Which specific Project 2025 proposals have been implemented by the administration to date?
Executive summary
Roughly half of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 “wishlist” has been put into motion through a mix of executive orders, regulatory changes, hiring choices and congressional moves—actions tracked by independent trackers and advocacy groups rather than by any single official White House acknowledgment [1] [2] [3]. Concrete implementations include media funding cuts, personnel and hiring reforms, immigration and asylum rule changes, reproductive-policy rollbacks at federal agencies, and early energy and regulatory reversals that mirror the document’s priorities [4] [1] [5] [6] [7].
1. Media funding and public-broadcasting moves: CPB defunded after a Project 2025 playbook
One of the clearest policy outcomes tied to Project 2025 was the administration’s push to strip federal support from public broadcasting: the president asked Congress to rescind $1.07 billion already allocated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a request Republican leadership approved, effectively removing federal funding from NPR, PBS and thousands of local stations—a move critics say follows Project 2025 media proposals [4]. Poynter and other trackers note that this campaign against public-media funding and measures targeting USAGM echo Project 2025’s recommendations and that contributors to the project were centrally involved in shaping the administration’s approach [4].
2. Personnel reshaping and hiring-screening mechanisms: personnel-as-policy in action
Project 2025 emphasized remaking the federal workforce and replacing career civil servants with political appointees; the administration’s early-year push to create hiring committees and vet candidates to ensure “consistency with the national interest” manifests that logic, with Russell Vought—one of Project 2025’s architects—installed at OMB and described as running a nerve center for policy implementation [6] [1]. Trackers and watchdogs document efforts to reclassify certain civil-service roles and to install Project-aligned figures across agencies, a pattern the ACLU and progressive trackers highlight as central to the blueprint’s goal of consolidating executive control [8] [9].
3. Immigration and asylum rule changes: expanded bars and data/verification shifts
The administration finalized rules and proposals that align with Project 2025 immigration goals, including a rule allowing asylum to be barred on “emergency public health concerns generated by a communicable disease” and DHS proposals to expand the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements Program into broader identity-matching systems—moves tracked and flagged by the Project 2025 observer and civil-rights groups as direct policy adoptions [1] [5]. Advocates warn these shifts create heightened privacy and due-process risks; the trackers cite both the rulemaking and proposals as implementations of Project 2025 priorities [1] [5].
4. Reproductive-health and data changes at agencies: staffing cuts and policy rollbacks
Several agencies saw changes that map onto Project 2025’s reproductive-health agenda: staffing reductions at CDC’s reproductive-health unit delayed collection and analysis of abortion-related data, and the VA implemented a rule barring coverage of abortion services—even in rape or incest cases—which trackers explicitly note as consistent with Project 2025 recommendations to curtail federal reproductive funding and data collection [6] [1] [10]. Independent trackers and reproductive-rights groups highlight these administrative actions as examples of Project 2025 influence on federal health policy [11] [10].
5. Energy, land-use and education signals: early executive moves reflect Project priorities
Project 2025’s energy and regulatory prescriptions—open-up federal lands, accelerate fossil-fuel production, and roll back environmental safeguards—show up in early executive orders reopening large parts of Alaska including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling and in withdrawing a pending PFAS discharge ban, steps cited by reporters as consistent with the blueprint [7]. Education and budgeting moves signaling consolidation or flexibility for federal programs (e.g., IDEA changes in the president’s budget) are also noted as overlapping with Project 2025 aims, though many such proposals still depend on further rulemaking or Congressional approval [12] [7].
Conclusion: multiple independent trackers and advocacy groups concur that dozens of Project 2025 proposals have been implemented through executive actions, agency rules, and personnel choices—roughly half of the tracked objectives by late 2025—while other items remain contingent on Congress or courts, and the administration formally disavows direct reliance on the Heritage document even as its actions mirror many of its prescriptions [1] [2] [3].