Project 2025 was created by the Heritage Foundation think-tank and runs for nearly 900 pages.
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Led by former Trump administration officials, it calls for the sacking of thousands of civil servants, expanding the power of the president, dismantling the Department of Education, sweeping tax cuts, a ban on pornography, halting sales of the abortion pill, and a whole lot more.
There is substantial agreement between many parts of the official Republican Party platform and Project 2025, although the think-tank document is much more detailed and in some policy areas and goes much farther than the party line.
There is a sharper contrast between the two when it comes to the issue of abortion, with Heritage urging much more aggressive anti-abortion policies.
Democrats have highlighted Project 2025’s more controversial proposals, and called the document a blueprint for a second Trump term in office. However, Trump and his campaign have denied or downplayed its influence.
What Links Project 2025 And The Trump Campaign?
The Project 2025 report was unveiled in April 2023, but liberal opposition to the document has ramped up now that Trump has extended his polling lead.
Recent US Supreme Court decisions that have strengthened presidential immunity and curtailed the power of federal agencies have further worried Democrats about what Trump might achieve if he returned to the White House.
With Mr Biden’s age increasingly a key election topic, the party has aimed to refocus their supporters’ attention in an effort to mobilise voters against Project 2025 – which Mr Biden recently said would “destroy America”.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump posted on his social media website, Truth Social. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”
Government
Project 2025 proposes that the entire federal bureaucracy, including independent agencies such as the Department of Justice, be placed under direct presidential control – a controversial idea known as “unitary executive theory”.
In practice, that would streamline decision-making, allowing the president to directly implement policies in a number of areas.
Immigration
Increased funding for a wall on the US-Mexico border – one of Trump’s signature proposals in 2016 – is proposed in the document.
Project 2025 also proposes dismantling the Department of Homeland Security and combining it with other immigration enforcement units in other agencies, creating a much larger and more powerful border policing operation.
Climate And Economy
The document proposes slashing federal money for research and investment in renewable energy, and calls for the next president to “stop the war on oil and natural gas”.
Carbon-reduction goals would be replaced by efforts to increase energy production and energy security.
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