THE BLUEPRINT
920 pages. 30 chapters. A department-by-department plan to reshape the federal government.
Source: 'Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise' — The Heritage Foundation, April 2023
It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place.— Kevin Roberts — President of The Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 foreword
Project 2025 is not a policy paper or a wish list. It is a four-part implementation machine designed to ensure that a conservative president can begin reshaping the federal government on the first day in office. Published in April 2023 by the Heritage Foundation, the ninth edition of their Mandate for Leadership series, it is the earliest such document ever released and the most ambitious in scope.
The Heritage Foundation's track record makes this document consequential regardless of political perspective. Reagan implemented roughly 49 percent of the 1981 Mandate in his first year. Trump implemented 64 percent of the 2016 version. Project 2025's Mandate is backed by over 110 conservative organizations, written by 140 former Trump administration officials, and supported by a personnel database of 20,000 vetted recruits ready for deployment into federal agencies.
What follows is what the 920-page document actually says, organized by structure and by policy area. These are not interpretations or characterizations. They are the stated proposals, in the authors' own words.
More Than
a Document
Project 2025 is not a policy paper. It is a four-part implementation machine designed to ensure that a conservative president can begin reshaping the federal government on day one — with trained personnel, detailed playbooks, and a vetted workforce ready to deploy.
It covers every major federal department with specific, actionable policy recommendations: what to change, what to eliminate, what to create. Published in April 2023 — months before the first presidential primary debate — making it the earliest Mandate ever released.
Applicants must answer ideological screening questions and have their social media scrutinized for alignment. Overseen by John McEntee, Trump's former Presidential Personnel Office director, known as the chief enforcer of 'MAGA purity' during the first term.
Courses cover how to navigate federal agencies, implement conservative policies, and overcome bureaucratic resistance. The goal: no learning curve. Appointees arrive knowing exactly what to do and how to do it.
The playbook specifies exactly what actions to take in the first six months — which regulations to reverse, which offices to close, which personnel to replace. It transforms campaign promises into executable government operations.
The Network
Project 2025 is not a fringe effort. It was organized by the Heritage Foundation — the most influential conservative think tank in America — and backed by a coalition of over 110 organizations spanning every major policy area.
• Reagan (1981): Implemented ~49% of Mandate recommendations in year one
• Trump (2017): Implemented 64% of the 2016 Mandate after one year
Project 2025's Mandate is the most ambitious yet — published earlier than any previous edition and backed by the largest coalition ever assembled.
• Alliance Defending Freedom — anti-LGBTQ+ litigation group
• America First Legal Foundation — Stephen Miller's organization
• Center for Immigration Studies — restrictionist think tank
• Claremont Institute — intellectual home of 'unitary executive' theory
• American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
• Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America
The Key
Proposals
The following are direct from the Mandate for Leadership document. These are not interpretations or characterizations — they are the stated policy recommendations, organized by topic.
• Department of Education: 'Congress should shutter' it entirely (Chapter 11)
• NOAA: Described as 'one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry' — break it up and privatize the National Weather Service
• CFPB: Place under presidential control or eliminate
• USAID: Effectively dismantle
• EPA: Close the Office of Environmental Justice, dramatically reduce workforce
• Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement
• Repealing the Inflation Reduction Act
• Reversing the EPA's endangerment finding — the legal basis for all major U.S. climate regulations since 2009
• 'Eradicating climate change references from absolutely everywhere' in government
• Ending NOAA's tracking of billion-dollar weather and climate disasters
• Placing the DOJ and FBI under direct presidential control, eliminating their independence
• Eliminating consent decrees — agreements following investigations into police wrongdoing
• Using the Civil Rights Division to target DEI and affirmative action programs
• Enforcing the Comstock Act (1873) against providers and distributors of abortion pills
• Revoking FDA approval of mifepristone (medication abortion)
• Enforcing the Comstock Act to ban mailing abortion pills — legal experts say this could create a de facto national abortion ban
• Replacing Biden's Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force with a 'pro-life' agency
• Restricting Title X family planning services
• Mass deportation of undocumented immigrants
• Mobilizing the military for domestic immigration enforcement, potentially under the Insurrection Act
• 'Indefinite curtailment' of the refugee admissions program
• Expanding border wall construction
• Ending all forms of 'catch and release'
• Defunding public broadcasting (NPR, PBS, CPB)
• Revoking noncommercial education status from NPR/PBS-affiliated stations
• Reinterpreting Section 230 to restrict content moderation
• Using the FCC to investigate and pressure media companies
• DOJ authority to force journalists to reveal sources during leak investigations
• Recognizing only biological sex across all federal policy
• Ending CDC collection of gender identity data
• Banning transgender military service
• Defining 'pornography' broadly to include 'transgender ideology'
• Imprisoning distributors and registering educators and librarians who provide such materials as 'sex offenders' (Mandate foreword)
• Place all independent agencies (FCC, FTC, SEC, etc.) under direct presidential control
• Eliminate the independence of inspectors general
• 'Sharply diminish Congress' imperative role' as a check on executive power
• Make the DOJ an arm of the presidency rather than an independent law enforcement agency
What the
Authors Said
Direct quotes from the Mandate for Leadership and its architects.
It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry out an pointedly conservative agenda.
"Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresence of transgender ideology... has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders.
— Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership — Foreword, pages 4-5. This passage explicitly equates 'transgender ideology' with pornography, creating a legal framework for criminalizing trans visibility.
The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity, diversity, equity, and inclusion, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.
The Mandate for Leadership is a public document. These are the stated goals of Project 2025 — written by former Trump officials, backed by 110+ organizations, and more than half implemented within a year of Trump taking office.