The grievance-driven blueprint for the next Trump administration

For the amended portion of this year, Project 2025 has been a catchall among Democrats for the menace erstwhile President Donald Trump poses to American society. The much than 900-page Mandate for Leadership, crafted by blimpish deliberation vessel the Heritage Foundation, is simply a sprawling and often contradictory premix of ideas from much than 100 organizations. It’s tied unneurotic not by unified argumentation predictions but by a bid of preoccupations: China; “wokeness”; clime denialism; and a committedness to gutting oregon abolishing national agencies. It includes plans that would remake America’s attack to technology, but similar galore things successful the document, its authors can’t precisely hold connected how.

Trump has attempted to region himself from the argumentation plan, but it’s tied to him by galore threads. His moving mate, JD Vance, is friends with Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, and Vance adjacent wrote the instauration to Roberts’ forthcoming book, Dawn’s Early Light. (The book’s publication, initially slated for September, was postponed until aft the election.) And immoderate of Project 2025’s chapters were written by Trump’s ain erstwhile medication officials, including FCC commissioner Brendan Carr and Department of Homeland Security authoritative Ken Cuccinelli. 

If Trump is elected, it’s highly apt that immoderate of Project 2025’s ideas would beryllium implemented — we conscionable don’t cognize which ones. The astir provocative proposals, similar banning pornography, are prominently highlighted but ne'er explained. Authors, successful turn, urge warring and embracing tech companies. “I don’t deliberation I’ve encountered a azygous idiosyncratic successful America who agrees with 100 percent,” Roberts said astatine the Reboot Conference successful San Francisco successful September. “It’s similar the paper astatine the Cheesecake Factory.” 

Much of what’s connected the paper is notably little delicious. We’re not going to interruption down each portion of Project 2025 present — you tin find more wide guides astatine CBS News, which showed however galore of Project 2025’s argumentation recommendations lucifer Trump’s own; ProPublica, which obtained concealed grooming videos created for Project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy; and The New York Times, which interviewed respective erstwhile Trump officials progressive successful the instauration of Project 2025. Instead, we’re taking a look astatine however its recommendations would impact tech astatine each level, from however companies tin prosecute overseas workers to the societal media platforms we usage each day.

Though determination are immoderate contradictions betwixt and wrong chapters — signs of fissures oregon points of contention among the dozens of participating organizations — Project 2025 does, successful the end, magnitude to a coherent vision. The papers calls for a extremist enlargement of authorities powerfulness to punish conservatives’ enemies successful tech, oust imaginable dissenters wrong the national bureaucracy, and enforce right-wing privation database items similar wide deportations and a nationalist termination ban. All of this would beryllium combined with wide deregulation and the defunding of societal services and national agencies that lend to the nationalist welfare. Project 2025’s authors privation tiny authorities for societal goods — but large authorities for retribution.

Federal Trade Commission

Authored by: Adam Candeub, a prof of instrumentality astatine Michigan State University. Candeub served arsenic the acting adjunct caput of commerce for telecommunications and accusation nether Trump. From 2020 to 2021, helium was the lawman subordinate lawyer wide successful Trump’s Department of Justice. 

Project 2025’s FTC guidelines are possibly the clearest illustration of blimpish ambivalence toward tech. The conception doesn’t really connection a acceptable of argumentation proposals. Instead, it outlines 2 diametrically opposed approaches: 1 wherever the Trump medication fiercely enforces antitrust instrumentality to interruption up monopolies; and different wherever it does hardly thing astatine all.

In the enforcement route, Project 2025 suggests utilizing the FTC to rein successful large corporations, particularly large tech companies. It puts guardant the European Union’s “less affable regulatory environment” arsenic a bully model, perchance referring to EU laws similar the Digital Markets Act, which person forced tech companies to marque large hardware and bundle changes to their products. It encourages the FTC to spouse with authorities attorneys wide to scrutinize oregon artifact hospital, supermarket, and large tech mergers. And it recommends that the FTC look into whether societal media platforms’ advertizing to and contract-making with children represent unfair commercialized practices.

