What Is Project 2025, How It Is Linked To Donald Trump's Presidential Campaign

Ahead of the crucial US presidential elections on November 5 this year, "The Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise," a policy wishlist by the 2025 Presidential Transition Project or simply called 'Project 2025' is making waves in the country.

"The project is the effort of a broad coalition of conservative organisations that have come together to ensure a successful administration begins in January 2025," according to its official website.

Since 1980, The Heritage Foundation has published a book of policy recommendations for the next Republican administration, The Washington Post stated. 

For this election cycle, it has convened a coalition of over 100 right-wing groups, presenting its controversial proposals as a movement consensus under the banner of 'Project 2025'. According to reports, this coalition involved at least 140 Trump administration alumni. 

The 900-page policy book was published in April last year, proposing a total overhaul of the executive branch.

Project 2025 makes the following suggestions 

It's asking for securing the border, finishing the wall, and deportation of "illegal aliens".

It calls for de-weaponising the Federal Government via more accountability and "oversight of the FBI and DOJ".

Unleash American energy production to reduce energy prices.

To reduce inflation, Project 2025 suggests cutting the growth of government spending.

Make federal bureaucrats more accountable to the democratically elected President and Congress.

Improve education by moving control and funding of education from DC bureaucrats directly to parents and state and local governments.

Project 2025 also suggests banning "biological males from competing in women's sports".

Is Project 2025 linked to Donald Trump?

Donald Trump shared a private flight with the head of the organisation behind Project 2025 in April 2022 and was said to have been briefed on the controversial policy agenda, The Washington Post reported.

While Trump has on multiple occasions denied knowing about its policy blueprint or even those behind it, the former US president shared the 45-minute private flight with Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, people familiar with the trip told the leading US daily.

Together, Trump and Roberts flew from the former US president's home in Palm Beach, Florida to the foundation's annual conference on Amelia Island, where the 78-year-old delivered a keynote address that pointed out Heritage's forthcoming policy proposals, the report stated.

Back then, the organisation was in the early stages of organising Project 2025. During the flight, Roberts brought up the matter with Trump, but he seemed uninterested and moved on to a different subject, a Heritage official said. 

However, an official of the Trump campaign stated that he didn't discuss Project 2025 on the plane with Roberts, who took over day-to-day management of the controversial agenda recently after the departure of director Paul Dans.

In July this year, Trump decried it on his Truth Social platform and said that he had “nothing to do with them”. Further, he called some of its projected ideas “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal”.

Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said, "Project 2025 has never and will never be an accurate reflection of President Trump's policies”.

Leavitt noted that Trump's 20 promises to the forgotten men and women and the RNC platform are "the only policies endorsed by President Trump for a second term."