Process”). Next, Project 2025 wants to convert more government roles into political appointees whose office holders leave at the end of an administration rather than being held by career officials, further allowing Trump to staff positions with cronies rather than having to deal with career bureaucrats. Finally, Russell Vought (the main architect of Project 2025) has openly called for terrifying current civil servants, saying “we want to put them in trauma” in order to either run them out of office or scare them into obedience. The first Trump administration faced both external resistance from Democrats as well as internal resistance from Republicans; these political proposals seek to circumvent such resistance for Trump’s second term.
The agenda for sex, sexual orientation, and the family
The minds behind Project 2025 want to create an America where abortion is illegal, sex is closely policed and kept between a man and a woman, public schools don’t exist, and punishment for any infraction of these is harsh. Accordingly, the authors write that their biggest priority is to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.”, and above all this must be done by banning abortion. If abortion remains legal, then it should be heavily monitored: “Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism, HHS [United States Department for Health and Human services; an executive branch department created to protect the health of U.S citizens] should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method”. The strategy here would be to either intimidate women who get abortions in liberal states, or eventually allow the federal government to prosecute women who reside in abortion-free states but traveled across state lines to get a legal abortion. Beyond abortion, the authors of Project 2025 want the federal government to ensure that abstinence-only programs should be the only sexual health programs eligible for federal funding. Also, pornography should be completely banned and “the people who promote and distribute it should be imprisoned”.
“Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society,”, therefore, the federal government should fund organizations which promote “a biblically based, social-science-reinforced definition of marriage and family”. The authors believe that other familial structures are less stable, and they back this claim with a completely made-up statistic that, according to which, “the average length of same-sex marriages is half that of heterosexual marriages”. Heterosexual marriages which want to procreate and produce more (hopefully white) children should be encouraged by enlisting churches to “provide marriage and parental guidance for low-income fathers.”. Unsurprisingly, the man will be the undisputed authority of the household that Project 2025 seeks to build, and through these church-backed educational programs and tax incentives, the goal would be to encourage the proliferation of male-dominated homes where the man is the breadwinner and the wife is the subservient mother and housekeeper.
Unsurprisingly, when it comes to trans people, Project 2025 seeks to attack them as much as legally possible. Trump has already implemented some of this; he has explicitly stated that the federal government should only recognize two sexes and that feral funding should be barred for gender-affirming care. This should be further expanded, according to Project 2025, to the point of rescinding any legal rules which prohibit hiring discrimination on the basis of someone’s sexuality, gender orientation, or sexual characteristics.
The agenda for education
The ultimate goal for education is to eliminate public schooling. Directly citing Milton Friedman, the authors of Project 2025 want taxpayer money to be given to families in the form of vouchers or savings accounts that they can spend on private/religious schooling; this would obviously bleed the public school system of funding and further erode it. This would work in tandem with the Department of Education loosening restrictions on charter schools and alternative schooling. The long term goal would also be to eliminate the department of education in general. As of today,, the DOE sends funds to state/local school systems with somewhat loose strings attached about what these systems curriculum is to be. The authors of Project 2025 would close the DOE but keep the money flowing; “Existing funding should be sent to states as grants over which they have full control, enabling states to put federal funding toward any lawful education purpose under state law,”. This would probably mean vast disparities in schooling between red and blue states, where Dem states might keep their systems more or less the same but Republican ones might turn schooling over to religious groups or other private organizations. It would stand to reason that miseducation in the form of backwards teachings on science, racism, and how the world works in general would become even worse than today.
The agenda for healthcare
The goal for healthcare is to make the entire system more privatized. The authors believe that Medicare should be privatized further by making Medicare Advantage (allows seniors enrolled to choose between a set of private insurance plans that the government then pays for) the default option, despite the fact that the government’s own research finds no evidence this provides better care than traditional Medicare while also costing taxpayers more money. Obviously, Medicade itself needs to be cut wherever, have the benefits offered reduced, and added work requirements to be eligible wherever possible in order to”disincentivize permanent dependence”; the authors don’t explain how to reduce dependence on someone whose life depends on certain forms of care but you can probably take a guess what they think should happen to people with disabilities.
Project 2025 on race and racism
Project 2025 wants to get rid of any DEI programs wherever they can throughout the government, and beyond that it seeks to use The Equal Opportuniry and Employment Commission to “reorient its enforcement priorities toward claims of failure to accommodate disability, religion, and pregnancy (but not abortion).” The administration would lobby Congress to prohibit the EEOC from collecting any data on race in employment in order to make racial disparities or discrimination on the job invisible. In fact, the authors argue that “disparities do not (and should not legally) imply discrimination per se.” The commission would make clear that its guidance is purely advisory, not legally binding. Using the Depertment of Education, the Trump administration will attempt to ban teaching CRT, which will probably mean banning a wide array of any discussions about race, racism, and discrimination in general (which has occured already when these bans were enacted at the state level like in Florida).