While there’s overlap with Democratic antitrust priorities here, there’s besides a absorption connected intelligibly partisan concerns. The section suggests investigating whether societal media platforms censored governmental code successful collusion with the government, pursuing up connected probes by the Republican-led House of Representatives and Republican authorities attorneys general. (Hunter Biden’s laptop, unsurprisingly, gets a mention.) You’ll besides spot references to issues similar the “de-banking” of arguable figures, which the Trump household has cited arsenic an inspiration for its mysterious crypto platform. “We are witnessing successful today’s markets the usage of economical powerfulness — often marketplace and possibly adjacent monopoly powerfulness — to undermine antiauthoritarian institutions and civilian society,” the section claims.

Each of these points is contradicted by a long-standing blimpish counterpoint: the authorities should fto the marketplace modulate itself. If the FTC regulates however children usage net platforms, for example, it could undermine conservatives’ calls for “parental empowerment connected acquisition oregon vaccines.” Expanding practice betwixt the FTC and authorities attorneys wide could “tie mediate America to large progressive government.”

Ultimately, though, the section seems to favour intervention. Conservatives “cannot unilaterally disarm and neglect to usage the powerfulness of authorities to further a blimpish agenda,” it warns, adjacent if their extremity is to bash distant with the regulatory state.

Federal Communications Commission

Authored by: Brendan Carr, a subordinate of the Federal Communications Commission who was appointed by Trump successful 2017.

Much of this section focuses connected “reining in” large tech companies. Carr proposes a big of policies, including eliminating definite immunities under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and “clarifying” that Section 230’s key 26 words should lone beryllium utilized successful cases astir platforms failing to region amerciable worldly posted by users, not arsenic a broader shield for moderation decisions.

Carr’s existent interest is with societal media platforms’ alleged suppression of blimpish speech. The section suggests requiring “Big Tech” to travel nett neutrality-like rules akin to those for broadband providers, similar disclosure connected practices specified arsenic blocking and prioritizing content. Platforms should besides beryllium required to “offer a transparent appeals process” erstwhile idiosyncratic contented is taken down. 

The section besides suggests that the FCC regulatory powerfulness should beryllium expanded with “fundamental Section 230 reforms” that fto it modulate however online platforms mean contented — or, successful Carr’s words, “no longer person carte blanche to censor protected speech.” Carr describes Texas’ HB 20 — the instrumentality that forbids platforms from removing, demonetizing, oregon downlinking posts based connected “viewpoint,” which set the signifier for NetChoice v. Paxton — arsenic a imaginable exemplary for national legislation.

As companies indispensable halt “censoring” blimpish speech, they’re expected to restrict children from accessing definite societal media platforms. Carr rapidly notes that these views “are not shared uniformly by each conservatives,” but arsenic is the lawsuit successful different chapters, the conception of expanding authorities powers to punish right-wing opponents ends up winning retired implicit a much laissez-faire approach.

Congress should besides necessitate large tech to wage into the FCC’s Universal Service Fund, which helps money broadband entree successful agrarian communities and is presently funded by broadband providers. It’s different illustration of Project 2025’s question distant from Reagan-era “small government” conservatives successful favour of punishing disfavored targets with much regulation. 

The section besides recommends that the FCC and White House enactment unneurotic to escaped further airwaves for commercialized wireless services and mostly bash much to “move spectrum into the commercialized marketplace.” Carr besides recommends that the authorities physique retired net infrastructure connected federally owned land. The latter, however, can’t beryllium accomplished by the FCC alone, and Carr notes that it would necessitate moving with the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service, among different agencies. The section besides recommends that the FCC much rapidly reappraisal and o.k. applications to motorboat caller satellites, specifically for the purposes of supporting StarLink, Kuiper, and akin efforts.

And past there’s China. One of the superior recommendations is that the FCC “address TikTok’s menace to nationalist security.” (Congress has, since the clip the Mandate for Leadership was published, done conscionable that by attempting to prohibition the app unless it divests from its genitor company, ByteDance; whether the courts volition fto that hap remains to beryllium seen.) Others see creating a much regular process to reappraisal entities “with ties to the CCP’s surveillance state” and stopping US entities “from indirectly contributing to China’s AI goals.”

Financial regulatory agencies

Authored by: David R. Burton, a elder probe chap successful economical argumentation astatine the Heritage Foundation; and Robert Bowes, a elder advisor to the adjunct caput of the Department of Housing and Urban Development nether Trump and erstwhile advisor to Trump adjutant Stephen Miller.

