Who are the main organizations on Project 2025’s advisory board and what are their stated missions?
Executive summary
Project 2025’s advisory board is a broad coalition of more than 100 conservative organizations assembled and led by the Heritage Foundation to provide policy, personnel, and implementation support for a conservative presidential transition and administration [1] [2]. The advisory members range from establishment conservative think tanks to activist groups focused on immigration, education, family policy and legal strategies, each bringing a stated mission that aligns with shrinking federal authority, reshaping personnel, and advancing conservative social and economic priorities [3] [4].
1. Who convened the advisory board and why
The Heritage Foundation organized and funded Project 2025 and its advisory board as part of a four‑pillar effort—policy guides, a personnel database, a Presidential Administration Academy, and an implementation playbook—intended to prepare conservative appointees and translate policy ideas into administrative action [2]. FactCheck and other trackers note the advisory board includes over a hundred groups that the Heritage team says “helped form the project pillars,” while also disclaiming that not every partner necessarily endorses every recommendation in the Project’s documents [1] [2].
2. Major categories of advisory organizations and their stated missions
The advisory board includes civil‑society and policy organizations whose missions are often explicit: free‑market and limited‑government think tanks that promote “liberty, opportunity, and free enterprise” (e.g., Texas Public Policy Foundation) and groups that prioritize conservative legal advocacy such as Alliance Defending Freedom and America First Legal, which frame their work as defending religious liberty, free speech, and conservative interpretations of law [3] [4]. Education and family‑focused organizations like Moms for Liberty and the American Principles Project emphasize parental control of schooling and oppose curricular or cultural initiatives they view as liberal, while groups such as the American Accountability Foundation and 1792 Exchange focus on personnel, vetting, and replacing federal officials to align agencies with conservative priorities [3] [4] [1].
3. Immigration, regulatory rollback, and personnel networks
Several advisory members center on immigration restriction (e.g., Center for Immigration Studies) and legal strategies to defend or extend conservative policies; Project 2025’s agenda calls for reinstating former Trump‑era rules and reorganizing immigration operations—an area where these groups’ missions directly overlap with the project’s recommendations [1]. Equally central is a personnel pipeline: the project’s database and training academy are meant to prepare conservative appointees to implement sweeping regulatory changes and reorganizations of agencies, reflecting the Heritage Foundation’s stated goal of turning future appointees into “experts in governmental effectiveness” [2] [1].
4. Critics, alternative readings, and hidden agendas
Democracy Forward, the ACLU and other critics portray the advisory board as a coalition whose stated missions mask an aggressive effort to roll back civil‑rights protections, weaken labor and consumer enforcement, and curtail access to reproductive and LGBTQ+ health care, arguing those outcomes are embedded in the Project’s policy prescriptions [5] [6]. Project 2025 defenders and some advisory groups say they are preparing to restore conservative governance and re‑orient federal institutions toward limited government and constitutional fidelity—language Project 2025 and many partner organizations use to describe their goals—yet reporting shows the project explicitly recommends abolishing or shrinking agencies and maximizing political appointee roles, which reveals the operational agenda behind the missions these groups state publicly [2] [1].
5. Practical significance and limits of public reporting
Public lists and copies of advisory bios (including a compiled advisory PDF and multiple journalism trackers) establish who sits on the board and what many groups say they do, but source materials also include caveats: Project 2025 says advisory partners do not necessarily endorse every policy in the Mandate for Leadership, and some organizations have disputed or nuanced their association publicly [4] [1]. Reporters and watchdogs have documented substantial ideological alignment between many advisory members and the Project’s recommendations, but complete mapping of each organization’s operational role—how they contributed to specific chapters, personnel vetting, or executive‑order drafting—remains partially opaque in the public record [3] [7].