The agenda for immigration
In Trump’s first term he had more apprehensions at the border but less total deportations than the Obama administration; this was clearly not cruel enough for the authors of Project 2025. When the COVID pandemic effected global travel, Trump used this as an opportunity to enact Title 42 to effectively turn away anyone at the border (thus remained in place until almost the end of the Biden administration, turning around 2.8 million people away in the process). Project 2025 wants to enact Title 42 again, except the emergency this time isn’t a public health crisis, but rather a declaration of “loss of operational control over the border”. The people allowed to come through the border would be ones who go through “premium processing” AKA pay more to jump the line and enter the country. On top of this, it is recommended that the Department of Labor phase out the H-2A visa, which allows hundreds of thousands of seasonal farmworkers to enter the United States on temporary visas. The H-1B, a visa for specialized workers that is often used in the tech industry would be narrowed as well. Finally, by declaring illegal immigration to be an “invasion”, the authors of Project 2025 argue that the military could be deployed to the border and skirt around the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act which prevents the usage of the military for domestic law enforcement.
This will be a two pronged attack: while one element of Project 2025’s plan seeks to prevent as many migrants as possible from crossing the border, the other side of the plan also seeks to deport as many people as possible. Step 1 will be to remove Temporary Protected Status, which grants people escaping wars, natural disasters, or other large-scale disasters the right to live and work in the United States (Trump removed this in February, and there are around 850,000 people in the U.S. who this could potentially effect). ”Expedited removal” allows immigration officers to deport people without any hearing or trials and is currently only allowed to be used within 100 miles of the border; unsurprisingly, Project 2025 wants it to be expanded across the entire United States. On top of this, they want to change guidelines that currently prevent ICE agents from arresting people in sensitive locations like schools, hospitals, or religious sites.
The agenda for the economy
The goal for their economic policies is pretty much your standard right-wing fair: increased privatization and more tax cuts for the rich/large corporations. The section in Project 2025 on tariffs is interesting only because the authors debate each other on whether Trump’s tariff policy is a good idea or not, showing that even the rightwing of capital is unsure of the strategic value of the tariff. Besides this, they uniformly want to de-regulate banking/the financial sector as well as pass laws making it harder to unionize and easier to break unions.
The agenda for energy
Project 2025 is pretty blatantly in the pockets of the fossil fuel industries. Anything that suggests climate change is real, alternative renewable energy sources need to be invested in, or that oil is not going to last is actually an “unprovoked war on fossil fuels” by progressives. Therefore, Project 2025 believes that the U.S. should immediately abandon all governmental efforts to combat climate change and instead funnel that funding into the fossil fuel industry while simultaneously decreasing any regulations/environmental protections that might disincentivize drilling. Project 2025 proposes closing the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy, withdrawing all climate-change-related work at the U.S. Agency for International Development, and pulling the plug on federal funding to research carbon capture. In one of its dumbest/goofiest proposals, Project 2025 argues for the wholesale privatization of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, whose weather forecasts millions of Americans rely on every day. When it comes to electric cars, the authors also want to reverse any laws, subsidies, or regulations that privilege them. When it comes to public transport, the authors believe private alternatives such as ride-sharing services should be given greater priority .
The agenda for China
Much like the conservatives who came to power under Reagan, the Trumpists of Project 2025 see themselves as warriors in a two-front struggle. The Reaganites believed they were fighting the USSR abroad as well as their internal allies/useful idiots in the United States (liberals); MAGAites believed they are fighting a near-holy war abroad against China while also having to battle the forces of ‘wokeness’ (again, liberals) internally. Both sides believed the liberals in this country had weakened the U.S and its ability to fight America’s supposed foreign enemies; a new conservative ideology of toughness needed to be implemented via a cultural revolution to correct for the weaknesses of liberals. Overall, the plans outlined in Project 2025 would greatly increase the pentagon budget and defense spending, which shows that the authors are in the pockets of the military-industrial-complex (much like they are with the fossil fuel conglomerates). In what they describe as a “generational struggle”, the authors call for “corporate America, technology companies, research institutions, and academia” to combat China in “this generational fight to protect our national security interests, economic interests, national sovereignty, and intellectual property,”.
Although divided on how to deal with Russia, Project 2025 seems quite coherent on its other extremely aggressive foreign policy maneuvers: South Korea should be protected via U.S nuclear deterrence against North Korea, but should have to handle the other aspects of defense by itself; India should be used as a bulwark against China in Asia; a hard line must be taken against Iran starting with harsher sanctions; Saudi Arabia should be integrated into an even tighter alliance with the U.S.; and finally a higher priority should be placed on forcing through structural adjustment/free market fundamentalist programs into Latin America to combat its Pink Tide.