While different sections are often ambivalent astir authorities regulation, this section straightforwardly suggests giving large concessions to cryptocurrency and loosening restrictions connected who tin put successful backstage companies.

Anyone who’s been pursuing Trump’s attempts to tribunal the crypto assemblage should cognize what’s coming here. There are a big of recommendations for the Securities and Exchange Commission, which the authors accidental has “chosen regularisation by enforcement” for cryptocurrency. The biggest alteration would beryllium redefining integer assets arsenic commodities, alternatively of securities, truthful they’re nary longer regulated by the SEC.

The section besides recommends making backstage superior raising little restrictive by changing a regularisation known arsenic Regulation D. Under Regulation D, companies tin rise unlimited funds for securities from an unlimited fig of “accredited investors,” with nary disclosure needed to the SEC. “Accredited investors” indispensable presently person a wage of $200,000 (or $300,000 combined with their spouse) oregon a nett worthy of astatine slightest $1 million, excluding their superior residence. As of 2022, more than 24 cardinal American households met these requirements. Project 2025 recommends broadening these qualifications oregon eliminating them altogether.

In practice, this would fto anyone put successful immoderate backstage company, not conscionable — as the regularisation stands contiguous — companies connected the nationalist market. To spell public, companies person to conscionable definite requirements and record a registration connection with the SEC, wherever they’re taxable to reporting requirements. In exchange, they presently get entree to a overmuch broader excavation of imaginable investors. Eliminating the accredited capitalist request would efficaciously let companies to skirt the requirements of going nationalist — and the oversight they’re taxable to afterward.

Department of Commerce

Authored by: Thomas F. Gilman, the manager of ACLJ Action, a blimpish enactment affiliated with the American Center for Law and Justice. Gilman was the main fiscal serviceman and adjunct caput for medication of the US Department of Commerce nether Trump.

This sprawling section touches connected astir each large Project 2025 theme, from fears of China to the “alarm industry” of national clime monitoring. Like practically each different section, it recommends expanding the national government’s scope if it volition beforehand blimpish interests and doing distant with immoderate agencies that don’t.

In keeping with the extremity of dismantling national bureaucracies, this section suggests doing distant with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which it says should beryllium privatized oregon placed nether the power of states and territories. Other agencies, similar the National Weather Service (NWS) and Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, would beryllium severely downsized. (In a connection provided to the Los Angeles Times, Steven R. Smith, the CEO of AccuWeather — which Project 2025 suggested could regenerate the NWS — said AccuWeather’s forecast motor partially relies connected NOAA data.) These agencies supply the information utilized successful upwind forecasts accessed by millions of Americans each time and besides springiness the nationalist important accusation astir impending hurricanes, heatwaves, and different earthy disasters and utmost upwind events. 

The Republican libertarian helping whitethorn get its extremity of privatizing national agencies, but astir of this section argues for much — not little — authorities interference successful the market. Noting that China has made important advances successful semiconductor design, aerospace technologies, and different important industries, it recommends caller rules to forestall tech transportation to overseas adversaries. It besides suggests an enforcement bid expanding the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 to restrict exports of Americans’ data. And it opposes intelligence spot waivers for “cutting-edge technologies” similar covid-19 vaccines — which an earlier section says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shouldn’t promote radical to get — done planetary agreements. These waivers, which were hotly debated for years pursuing the onset of the pandemic, springiness low- and middle-income countries entree to life-saving immunizations, though advocates accidental much needs to beryllium done to execute planetary vaccine equity.

The section besides suggests adding definite app providers — including WeChat, TikTok, and TikTok’s genitor company, ByteDance — to the entity list, which would forestall the apps from issuing programme updates successful the US, efficaciously making them nonoperational. The Heritage Foundation seemingly didn’t get the memo that Trump loves TikTok now.

Department of Transportation

Authored by: Diana Furchtgott-Roth, manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment.

Unlike different chapters that are openly antagonistic toward tech companies, this section suggests partnering with the backstage assemblage to “revolutionize travel.” There’s an accent connected backstage proscription implicit nationalist proscription — not conscionable successful presumption of opposing authorities backing for wide transit but besides supporting ridehailing apps, self-driving vehicles, and micromobility, which lone gets a passing notation successful the section but apt refers to e-bikes and electrical scooters.

