How did Project 2025 influence enacted legislation and executive actions during Trump’s second term?
Executive summary
Project 2025 functioned as a blueprint and personnel pipeline that materially shaped many of the Trump administration’s early executive actions and regulatory priorities, with multiple trackers and news analyses finding substantial overlap between the plan’s recommendations and policies enacted in 2025 [1] [2]. The influence showed up most clearly in personnel decisions, administrative restructuring (including reinstating Schedule F), and a wave of executive orders and rule changes targeting federal agency programs on reproductive health, gender identity, grants, and environmental safeguards [3] [4] [5] [6].
1. How Project 2025 translated into personnel and institutional power
Project 2025 prioritized creating a database of conservative loyalists and training them for government roles, and that strategy was realized in appointments: Trump nominated several of the plan’s architects and supporters to his administration, consolidating policy influence through personnel who had worked on the project or in his first term [3] [1] [7]. The administration’s elevation of allies to key agencies—most notably Russell Vought at OMB, and other Project 2025 contributors in executive roles—demonstrated the plan’s basic insight that “personnel is policy,” shaping agency priorities and budget choices [8] [7].
2. Executive actions and rulemakings that mirrored Project 2025
Independent analyses and trackers documented that many executive orders and regulatory moves “mirror or partially mirror” Project 2025 recommendations, with Time’s early review saying nearly two-thirds of executive actions reflected the plan and other outlets finding roughly half of recommendations had become official policies or directives in the first year [1] [9]. Advocacy and policy groups monitoring implementation compiled lists of rollbacks and new directives across dozens of agencies that align with Project 2025’s prescriptions, from grant reviews to deregulatory pushes [2] [10].
3. Administrative restructuring: Schedule F and staff reductions
One of the clearest concrete outcomes tied to Project 2025 was the reinstatement of Schedule F–style reforms intended to make many federal employees easier to remove—a top recommendation of the plan—which correlated with large staffing declines in agencies such as Interior and the Forest Service where tens of thousands of positions were altered or reduced [4] [9]. These structural changes gave the administration a mechanism to reshape program implementation without new legislation, directly channeling Project 2025’s aim to politicize the civil service [3] [4].
4. Reproductive and LGBTQ+ policy shifts traced to the plan
Multiple trackers and advocacy groups reported that many of the administration’s moves on abortion, contraception access, Medicaid and privacy protections followed Project 2025’s targeting of reproductive health policies and gender-affirming care—Reproductive Freedom for All and the Guttmacher Institute calculated that significant fractions of Project 2025’s reproductive proposals had been implemented or set in motion [8] [5] [11]. Measures ranged from executive directives limiting federal funding streams to attempts to rescind Biden-era guidance on privacy and health services, demonstrating policy alignment between the plan’s goals and administration actions [5] [8].
5. Environmental, grants, and regulatory rollbacks
Project 2025’s wishlist included sweeping cuts and rollbacks across environmental protections and federal grant programs, and reporting found the administration pursued aggressive rulemaking and budget shaping consistent with that vision—trackers documented rollbacks across public-lands management, environmental reviews, and agency grant practices while watchdogs flagged proposed cuts and reorganizations [10] [4] [2]. These administrative pathways allowed the administration to advance large policy shifts without new statutory enactments.
6. Disavowal, political cover, and competing assessments
Trump publicly disavowed familiarity with Project 2025 during the 2024 campaign even as his administration later embraced many of its ideas and personnel, a posture commentators and organizations like the ACLU described as disingenuous given the heavy overlap of contributors and appointees [1] [7]. Assessments of how much was accomplished vary—some outlets put implementation near “half” to “nearly two-thirds” of targeted actions while others and issue-specific trackers count lower percentages in certain policy areas—highlighting both methodological differences in scoring and the mix of completed orders, rulemakings underway, and goals still pending [9] [11] [2].
7. What remains uncertain and what to watch next
While documentation shows Project 2025 significantly shaped executive priorities, some ambitions remain unfulfilled and rely on future rulemaking, litigation, or congressional action; trackers emphasize many items are in process rather than fully implemented, and independent outlets note dozens of remaining items awaiting attention [2] [6]. Observers should watch personnel confirmations, ongoing rulemaking dockets, and litigation outcomes to judge whether the administration converts remaining Project 2025 proposals into durable law or reversable administrative changes [2] [6].