Which specific Project 2025 policies have been implemented and who authored them?
Executive summary
Project 2025 — a nearly 900‑page conservative blueprint convened by the Heritage Foundation — has served as both a policy playbook and a personnel roster that the second Trump administration has used to shape personnel decisions and dozens of executive actions; trackers and news outlets identify concrete implementations ranging from hiring and civil‑service changes to reproductive, immigration, energy and agency‑restructuring moves [1] [2] [3]. Key architects and named authors — most prominently Russell Vought and a coalition of Heritage‑aligned figures and former administration officials — have been appointed to roles that enabled execution of many of the document’s recommendations, though attributing any single rule directly to an individual author is often impossible from available public reporting [4] [3] [5].
1. Personnel and “personnel is policy”: hiring panels, political vetting and Schedule F ambitions
One of the clearest, repeatedly documented implementations is Project 2025’s emphasis on vetting and reshaping the federal workforce: the administration created hiring committees and new processes to vet candidates for positional alignment with White House priorities, fulfilling Project 2025’s personnel strategy that “personnel is policy” [2] [6]; Russell Vought — a co‑author and OMB director — has been singled out as the architect who would use OMB authority to enforce presidential policy across agencies [4] [3]. Authors tied to this component include Paul Dans and other Project 2025 contributors who wrote about managing the bureaucracy and who previously pushed Schedule F‑style reclassifications [7] [8].
2. Reproductive‑health rules and funding moves linked to Project 2025 aims
Multiple administration actions align with Project 2025 goals to restrict federal support for abortion and reproductive services: the Department of Veterans Affairs implemented a rule barring VA coverage of abortion even in rape or incest cases, HUD and other agencies have shifted policies affecting clinic funding, and officials moved to eliminate Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood — changes tracked by Project2025. observer and reproductive‑rights trackers [2] [9]. Russell Vought, a Project 2025 co‑author, advocated abolishing the Gender Policy Council and helped author the executive‑office chapter that shaped early playbook priorities [4] [10].
3. Immigration and asylum: new rules echo Project 2025 prescriptions
The administration finalized a rule allowing authorities to bar asylum on “emergency public health” grounds and pursued powers described in Project 2025 to create Title‑42‑like authorities to rapidly expel migrants — moves logged by project trackers and news outlets as implementations of Project 2025 suggestions [2]. Tom Homan and other named Project 2025 contributors have been publicly tied to the project’s border and detention recommendations [5] [4].
4. Agency restructuring, de‑funding and regulatory rollbacks
Project 2025’s blueprint to remake or diminish independent agencies and to rescind environmental protections has been reflected in administration actions: Interior rescinded protections for the National Petroleum Reserve and moved to expand leasing; HUD ended “Housing First” language and reduced permanent‑housing funding; efforts also targeted diversity, equity and inclusion offices and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, consistent with Project 2025’s recommendations [2] [11] [8]. Authors and allies tied to these ideas include Heritage Foundation figures and a long roster of Project 2025 chapter authors; the Heritage network organized the policy work [1] [8].
5. Who authored what — an available map and its limits
Project 2025 names many authors and contributors; reporting finds that dozens of them later took government roles or advisory posts — Russell Vought is repeatedly identified as a principal author and implementer, and other noted names with administration ties include Brendan Carr, John Ratcliffe, Tom Homan, Peter Navarro, Paul Atkins and Pam Bondi among a longer list of authors and advisers [4] [5] [9]. However, public sources rarely map individual chapter text line‑for‑line to a single implemented regulation, so while attribution of broad themes and many implemented items to Project 2025’s authors is supported, precise authorship for each final rule or executive order is often not documented in the available reporting [10] [8].
Conclusion — implementation so far and the evidence standard
Multiple independent trackers and news outlets conclude that substantial portions of Project 2025’s agenda — especially personnel engineering, reproductive‑policy restrictions, immigration rules, agency restructuring and deregulatory energy moves — have been implemented or advanced, and many of the people who authored or advised Project 2025 now hold positions that enabled those actions [2] [3] [12]. That conclusion rests on pattern‑matching between Project 2025 recommendations and administration actions and on authorship lists showing deep personnel overlap; available sources also caution that exact one‑to‑one attribution of each policy to an individual Project 2025 author is frequently not publicly documented [10] [7].