Project 2025 is a policy proposal document created by The Heritage Foundation which wants to promote a steroid-infused neoliberalism in American and make this more palatable to the various strands of American right-wingers by simultaneously promoting white Christian nationalism. To do this they set out to use Trump as a Bonapartist figure that the right can coalesce around, and in turn he can help put Hertigate-approved right-wingers in positions of power throughout various government offices. This is not the first important blueprint the Heritage foundation has created for a conservative president; in 1980 they wrote a proposal called Mandate for Leadership which was widely implemented by the Reagan administration. This “manifesto of the Reagan Revolution” apparently had 60% of its recommendations implemented by Reagan’s government during his first year in office.
To regain its influence on presidential policy today, the Hertiage Foundation intentionally looked outside its organization to gather a wide range of converservatives that contributed to the Project 2025 document. Most authors of the blueprint have held or currently hold positions of power within one of the Trump administrations, further proving that Project 2025 could very well be implemented to a certain degree (and in some respects it already has). This isn’t just a policy proposal document, however, but a blueprint for a coherent and thorough political strategy to put MAGA-conservatives into power and keep them there. At the highest level, this strategy seeks to move more power into the executive branch to circumvent congress and any checks on Trump’s power. To do so, it seeks to staff the federal government with appointees who are ideologically committed to the MAGA movement, then properly train them into more effective political operatives. The Heritage foundation created a database of tens of thousands of potential candidates for this process and then produced around 30 training sessions to better train these candidates (courses included “Conservative Governence 101” and “The Administrative State and Regulatory Process”). Next, Project 2025 wants to convert more government roles into political appointees whose office holders leave at the end of an administration rather than being held by career officials, further allowing Trump to staff positions with cronies rather than having to deal with career bureaucrats. Finally, Russell Vought (the main architect of Project 2025) has openly called for terrifying current civil servants, saying “we want to put them in trauma” in order to either run them out of office or scare them into obedience. The first Trump administration faced both external resistance from Democrats as well as internal resistance from Republicans; these political proposals seek to circumvent such resistance for Trump’s second term.
The agenda for sex, sexual orientation, and the family
The minds behind Project 2025 want to create an America where abortion is illegal, sex is closely policed and kept between a man and a woman, public schools don’t exist, and punishment for any infraction of these is harsh. Accordingly, the authors write that their biggest priority is to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.”, and above all this must be done by banning abortion. If abortion remains legal, then it should be heavily monitored: “Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism, HHS [United States Department for Health and Human services; an executive branch department created to protect the health of U.S citizens] should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method”. The strategy here would be to either intimidate women who get abortions in liberal states, or eventually allow the federal government to prosecute women who reside in abortion-free states but traveled across state lines to get a legal abortion. Beyond abortion, the authors of Project 2025 want the federal government to ensure that abstinence-only programs should be the only sexual health programs eligible for federal funding. Also, pornography should be completely banned and “the people who promote and distribute it should be imprisoned”.
“Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society,”, therefore, the federal government should fund organizations which promote “a biblically based, social-science-reinforced definition of marriage and family”. The authors believe that other familial structures are less stable, and they back this claim with a completely made-up statistic that, according to which, “the average length of same-sex marriages is half that of heterosexual marriages”. Heterosexual marriages which want to procreate and produce more (hopefully white) children should be encouraged by enlisting churches to “provide marriage and parental guidance for low-income fathers.”. Unsurprisingly, the man will be the undisputed authority of the household that Project 2025 seeks to build, and through these church-backed educational programs and tax incentives, the goal would be to encourage the proliferation of male-dominated homes where the man is the breadwinner and the wife is the subservient mother and housekeeper.
Unsurprisingly, when it comes to trans people, Project 2025 seeks to attack them as much as legally possible. Trump has already implemented some of this; he has explicitly stated that the federal government should only recognize two sexes and that feral funding should be barred for gender-affirming care. This should be further expanded, according to Project 2025, to the point of rescinding any legal rules which prohibit hiring discrimination on the basis of someone’s sexuality, gender orientation, or sexual characteristics.
The agenda for education
The ultimate goal for education is to eliminate public schooling. Directly citing Milton Friedman, the authors of Project 2025 want taxpayer money to be given to families in the form of vouchers or savings accounts that they can spend on private/religious schooling; this would obviously bleed the public school system of funding and further erode it. This would work in tandem with the Department of Education loosening restrictions on charter schools and alternative schooling. The long term goal would also be to eliminate the department of education in general. As of today,, the DOE sends funds to state/local school systems with somewhat loose strings attached about what these systems curriculum is to be. The authors of Project 2025 would close the DOE but keep the money flowing; “Existing funding should be sent to states as grants over which they have full control, enabling states to put federal funding toward any lawful education purpose under state law,”. This would probably mean vast disparities in schooling between red and blue states, where Dem states might keep their systems more or less the same but Republican ones might turn schooling over to religious groups or other private organizations. It would stand to reason that miseducation in the form of backwards teachings on science, racism, and how the world works in general would become even worse than today.
