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What Is Project 2025, and Why Did Trump Disavow It at the Debate?
Democrats have attacked Donald J. Trump’s ties to the conservative policy plan that would amass power in the executive branch. He has distanced himself from it, and claimed that “I’m not going to read it.”
Former President Donald J. Trump has gone to great lengths to distance himself from Project 2025, a set of conservative policy proposals for a future Republican administration that has outraged Democrats. He has claimed he knows nothing about it or the people involved in creating it.
“I’m not going to read it,” Mr. Trump said at his first presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris. “Everybody knows what I am going to do.”
Mr. Trump himself was not behind the project. But some of his allies were.
The document, its origins and the interplay between it and the Trump campaign have made for one of the most hotly debated questions of the 2024 race.
Here is what to know about Project 2025, and who is behind it.
What is Project 2025?
Project 2025 was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation and like-minded conservative groups before Mr. Trump officially entered the 2024 race. The Heritage Foundation is a think tank that has shaped the personnel and policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency.
The project was intended as a buffet of options for the Trump administration or any other Republican presidency. It’s the latest installment in the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership series, which has compiled conservative policy proposals every few years since 1981. But no previous study has been as sweeping in its recommendations — or as widely discussed.
Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation, which began putting together the latest document in 2022, said he thought the American government would embrace a more conservative era, one that he hoped Republicans would usher in.
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