What are the documented policy proposals from Project 2025 that current appointees are attempting to implement?
Executive summary
Project 2025 is a 900‑page "Mandate for Leadership" playbook from the Heritage Foundation that maps hundreds of conservative executive‑branch changes and personnel plans; in the first year of the current administration a large share of those ideas have been translated into presidential directives, agency actions, and key nominations, especially around politicizing the civil service, reshaping education and media policy, rolling back climate and diversity initiatives, and hardening immigration enforcement [1] [2] [3]. Independent trackers and advocacy groups say roughly half of Project 2025’s recommendations became administration policy or goals within the first 12 months, while other observers note selective adoption and ongoing legal, political, and technical constraints [3] [4].
1. Filling the federal workforce with political appointees — reclassifying career staff and Schedule F
Project 2025’s central personnel proposal is to strip civil‑service protections from thousands of career employees so they can be replaced by political appointees or loyalists; the administration has moved aggressively on this playbook by pursuing orders and rule changes designed to expand political hires and create pathways for replacing merit staff, a conversion that critics say would politicize everyday agency functions [2] [5] [6]. The Heritage authors and OMB operatives who helped draft the playbook occupy senior roles, and the ACLU and union groups have documented efforts led from within the administration to use OMB authority and executive actions to implement those staffing goals [7] [6].
2. Education and culture‑war shifts — shrinking Department of Education influence and overturning DEI/student policies
Project 2025 recommends drastically reducing the Department of Education’s role and using administrative levers to target diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and protections for transgender students; the administration has already rescinded Biden‑era student‑loan forgiveness, moved to withhold or review accreditations tied to DEI, and issued guidance favoring parental choice and rolling back protections for transgender and nonbinary students — steps that mirror Project 2025 recommendations [3] [8]. While full abolition of the department would require Congress, sources document concrete administrative steps that align with the document’s playbook [3] [8].
3. Media and regulatory capture — FCC actions, threats to public broadcasters, and ownership rules
Project 2025 calls for loosening FCC rules, consolidating media, and exerting political pressure on public media; Brendan Carr, who authored the FCC chapter, was appointed to the FCC and has launched investigations into NPR and PBS and pressured major networks — moves that watchdogs and journalists tie directly to Project 2025’s prescriptions even as wholesale media‑ownership deregulation remains only partially advanced [5] [9]. Reporting shows targeted actions against funded outlets and efforts to reinterpret "heavy‑handed" FCC regulations in ways suggested by the playbook, although some of the broader ownership changes have not been fully executed [9] [4].
4. Climate, environment, and regulatory rollback — deregulatory agenda and agency independence
Project 2025 advocates sharp rollbacks of Biden‑era climate and environmental protections and a rejiggering of independent regulatory agencies; the administration has pushed to unwind environmental rules, replace career regulators, and pursue a broader assault on agency independence that observers say follows Project 2025’s blueprint for concentrating executive power [3] [4]. Progressive trackers and legal groups are monitoring dozens of executive actions across agencies that mirror Project 2025’s deregulatory and politicizing recommendations [10] [4].
5. Immigration, social policy, and health care — enforcement, religious exemptions, and service limits
Project 2025’s immigration chapters call for tougher enforcement and expanded deportations; policymakers with ties to the project have taken senior roles at ICE and DHS and the administration has pursued more aggressive immigration directives consistent with those recommendations [5] [3]. On social policy, Project 2025 recommends broad religious‑moral exemptions to block abortion and contraception access and to weave conservative religious considerations into federal policy; advocacy groups report administration rules—such as VA restrictions on abortion care and limits on housing‑first homelessness policies—that reflect these priorities, though some measures remain contested and in flux [11] [12].
This reconstruction of implementation is drawn from Project 2025’s public playbook and contemporaneous reporting and tracking by news organizations, advocacy groups, and policy trackers; significant implementation has occurred where executive authority suffices, while more sweeping structural changes still face legal and political constraints, and the administration has at times denied formal ties even as personnel and policies map closely to the Heritage blueprint [1] [3] [9]. Sources used in this review include Project 2025’s own site, detailed trackers from progressive organizations, mainstream press summaries, and watchdog reporting; where actions are not documented in these sources, this report does not speculate beyond those records [1] [10] [4].