The agenda for healthcare
The goal for healthcare is to make the entire system more privatized. The authors believe that Medicare should be privatized further by making Medicare Advantage (allows seniors enrolled to choose between a set of private insurance plans that the government then pays for) the default option, despite the fact that the government’s own research finds no evidence this provides better care than traditional Medicare while also costing taxpayers more money. Obviously, Medicade itself needs to be cut wherever, have the benefits offered reduced, and added work requirements to be eligible wherever possible in order to”disincentivize permanent dependence”; the authors don’t explain how to reduce dependence on someone whose life depends on certain forms of care but you can probably take a guess what they think should happen to people with disabilities.
Project 2025 on race and racism
Project 2025 wants to get rid of any DEI programs wherever they can throughout the government, and beyond that it seeks to use The Equal Opportuniry and Employment Commission to “reorient its enforcement priorities toward claims of failure to accommodate disability, religion, and pregnancy (but not abortion).” The administration would lobby Congress to prohibit the EEOC from collecting any data on race in employment in order to make racial disparities or discrimination on the job invisible. In fact, the authors argue that “disparities do not (and should not legally) imply discrimination per se.” The commission would make clear that its guidance is purely advisory, not legally binding. Using the Depertment of Education, the Trump administration will attempt to ban teaching CRT, which will probably mean banning a wide array of any discussions about race, racism, and discrimination in general (which has occured already when these bans were enacted at the state level like in Florida).
The agenda for immigration
In Trump’s first term he had more apprehensions at the border but less total deportations than the Obama administration; this was clearly not cruel enough for the authors of Project 2025. When the COVID pandemic effected global travel, Trump used this as an opportunity to enact Title 42 to effectively turn away anyone at the border (thus remained in place until almost the end of the Biden administration, turning around 2.8 million people away in the process). Project 2025 wants to enact Title 42 again, except the emergency this time isn’t a public health crisis, but rather a declaration of “loss of operational control over the border”. The people allowed to come through the border would be ones who go through “premium processing” AKA pay more to jump the line and enter the country. On top of this, it is recommended that the Department of Labor phase out the H-2A visa, which allows hundreds of thousands of seasonal farmworkers to enter the United States on temporary visas. The H-1B, a visa for specialized workers that is often used in the tech industry would be narrowed as well. Finally, by declaring illegal immigration to be an “invasion”, the authors of Project 2025 argue that the military could be deployed to the border and skirt around the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act which prevents the usage of the military for domestic law enforcement.
This will be a two pronged attack: while one element of Project 2025’s plan seeks to prevent as many migrants as possible from crossing the border, the other side of the plan also seeks to deport as many people as possible. Step 1 will be to remove Temporary Protected Status, which grants people escaping wars, natural disasters, or other large-scale disasters the right to live and work in the United States (Trump removed this in February, and there are around 850,000 people in the U.S. who this could potentially effect). ”Expedited removal” allows immigration officers to deport people without any hearing or trials and is currently only allowed to be used within 100 miles of the border; unsurprisingly, Project 2025 wants it to be expanded across the entire United States. On top of this, they want to change guidelines that currently prevent ICE agents from arresting people in sensitive locations like schools, hospitals, or religious sites.
The agenda for the economy
The goal for their economic policies is pretty much your standard right-wing fair: increased privatization and more tax cuts for the rich/large corporations. The section in Project 2025 on tariffs is interesting only because the authors debate each other on whether Trump’s tariff policy is a good idea or not, showing that even the rightwing of capital is unsure of the strategic value of the tariff. Besides this, they uniformly want to de-regulate banking/the financial sector as well as pass laws making it harder to unionize and easier to break unions.
The agenda for energy
Project 2025 is pretty blatantly in the pockets of the fossil fuel industries. Anything that suggests climate change is real, alternative renewable energy sources need to be invested in, or that oil is not going to last is actually an “unprovoked war on fossil fuels” by progressives. Therefore, Project 2025 believes that the U.S. should immediately abandon all governmental efforts to combat climate change and instead funnel that funding into the fossil fuel industry while simultaneously decreasing any regulations/environmental protections that might disincentivize drilling. Project 2025 proposes closing the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy, withdrawing all climate-change-related work at the U.S. Agency for International Development, and pulling the plug on federal funding to research carbon capture. In one of its dumbest/goofiest proposals, Project 2025 argues for the wholesale privatization of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, whose weather forecasts millions of Americans rely on every day. When it comes to electric cars, the authors also want to reverse any laws, subsidies, or regulations that privilege them. When it comes to public transport, the authors believe private alternatives such as ride-sharing services should be given greater priority .
