TL;DR: Trump knows the people who wrote Project 2025 because they’re his team, and he’s a compulsive liar. Project 2025 is an anti-American, anti-science, and intolerant plan that promotes an agenda of ignorance. To counter this, you need to vote for Democrats.
Scroll down for findings from Project 2025 training videos if you already know that Project 2025, Agenda 47, and the people involved are essentially the same thing.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts with Donald Trump in 2022, where Trump praised them for “laying the groundwork” for his movement. Despite Trump’s recent lies to distance himself from this anti-American agenda, his influence has waned following multiple fraud convictions.
Project 2025 (Agenda 47) is Trump’s plan. Duh.
Project 2025 is deeply entwined with Donald Trump’s political ambitions, despite his public denials. A significant number of the individuals who contributed to its development are directly linked to Trump’s administration, with at least 29 of the 36 speakers in training videos having served in his 2016-17 transition team, his administration, or his 2024 campaign. Notably, in 2022, Trump flew on a private jet with Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, which spearheads Project 2025, and praised the foundation’s efforts in laying the groundwork for his administration. Over 140 individuals who were part of the Trump administration or are currently involved in his campaign played a significant role in shaping Project 2025.
Project 2025 has been carefully crafted by those deeply embedded in Trump’s political circle, with the intent to overhaul the federal government in a manner that aligns strictly with Trump’s vision. The project includes plans to reclassify thousands of civil service positions, making it easier to replace career employees with those loyal to Trump. The scale of this effort is enormous, with contributors like Steve Bannon actively promoting Project 2025 to Trump’s base, urging them to get up to speed on the roles that the administration will staff with Trump loyalists from day one. This connection underscores that Project 2025 is the blueprint for Trump’s destruction of America.
JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, wrote the foreword for Kevin Roberts’ upcoming book Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America. Roberts is the president of the Heritage Foundation and a key architect of Project 2025, a far-right initiative designed to reshape the federal government under a potential future conservative administration. Vance’s involvement in writing the foreword further ties him and, by extension, the Trump campaign to Project 2025, despite attempts to distance themselves from the controversial plan.
Because Project 2025 became widely recognized, with many calling out its potential harms, Trump attempted to distance himself from it, even falsely claiming that he didn’t know anyone involved with Project 2025 (despite clear evidence to the contrary, as mentioned above). In an effort to create separation from the negative perceptions surrounding Project 2025, Trump rebranded his agenda as “Agenda 47.” Paul Dans, the project’s director, and Trump’s chief of staff at the US Office of Personnel, was likely forced to step down. Both agendas emphasize replacing government employees with Trump loyalists and expanding presidential control over the federal government. The most concerning elements, such as dismantling key institutions and eliminating critical regulatory policies, remain consistent, making Agenda 47 simply a continuation of Project 2025 under a different name.
What the Project 2025 training videos reveal
The findings from ProPublica’s investigation into Trump’s plans are deeply alarming, particularly for those who value science, rational governance, and the preservation of secular democracy.
Here are some of the most frightening aspects:
- Eradication of Climate Change References: Project 2025’s leaders advocate for the complete erasure of climate change from federal discourse, dismissing it as a ploy for population control. This blatant denial of scientific reality not only threatens environmental policy but also endangers global efforts to combat climate change, potentially leading to catastrophic consequences.
- Censorship and Media Control: The training videos instruct future political appointees to avoid mainstream media and instead focus solely on conservative outlets. This strategy of media manipulation undermines the public’s access to unbiased information, fostering an environment where only ideologically aligned narratives are promoted, stifling scientific discourse and critical thinking.
- Gender and Equality Rollbacks: The project’s agenda includes the dismantling of gender equity initiatives, with calls to eliminate gender adviser positions and rewrite policies to remove any references to gender fluidity. This rollback of progress in gender rights is not only regressive but also disregards the lived experiences of millions, promoting an ideology that is in direct conflict with scientific understanding of gender.
- Secrecy and Avoiding Accountability: The videos emphasize strategies to avoid creating paper trails, deliberately circumventing transparency and public oversight. This calculated effort to dodge Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests is a clear attempt to operate in secrecy, preventing watchdog groups from holding the administration accountable for its actions. Such practices threaten the foundational principles of a transparent and accountable government.
- Weaponization of the Federal Government: The project outlines plans to reshape the federal government, filling it with loyalists who are trained to dismantle existing structures, including those that safeguard scientific integrity and public welfare. This radical restructuring aims to centralize power in the hands of a few, eroding the checks and balances that prevent authoritarian rule.
- Undermining Public Education: There is a concerted effort to remove so-called “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” from public school curricula, despite these concepts being rooted in factual, evidence-based education. This move represents a direct assault on intellectual freedom and the right to a scientifically informed education, pushing a narrative that aligns with conservative ideology rather than reality.
- Expansion of Repressive Government Agencies: Ironically, despite the conservative rhetoric of “small government,” Project 2025 advocates for expanding certain federal agencies, like the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), to exert greater control over regulations. This expansion is designed not to benefit the public but to tighten the grip of conservative ideology on government operations, further stifling scientific progress and environmental protections.
- Cultivating an Army of Ideologues: The project is training a cadre of political appointees who are being prepared not just to implement conservative policies, but to actively combat and dismantle the so-called “deep state” — a term used to delegitimize career civil servants and the scientific community. This militarization of the federal workforce against its own government is a chilling indication of the lengths to which Project 2025 will go to impose its agenda.
For Americans who champion science, reason, and American norms, Project 2025 represents a direct threat to the principles of evidence-based policymaking, intellectual freedom, and secular governance. The project’s goals are not just to influence government policy, but to fundamentally alter the structure of American democracy in ways that could reverse decades of progress in civil rights, environmental protection, and public accountability.
It’s imperative that Americans work together to ensure that these dangerous people are kept far from power. Vote for Democrats up and down the ballot and get mobilized to ensure others do the same.