Current policies, the papers says, “strangle the improvement of caller technologies” similar drones. Instead, the DOT should promote the usage of tiny craft for aerial taxis oregon for quiescent vertical flights. It should besides propulsion for a displacement to integer oregon distant power towers for planes, letting flights beryllium managed “anywhere from anywhere.”

Department of the Treasury

Authored by: William L. Walton, a trustee of the Heritage Foundation and the laminitis and seat of the backstage equity steadfast Rappahannock Ventures LLC; Stephen Moore, a visiting chap successful economics astatine the Heritage Foundation; and David R. Burton, a elder probe chap successful economical argumentation astatine the Heritage Foundation.

Under Project 2025, the US would efficaciously wantonness its committedness to stopping clime change. The section suggests getting escaped of the department’s Climate Hub bureau and withdrawing from planetary clime alteration agreements, including the Paris statement and the United Nations Framework Convention connected Climate Change. Instead of focusing connected cleanable vigor oregon clime change-resilient infrastructure, the section suggests that the authorities should put successful home energy, particularly lipid and gas.

Like respective different sections, this section takes purpose astatine “wokeness” and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. As portion of Project 2025’s program to gut the national workforce, it suggests identifying each Treasury officials who person participated successful DEI initiatives, publishing their communications astir DEI, and firing anyone who participated successful DEI initiatives “without objecting connected law oregon motivation grounds.”

Department of Health and Human Services

Authored by: Roger Severino, a vice president astatine the Heritage Foundation and erstwhile manager of its DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society, who served arsenic the manager of the HHS’s Office of Civil Rights nether Trump.

The bottommost line: Project 2025 would bounds the government’s quality to bash basal wellness governance portion mounting up a surveillance authorities for favored blimpish issues similar termination and gender-affirming attraction for trans people. 

Much of the HHS section focuses connected the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s effect to covid-19, which the writer characterizes arsenic adjacent totalitarian. The section recommends barring the CDC from saying that children should beryllium masked oregon vaccinated against immoderate unwellness and says that the CDC should beryllium investigated for “colluding with Big Tech to censor dissenting opinions during Covid.” The writer besides suggests moving respective CDC programs — including the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment project, which researches vaccine information — to the Food and Drug Administration.

Unsurprisingly, termination would beryllium severely restricted. Under Project 2025, the FDA would reverse the support of pills that facilitate medicine abortions, which the papers calls the “single top menace to unborn children.” The FDA would besides destruct policies allowing radical to bid termination pills by message oregon online. As the CDC would halt encouraging vaccinations — which immoderate conservatives judge infringe connected bodily autonomy — the bureau would summation its surveillance and recordkeeping of abortions and maternal mortality. This includes a proposal that the HHS “use each disposable tool, including the cutting of funds” to unit states to study “exactly however galore abortions instrumentality spot wrong its borders.” 

A abstracted study, done the National Institutes of Health, is recommended to analyse the “short-term and semipermanent antagonistic effects of cross-sex interventions,” i.e., gender-affirming care. The study besides recommends utilizing AI to observe Medicaid fraud, which costs the US an estimated $100 billion a twelvemonth and is typically perpetrated by healthcare providers, not idiosyncratic beneficiaries of nationalist healthcare.

Department of Homeland Security

Authored by: Ken Cuccinelli, who served successful assorted capacities nether Trump, including arsenic the manager of US Citizenship and Immigration Services and, later, the “senior authoritative performing the duties of the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security.”

Perhaps counterintuitively fixed Republicans’ laser absorption connected the US border, Project 2025 recommends abolishing the Department of Homeland Security. The goal, though, is to regenerate it with the Border Security and Immigration Agency, a new, much draconian, and little accountable migration enforcement apparatus. 

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) would beryllium privatized, and the Coast Guard would beryllium moved to either the Department of Defense oregon the Department of Justice. Dismantling the DHS astir surely won’t hap — it would necessitate an enactment of Congress, and lawmakers haven’t passed an migration measure successful decades.