The agenda for China
Much like the conservatives who came to power under Reagan, the Trumpists of Project 2025 see themselves as warriors in a two-front struggle. The Reaganites believed they were fighting the USSR abroad as well as their internal allies/useful idiots in the United States (liberals); MAGAites believed they are fighting a near-holy war abroad against China while also having to battle the forces of ‘wokeness’ (again, liberals) internally. Both sides believed the liberals in this country had weakened the U.S and its ability to fight America’s supposed foreign enemies; a new conservative ideology of toughness needed to be implemented via a cultural revolution to correct for the weaknesses of liberals. Overall, the plans outlined in Project 2025 would greatly increase the pentagon budget and defense spending, which shows that the authors are in the pockets of the military-industrial-complex (much like they are with the fossil fuel conglomerates). In what they describe as a “generational struggle”, the authors call for “corporate America, technology companies, research institutions, and academia” to combat China in “this generational fight to protect our national security interests, economic interests, national sovereignty, and intellectual property,”.
Although divided on how to deal with Russia, Project 2025 seems quite coherent on its other extremely aggressive foreign policy maneuvers: South Korea should be protected via U.S nuclear deterrence against North Korea, but should have to handle the other aspects of defense by itself; India should be used as a bulwark against China in Asia; a hard line must be taken against Iran starting with harsher sanctions; Saudi Arabia should be integrated into an even tighter alliance with the U.S.; and finally a higher priority should be placed on forcing through structural adjustment/free market fundamentalist programs into Latin America to combat its Pink Tide.
August 31, 2025
3.75 Stars ----
This is both a good guide to Project 2025 and a bad one at the same time.
It is quite short and concise. I would have preferred a much longer and in-depth review of the project and how it will affect America, the people and the world. I think it may be good for people who don't really know anything about what Project 2025 is trying to achieve. At the same time, it does require some prior political knowledge, so not the best for beginners, but not the best for experts/professionals either, but I'm sure there is an audience in between those two expertise levels that this is perfect for. If you follow American politics, you will likely already know everything in this book, as I did.
In terms of the content, Project 2025 is written by absolute buffons who clearly have no idea how the world works. They want a return to traditional family values, and think all women should be having children and raising a family, but at the same time want to remove all social support. They want further privatise healthcare, yet again want more people to have more children. They want to take away food stamps and get more people to join the military, yet ignore the FACT that veterans are one of the groups at highest risk of homelessness and poverty after their service. They want to remove all climate change initiatives and remove all restrictions on harmful chemical use (PFAS and florohydrocarbons aka what caused the hole in the ozone). They want companies and Christian straight white men to have more freedom while simultaneously taking away the freedoms of every single other group. They don't care about science; they only care about what their version of the Bible says. So much for the land of the free.
It was infuriating reading the hypocrisy. I wanted to scream and pull my hair out.
I understand the author is a journalist and wants to remain neutral. If you're neutral (or non-political), you are taking the side of the oppressor. I wanted more pushback, I wanted data and science to juxtapose the lunacy.
If you're a fellow Australian and are interested in American politics - I recommend 'Planet America' with Dr John Barron and Chaz Licciardello on the ABC (also available on youtube). It does a perfect job of covering American politics with FACTS and PUSHBACK (everything I wanted from this book)!!!!
This is both a good guide to Project 2025 and a bad one at the same time.
It is quite short and concise. I would have preferred a much longer and in-depth review of the project and how it will affect America, the people and the world. I think it may be good for people who don't really know anything about what Project 2025 is trying to achieve. At the same time, it does require some prior political knowledge, so not the best for beginners, but not the best for experts/professionals either, but I'm sure there is an audience in between those two expertise levels that this is perfect for. If you follow American politics, you will likely already know everything in this book, as I did.
In terms of the content, Project 2025 is written by absolute buffons who clearly have no idea how the world works. They want a return to traditional family values, and think all women should be having children and raising a family, but at the same time want to remove all social support. They want further privatise healthcare, yet again want more people to have more children. They want to take away food stamps and get more people to join the military, yet ignore the FACT that veterans are one of the groups at highest risk of homelessness and poverty after their service. They want to remove all climate change initiatives and remove all restrictions on harmful chemical use (PFAS and florohydrocarbons aka what caused the hole in the ozone). They want companies and Christian straight white men to have more freedom while simultaneously taking away the freedoms of every single other group. They don't care about science; they only care about what their version of the Bible says. So much for the land of the free.
It was infuriating reading the hypocrisy. I wanted to scream and pull my hair out.
I understand the author is a journalist and wants to remain neutral. If you're neutral (or non-political), you are taking the side of the oppressor. I wanted more pushback, I wanted data and science to juxtapose the lunacy.
If you're a fellow Australian and are interested in American politics - I recommend 'Planet America' with Dr John Barron and Chaz Licciardello on the ABC (also available on youtube). It does a perfect job of covering American politics with FACTS and PUSHBACK (everything I wanted from this book)!!!!
