“Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links.”
What will a new presidency of Donald Trump look like? The president-elect has given us a pretty good idea, laying out the government’s goals in a platform called Agenda 47
At the same time, the Heritage Foundation, one of Washington’s most prominent right-wing think tanks, put together a nearly 900-page blueprint for how it plans to push the U.S. government and society toward the far right, called Project 2025. The public research group policy began in 1981, when Ronald Reagan was about to take office, with the drafting of policy plans for Republican administrations, and it happened again this year, during the Trump campaign.
Although Trump has repeatedly denied any connection to the Heritage Foundation or Project 2025, more than 140 members of the previous Trump administration worked on it. Vance also has very close ties to the group and its members, with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts praising him and saying he is a ‘leader’ of the movement. Vance also wrote the foreword for Roberts’ new book, The early light of dawn.
Below, see the differences and similarities between Trump’s 2025 plan and Project 2025 on four key issues, and learn how the Republican’s second presidency will impact everyone.
Alex Wong – Getty Images
They both want to close the border.
Trump’s plan: Trump has vowed to lead the “largest deportation program in American history” once he reenters the White House in January 2025. Not only does he want to deport migrants who have crossed the border unlawfully (he and Vance have been unclear about whether this includes unaccompanied children), he also wants to kick out the Dreamers, reverse the Democrats’ “open borders” policy and stop the processing of thousands of asylum applications. He is also calling for a reduction in the legal immigration routes that migrants need to take to become U.S. residents or citizens.
Project 2025: The conservative group wants to restore “every rule regarding immigration that was issued” during Trump’s 2017-2021 administration. It calls on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to launch immediate and mass deportations across the country — even if that means raiding illegal immigrants at schools, hospitals and religious institutions.
It backs Trump in building a wall on the southern border and wants to militarize the border, expand immigrant detention centers, end protections for thousands of Dreamers and refugees, and allow state and local police officers to enforce federal immigration laws .
They both want to get rid of the Ministry of Education.
Trump’s plan: The president-elect wants to eliminate diversity programs at all levels of education and supports diverting funding from “any school or program that pushes critical race theory, gender ideology or other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content on our children.” He also wants to divert the money from private universities to an online platform “American Academy,” which he claims will provide “truly world-class education” and university degrees all Americans, free. “It will be strictly apolitical and there will be no wokeness or jihadism,” the winning candidate said.
Project 2025: The group calls on Congress to eliminate the Department of Education and what it has described as its overly progressive agenda and “return control of education to the states.” It supports ending federal funding for schools, eliminating the Head Start program (which provides education for young children from low-income families), and instead encouraging in-home childcare instead. This would not only result in hundreds of thousands of qualified teachers losing their jobs, but also in hundreds of thousands of children not receiving an appropriate education. Read more here.
They both want to limit rights for the LGBTQ+ community.
Trump’s plan: On transgender rights, Trump — who has falsely claimed, “Your child goes to school and comes home a few days later with surgery” — wants to end gender-affirming care for minors. He has said he will reverse President Joe Biden’s Title IX extension of protections for transgender students and pledged to allow only boys’ and girls’ sports in schools.
“We will take transgender madness out of our schools, and we will keep men out of women’s sports,” he said recently. Madison Square Garden meeting.
Project 2025: The plan is homophobic and transphobic and has outlined the belief that the government “should affirm that children need and deserve both the love and care of a mother and the play and protection of a father.”
It also wants to dismantle the Affordable Care Act’s protections against sex discrimination in health care.
Like Trump, the plan seeks to undo Biden’s Title IX rule, which protects young students (particularly gay students and girls) from discrimination in schools, and eliminate LGBTQ+ workplace discrimination protections under Title VII. It also wants all educators and platforms to stop supporting or even discussing “transgender ideology.” The group has said that teachers and public librarians who spread the concept of being transgender should be registered as sex offenders.
Like the Republican candidate, Project 2025 wants to impose incredibly strict restrictions on gender-affirming care, but it goes a step further and even accuses parents of trans children and doctors who perform gender-affirming surgeries of participating in “child abuse.” and ‘mutilation’. If the architects had their way, they would accept Medicaid funding from doctors who provide gender-affirming medical care to transadolescents.
The project also wants to criminalize pornography – something that Trump, who is currently fending off dozens of sexual abuse allegations, will certainly not go for.
They have different views on reproductive rights.
Trump’s plan: The country’s incoming president has gone back and forth on his views on reproductive rights and women’s freedoms, but he has been clear about one thing: He wants abortion access to be left to the states rather than made sealed as a constitutionally protected right. And while he remains steadfast in his efforts to help the Supreme Court fall over Roe v. Wade in 2022, he has said he will not sign a bill limiting women’s access to contraception.
Project 2025: The project takes a much tougher approach to women’s reproductive rights, especially abortion and contraception, than Trump. The group not only wants to impose impossibly strict restrictions on abortion and contraception, but is apparently against all sex that is not intended to cause a pregnancy. In one post shared on Xthe Heritage Foundation said that allowing women easy and free access to contraception would “return the effects of sex.” It wrote: “Conservatives must lead the way in restoring sex to its true purpose, and ending recreational sex and the meaningless use of birth control pills.”
It believes that the next conservative president “has a moral responsibility to lead the nation in restoring a culture of life to America.”
You might also like it