Which Project 2025 proposals have been implemented through executive orders since 2025?
Executive summary
A range of proposals from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 have been put into effect by the Trump administration using executive orders and directives since 2025, particularly in the first days of the term, with actions touching public lands and energy, personnel and agency control, abortion funding, media funding, diversity-equity-inclusion (DEI) programs, and education policy [1] [2] [3] [4]. Independent trackers and news organizations catalog dozens of orders that align with Project 2025’s “180‑day playbook,” though some high-profile proposals remain legislative or regulatory fights rather than completed executive actions [5] [6] [7].
1. Reopening public lands and expanding drilling in Alaska — a clear Project 2025 echo
On Day One the administration moved to reopen large areas of Alaska, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to oil and gas activity — a shift repeatedly cited as an implementation of Project 2025’s energy-and-lands prescriptions and confirmed in contemporaneous reporting and trackers [1] [8].
2. Rescinding environmental and chemical-discharge restrictions (PFAS) — executive withdrawal of Biden-era limits
The administration withdrew a pending Biden administration restriction on PFAS in industrial discharge, an action explicitly tied in reporting to Project 2025’s recommended rollbacks of environmental rules and implemented through executive or administrative withdrawal processes [1].
3. Personnel and the “dismantling” of the administrative state — Schedule F/SES actions
Multiple executive orders and directives have targeted career senior executive service alignment and broader political control of the bureaucracy, including an order titled “Restoring Accountability For Career Senior Executives” that mirrors Project 2025’s playbook to reassign or reclassify SES employees and concentrate presidential control over agency personnel [2] [7] [4].
4. Cutting federal support for abortion-related programs — funding restrictions by executive order
Reporting identifies a White House executive order designed to halt federal funds related to abortion and to constrain federal support for abortion services, language and actions that journalists and trackers tie directly to Project 2025 proposals to eliminate federal funding for abortion-related care [9] [10].
5. Media funding and public-broadcasting pressure — CPB, NPR and PBS targeted
An early executive action instructed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cease funding NPR and PBS, a move outlets reported as implementing Project 2025 media proposals and later challenged in court given congressional appropriations controls [3].
6. DEI, “gender ideology,” and LGBTQ-related orders — erasing language and cutting programs
The White House issued orders demanding agencies remove references to “gender ideology” from public statements and to eliminate DEI, DEIA and environmental-justice offices, actions trackers and major outlets link to Project 2025’s agenda to dismantle equity programs and curtail federal protections and funding for transgender and gender‑affirming services [4] [10] [11].
7. Education and school‑choice directives — restricting funding and promoting choice
Executive orders have restricted or conditioned federal education funding tied to what the administration labels “indoctrination” around gender and equity and directed agencies to study or promote school‑choice mechanisms — steps that reporters note align with Project 2025’s education chapter even when the blueprint did not call for identical funding limits [12].
8. Foreign aid pauses and “terminations” of climate/Green New Deal programs
The administration used executive directives to pause certain foreign aid flows and to terminate funding streams for climate-oriented programs described as linked to the “Green New Deal,” moves FactCheck and other outlets contrasted with Project 2025’s fiscal and regulatory strategy [4].
9. What has not been fully implemented via order — where Congress or courts remain decisive
Several of Project 2025’s most radical proposals—such as wholesale statutory changes to criminalize abortion medications across state lines, wholesale alterations to nuclear posture, or statutory removals of Endangered Species protections—require Congress or rulemaking and have not been completed by executive order alone; trackers stress that many items remain ongoing regulatory processes or court‑contested orders rather than settled law [1] [8] [6].
10. Assessment and competing perspectives
Progressive legal and civil‑rights groups portray these executive moves as the rapid implementation of Project 2025’s authoritarian blueprint and are litigating many orders, while conservative outlets and some administration allies argue the orders fulfill campaign promises and were lawful uses of executive authority; multiple independent trackers and the Federal Register list the specific orders and show both breadth and ongoing legal friction [5] [11] [13].