August 17, 2025
Just some light Sunday reading 😵💫
June 2, 2025
I read this after it was recommended on Ezra Klein's podcast. This book is good, the problem is there is no audience for it. If you're the sort of person who would pick up this book, you already know all the information in it. If you don't know much about Project 2025 I'm guessing you're not interested in this book either.
July 13, 2025
If you are not in a masochistic enough mood to read the 900-page version of the current administration’s Project 2025, then I suggest you read David A. Graham’s excellent study-notes condensation called The Project: How Project 2025 is Reshaping America. Graham, a staff writer for The Atlantic, does a nice job of summarizing the key points in less that a quarter of the pages of the original, in addition to which, Graham’s book is just about pocket-sized.
In Section 1, “The Ways and Means,” Graham describes how Project 2025 will reinvent what government does and specify how government does it. The latter will be accomplished by wresting power from Congress and weaponizing “obscure parts of the executive branch, including the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Presidential Personnel, and the Department of Justice.”
Under the umbrella term, “The Agenda,” Section 2 describes the necessary radical policies to be implemented with the administration’s new-found powers. Graham explains “the most notable and important changes” in the areas of Gender, Family, and Rights; Immigration and Border Security; Economy and Trade; Environment and Energy; and Foreign Policy and Defense.
An extract from Gender, Family, and Rights clearly encapsulates the desired goal of Project 2025. Graham states: “With a little imagination, we can glimpse what it would look like to live in the America where, as Kevin Roberts has it, we are free to do as we ought—or rather, as Roberts and his coauthors believe we ought. It is an avowedly Christian nation, but following a very specific, narrow, and modern strain of Christianity. In many ways, it resembles the 1950s. While fathers work, mothers stay at home with larger families; that’s lucky, since there’s no educational TV for children to watch. At school, they learn old-fashioned values and lessons. Abortion is illegal, vaccines are voluntary, and the state is minimally involved in healthcare. The government is slow to police radical discrimination in all but its most blatant expressions. Trans and gay people exist—they always have—but are encouraged to remain closeted. It is a vision that suggests Reagan was right: freedom really is a fragile thing.”
The ambitions of Project 2025 have been variously labeled as “a JFK-type moment,” “a real renaissance,” and “a second American Revolution,” and the implementers are signaling that they will brook no interference, that the “revolution will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” The changes being wrought are not temporary; they are not intended to run for one traditional presidential term of four years. People will recall Trump saying, “In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”
If that is not the rise of authoritarianism to displace democracy, it’s difficult to know what is. If Graham intended to sound a call for action, I’m not sure I saw it, or that it lingered in my mind. Nevertheless, The Project is a great way to be educated and informed about the grim future America faces, grim for the have-nots as the gap will begin to widen between them and the haves.
In Section 1, “The Ways and Means,” Graham describes how Project 2025 will reinvent what government does and specify how government does it. The latter will be accomplished by wresting power from Congress and weaponizing “obscure parts of the executive branch, including the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Presidential Personnel, and the Department of Justice.”
Under the umbrella term, “The Agenda,” Section 2 describes the necessary radical policies to be implemented with the administration’s new-found powers. Graham explains “the most notable and important changes” in the areas of Gender, Family, and Rights; Immigration and Border Security; Economy and Trade; Environment and Energy; and Foreign Policy and Defense.
An extract from Gender, Family, and Rights clearly encapsulates the desired goal of Project 2025. Graham states: “With a little imagination, we can glimpse what it would look like to live in the America where, as Kevin Roberts has it, we are free to do as we ought—or rather, as Roberts and his coauthors believe we ought. It is an avowedly Christian nation, but following a very specific, narrow, and modern strain of Christianity. In many ways, it resembles the 1950s. While fathers work, mothers stay at home with larger families; that’s lucky, since there’s no educational TV for children to watch. At school, they learn old-fashioned values and lessons. Abortion is illegal, vaccines are voluntary, and the state is minimally involved in healthcare. The government is slow to police radical discrimination in all but its most blatant expressions. Trans and gay people exist—they always have—but are encouraged to remain closeted. It is a vision that suggests Reagan was right: freedom really is a fragile thing.”
The ambitions of Project 2025 have been variously labeled as “a JFK-type moment,” “a real renaissance,” and “a second American Revolution,” and the implementers are signaling that they will brook no interference, that the “revolution will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” The changes being wrought are not temporary; they are not intended to run for one traditional presidential term of four years. People will recall Trump saying, “In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”
If that is not the rise of authoritarianism to displace democracy, it’s difficult to know what is. If Graham intended to sound a call for action, I’m not sure I saw it, or that it lingered in my mind. Nevertheless, The Project is a great way to be educated and informed about the grim future America faces, grim for the have-nots as the gap will begin to widen between them and the haves.