Project 2025 doesn’t conscionable urge much stringent restrictions connected unauthorized immigration; it besides lays retired a imaginativeness of severely restricted ineligible immigration. It recommends scrapping the family-based migration strategy that has been successful spot since 1965 and replacing it with a “merit-based strategy that rewards high-skilled aliens.” Other suggestions see eliminating the diverseness visa lottery and altering the enactment visa system. This, too, would mostly necessitate legislature action. 

As it prioritizes “merit-based” migration to the US, the section proposes limiting overseas students’ quality to survey here. In a determination that (unlike overmuch of this chapter) could beryllium accomplished done enforcement action, it proposes ending what it calls Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) “cozy deference to acquisition institutions,” i.e., the issuing of pupil visas to astir overseas students admitted to US universities. It besides calls to “eliminate oregon importantly trim the fig of visas issued to overseas students from force nations” — implicitly, China.

Intelligence community

Authored by: Dustin J. Carmack, Meta’s manager of nationalist argumentation for the Southern and Southeastern US. Carmack, a erstwhile probe chap astatine the Heritage Foundation, was the main of unit for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence nether Trump from 2020 to 2021.

Concerns astir China are acold much explicit successful this chapter, which looks astatine the “vast, intricate bureaucracy of quality agencies wrong the national government.” The section raises the menace of Chinese (and to a lesser extent, Russian) espionage, online power campaigns, and “legitimate businesses serving arsenic postulation platforms,” a imaginable allusion to TikTok. The Mandate for Leadership recommends amending Executive Order 12333 — which was signed by President Ronald Reagan successful 1981 and, among different things, authorizes wide information postulation for quality purposes to code the threats the US and its allies look “in cyberspace.”

But the section besides claims quality agencies person dedicated acold excessively overmuch clip to surveilling the erstwhile president, which allegedly proves a “shocking grade of politicization” among the agencies and the officials who pb them. (Its grounds includes the missive signed by 51 erstwhile quality officials up of the 2020 US statesmanlike predetermination claiming that the communicative astir Hunter Biden’s laptop was apt a Russian accusation operation.) The writer calls for an probe into “past politicization and abuses of quality information.” 

The section besides recommends that Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — the arguable instrumentality allowing warrantless wiretapping that was reauthorized earlier this year — beryllium reformed with “strong provisions to support against partisanship,” pointing to the usage of FISA to surveil erstwhile Trump run subordinate Carter Page arsenic portion of the FBI’s probe into Trump’s ties to Russia. There is small notation of however these immense surveillance powers impact regular people. In fact, the section notes that an autarkic reappraisal recovered that Section 702 surveillance powers were “not abused,” though it does urge that Congress reappraisal further reports to find whether immoderate FISA reforms are needed.

Buried amid each these claims, it besides recommends the Department of Defense analyse the anticipation of associated outer and abstraction programs with “potential allied nations” to antagonistic the menace posed by Russia and China. Additionally, it suggests agencies spy connected the abstraction programs of overseas adversaries and cod much information connected adversaries’ imaginable threats to US abstraction programs.

Media agencies

Authored by: Mora Namdar, a erstwhile State Department authoritative who worked arsenic a elder argumentation advisor and acting adjunct caput of authorities successful consular affairs nether Trump; and Mike Gonzalez, a erstwhile writer and existent elder chap astatine the Heritage Foundation.

These agencies aren’t arsenic consequential arsenic juggernauts similar the FTC, but the accustomed slash-and-burn recommendations apply. Project 2025 encourages undercutting the Open Technology Fund, a subagency wrong the US Agency for Global Media dedicated to protecting escaped code astir the satellite that has funded open-source projects similar Signal. It calls the OTF a “wasteful and redundant boondoggle” that makes “small, insubstantial donations to overmuch larger messaging applications and exertion to bolster its unsubstantiated claims” and — contra its sanction and stated ngo — suggests it money closed-source exertion instead.

The section besides notes that determination is “vast concern” astir the vulnerability of undersea cablegram trunks that powerfulness the net and says that large planetary struggle could origin wide harm to these cables, perchance starring to long-lasting powerfulness outages. There is nary notation of what tin beryllium done to forestall this, though the section does accidental that the US Agency for Global Media’s shortwave vigor capabilities could assistance transportation broadcasts and support connection successful areas wherever online postulation is constricted oregon restricted.