June 8, 2025
The Project von David A. Graham ist ein sachlich zugespitzter Beitrag zum gegenwärtigen politischen Diskurs in den USA. Als kompakte Analyse der konservativen Agenda, wie sie in „Project 2025“ ausgearbeitet wurde, vermittelt das Buch in zugänglicher Form, was bei einer Rückkehr Donald Trumps ins Präsidentenamt politisch konkret auf dem Spiel steht.
Graham erläutert, welche politischen und administrativen Umstrukturierungen konservative Think-Tanks planen, um in einer zweiten Amtszeit schnell und umfassend Macht im Staat zu konzentrieren – etwa durch eine Schwächung unabhängiger Behörden, massive Personalumbauten oder restriktive Sozial- und Einwanderungspolitik.
Stilistisch bleibt Graham präzise, journalistisch klar und weitgehend neutral. Er stellt dar, ohne zu polemisieren – ein klarer Vorteil für Leser, die sich eine fundierte Meinungsbildung wünschen. Das Buch profitiert von seiner Konzentration: Es verzichtet auf Breite zugunsten analytischer Tiefe und Kontextualisierung. Gleichzeitig bleibt es zugänglich, auch für Leser ohne detaillierte Vorkenntnisse des amerikanischen Regierungssystems.
Was besonders überzeugt, ist die klare Trennung von Fakt und Meinung: Graham liefert gut belegte Informationen, stellt Zusammenhänge her und überlässt das Urteil den Leserinnen und Lesern. Wer politische Diskussionen auf sachlicher Basis führen möchte, findet hier eine verlässliche Grundlage.
Ein informatives, konzentriertes Sachbuch mit hoher politischer Relevanz – nüchtern, aber nicht kalt. Kein Text für Empörung, sondern für Verstehen.
Graham erläutert, welche politischen und administrativen Umstrukturierungen konservative Think-Tanks planen, um in einer zweiten Amtszeit schnell und umfassend Macht im Staat zu konzentrieren – etwa durch eine Schwächung unabhängiger Behörden, massive Personalumbauten oder restriktive Sozial- und Einwanderungspolitik.
Stilistisch bleibt Graham präzise, journalistisch klar und weitgehend neutral. Er stellt dar, ohne zu polemisieren – ein klarer Vorteil für Leser, die sich eine fundierte Meinungsbildung wünschen. Das Buch profitiert von seiner Konzentration: Es verzichtet auf Breite zugunsten analytischer Tiefe und Kontextualisierung. Gleichzeitig bleibt es zugänglich, auch für Leser ohne detaillierte Vorkenntnisse des amerikanischen Regierungssystems.
Was besonders überzeugt, ist die klare Trennung von Fakt und Meinung: Graham liefert gut belegte Informationen, stellt Zusammenhänge her und überlässt das Urteil den Leserinnen und Lesern. Wer politische Diskussionen auf sachlicher Basis führen möchte, findet hier eine verlässliche Grundlage.
Ein informatives, konzentriertes Sachbuch mit hoher politischer Relevanz – nüchtern, aber nicht kalt. Kein Text für Empörung, sondern für Verstehen.
August 26, 2025
Where do I even start? How about the fact that when you step away from it for a second and peice it all together you see the absolute destruction of a nation. This nearly 1000 page “book” is absolutely disgusting in the way it romanticizes white supremacy and a patriarchal forward world. The way that the inner workings of an economy are blatantly ignored shows the pain this will bring to families and people who are in a more difficult financial situation. I cannot stress enough how this “agenda” will ultimately become the demise of the USA. We are officially 47% through the actual goals of this and look where we stand. The parallels of a dystopian society is eating away at the foundation of the States themselves. When you take your eyes away from the small words and few headline you like you can see what is actually happening. I hope you’re happy. I will say reading this was beneficial to understand the situation you have gotten us into. But it does not stop what has already started.
July 23, 2025
A short book covering the major policies contained within the Project 2025 manifesto. I’ve been reading through that manifesto myself for the last couple of months, and while the author states that he cannot overstate how unhinged some of the rhetoric is, he still does not quite capture how really and truly unhinged many sections sound. I understand that this is a policy book and not necessarily meant to poke holes in the document itself, but the manifesto is also rife with lack of citations, circular citations, or incredibly cherry picked statements for the few citations that actually lead somewhere. Definitely a great way to understand Project 2025 but I also recommend reading through the original document for the language used because it’s just so much.
May 6, 2025
This was a wild read almost as if the author had handwritten all of 2025’s news headlines a year ago. Trump’s admin is 100% line by line implementing Project 2025. And honestly I get no sense that they give a rip about Trump. He’s a charismatic leader who has an entire army of Heritage Foundation acolytes feeding him his actions. When he goes off the rails, his admin sighs but they put up with it because it’s getting them what they want.
June 4, 2025
David A Graham read all 900+ pages of Project 2025 so we don't have too. (But of course we can if needed/want to). For all the Cheeto disavowed Project 2025, this is the playbook of the 2nd administration. It's awful for anyone not white, male, and Christian (conservative).
If able, please plan on attending a nationwide protest June 14th. There is a high choice there is one close by.
Helpful links:
https://www.fiftyfifty.one/
https://www.womensmarch.com/
If able, please plan on attending a nationwide protest June 14th. There is a high choice there is one close by.
Helpful links:
https://www.fiftyfifty.one/
https://www.womensmarch.com/
July 26, 2025
Project 2025 is the incestuous child of far-right think tanks and no author has ever made that more clear than David A. Graham. While the ludicrous ideas held in the project are not ones that need to be deciphered (right-wing quacks hardly ever hide their bigotry anymore), Graham’s journalistic approach to connecting the ideas in Project 2025, the people that came up with those ideas, and ways they have already been implemented is concise and helpful.
If you have any doubt about what Project 2025 is, and how terrible it is, read this book.
If you have any doubt about what Project 2025 is, and how terrible it is, read this book.
May 4, 2025
A comprehensive review of Project 2025, giving attention to all facets. Worthwhile read, especially if one doesn’t have the ability to tackle it in its entirety.The historical contexts were appreciated in seeing the picture as a whole.
June 27, 2025
This is the most frightening book I have ever read. Many of these horrific ideas have already been implemented within 5 months of orange’s reign! It rolls back our country to 1920s mentality, morality, ignorance, racism, misogyny and poverty. WHY?
May 10, 2025
An interesting look at Project 2025, imo marred by bias and the omission of in-text references. It made it hard to track sources and legitimacy. The mix of referenced texts from different eras also made it hard to determine what was actually in the text and what was in other manifestos from other times. Not the neutral read I was hoping for, though interesting and provocative, sure.
June 9, 2025
Remember when everyone said project 2025 was just fear monger?
It’s almost all happening.
It’s almost all happening.
July 2, 2025
good overview.
July 24, 2025
Excellent and informative recap of Project 2025 (saves people from reading all 922 pages). I would have rated this 5 stars but the book just ends without a conclusion from the author.
May 10, 2025
A clear simplified overview of Project 2025.
Nothing was earth shattering in here that I wasn’t already aware of. It was interesting to note that even with different authors of Project 2025. THEY couldn’t even agree on certain things. Basically the world is on fire and everyone thinks they are in charge and in reality no one is. Chaos is the name of the game.
Nothing was earth shattering in here that I wasn’t already aware of. It was interesting to note that even with different authors of Project 2025. THEY couldn’t even agree on certain things. Basically the world is on fire and everyone thinks they are in charge and in reality no one is. Chaos is the name of the game.
May 28, 2025
Picked this up at the airport and really glad I did - nice overview of project 2025 and interesting to read about things that are (or have been) implemented
July 25, 2025
Important read
August 27, 2025
I read through this quickly to get a sense of its scope. Now, I’m reading it again and taking notes on a page by page basis. Candidly, it’s overwhelming trying to fit all this into my head; I haven’t been an especially political person in the past—even at times when I should have been more informed.
Early this year, with the Orangutan taking office, I wanted to be politically aware and alert. I’ve done alright, but I’ll admit that with the sheer amount of ludicrous policy change, I’ve started to lose the plot.
Enter The Project. It was a chance for me to get clarity and refocus my energy on understanding and combatting this administration as best I can.
Graham writes, “Project 2025 is the skeleton key for understanding the second Trump presidency—as well as the future of the Republican Party and the American right.” That’s exactly what I was looking for, a skeleton key. Maybe I’ll get around to reading the primary text too, but for now The Project will more than suffice.
Early this year, with the Orangutan taking office, I wanted to be politically aware and alert. I’ve done alright, but I’ll admit that with the sheer amount of ludicrous policy change, I’ve started to lose the plot.
Enter The Project. It was a chance for me to get clarity and refocus my energy on understanding and combatting this administration as best I can.
Graham writes, “Project 2025 is the skeleton key for understanding the second Trump presidency—as well as the future of the Republican Party and the American right.” That’s exactly what I was looking for, a skeleton key. Maybe I’ll get around to reading the primary text too, but for now The Project will more than suffice.
Read
September 1, 2025Too late for any of this to be a warning, and some current policies are already worse than those in the book, but that’s not the author’s fault. I think the book would have had better longevity if it had looked closer at the broader historical context of the Project 2025 ideologies and approaches, but that wasn’t the purpose of the book. Also certainly a biased voice, but it’s hard not to be biased when talking about evil morons hellbent on ruining the world.
September 15, 2025
3.25 this is a pretty comprehensive overview of project 2025. I wish certain chapters had a little bit more of the topics expanded upon, such as the chapter on climate change.
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