The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump's First 100 Days: Project 2025 & Its Influence

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

The Heritage Foundation's "blueprint" for a new Republican administration got a lot of attention during the 2024 presidential campaign. While candidate Donald Trump said he "had never read" the document, President Trump has incorporated many of its policies, and authors, into his administration's first 100 days. This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and senior political editor & correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And this week on the pod, we're doing something a little different, taking a look at some of the policies and decisions President Trump has made in the first 100 days of his second term. And to understand some of what he's done so far, we're going to start by going back to something that got a lot of attention in the 2024 presidential campaign. A think tank called the Heritage Foundation made a wide range of policy recommendations in what they call Project 2025. Project 2025, a 922-page book filled with ideas, policy prescriptions, and blueprints

for a future Republican administration. And even though Donald Trump often said Project 2025 wasn't part of his campaign... Like on Project 2025, I have no idea about it. It had nothing to do with me. Project 2025, I've said a hundred times, I know nothing about it. I had nothing to do. She talks about Project 2025, which I have absolutely nothing to do with. She says, I know that because of Project. Well, we've denied that. I have no idea what Project 2025 is.

I've never read it and I never will. The goals it mentioned often aligned with Trump's own campaign messaging. Things like freezing foreign aid. You let them know that effective immediately, they're no longer getting any foreign aid. They're no longer getting... Tightening immigration laws. On day one, I will terminate every open borders policy

of the Biden administration. And we will begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history. And drastically reducing the size of the federal government. We will fight for America like no one has ever fought before. With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists.

Now that Trump is in office again, a number of the people behind Project 2025 are with him. People like Russ Vogt, who wrote sections related to expanding the power of the presidency and now runs the Office of Management and Budget. Or Brendan Carr, who wrote about reining in tech companies and is now chairman of the FCC or Caroline Levitt, who was part of the group's effort to train new young conservative leaders and is now White House press secretary. So today, let's talk about Project 2025 and let's talk about it with White House correspondent Franco Ordonez and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro. Hello. Hello.

Hey there. So Franco, as we look back at the first 100 days of the Trump administration, how closely does Project 2025 match up with the policies President Trump enacted right out of the gate? It's not like a carbon copy of the Trump agenda, but that said, there is a bunch of stuff

from Project 2025 that is now in the Trump agenda. But that said, there is a bunch of stuff from Project 2025 that is now in the Trump administration. And you kind of named the big overlap, which is people. You mentioned Russ Vought. There was also Peter Navarro, Trump's trade advisor, who has long, long championed increased tariffs. In terms of policies, there are so much policy overlap, including consolidating power in the executive branch, stripping job protections for federal workers, taking on diversity and equity programs, and as again, launching mass deportation operations. I get the sense that it's not just the what, but also the how.

Yeah, I mean, for sure. I mean, let's go a little even deeper. I mean, Elon Musk, the billionaire head of Tesla, who has been an advisor for Trump, you know, he obviously emerged late in the campaign. The playbook was already written before Elon Musk came on the scene. But many of the actions that Musk took that his Doge group took were foreshadowed in Project 2025. Project 2025 called for a rehauling of USAID and an ending of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Project 2025 also outlined how to empower

the little-known office of personnel and management to basically overhaul the federal workforce. People will remember OPM because that is the office where the famous kind of fork in the road email came from as well as the what are the five things that you accomplished this week email. Domenico I do want to ask you does it matter or why does it matter that there is this overlap between project 2025 and how President Trump has run his White House. You know, it's a long-term project of the hardest right in society matching up with MAGA and Trump, really written for him in many ways. And I think it's also important because

you heard how many times Trump disavowed it during the campaign, but he certainly hired on a lot of the people who were instrumental in writing it and who are influential with him right now. Franco, how has the government changed as a result? I mean, it's only been a hundred days, but what is the change that this has brought? I mean, it's brought so much change. We talked about USAID.

There's also the Department of Education. Project 2025 called for basically the immediate end of the Department of Education, which 2025 called for basically the immediate end of the Department of Education, which is another thing Trump is trying to get rid of. I mean, now I will say allies of Trump and allies of Project 2025 say a lot of this stuff is kind of standard Republican fare, but it really is quite a lot of the same things. Again, as Domenico just said, for someone who said he knew nothing about it. And Domenico, the Heritage Foundation insisted that they wrote Project 2025 for any Republican who would win,

who would become president. Of course, Donald Trump is the one who won and became president. And in so many ways, it seems like it was written for him. It was written in his form. And he was certainly the front runner for the nomination if he wanted to get into the race and then did get into the race

and he was running for a long time. Remember, he got into the race a week after the 2022 midterm election. So the Heritage Foundation knew that the person most likely to win the Republican nomination was Donald Trump. And we have to realize that the Heritage Foundation underwent a big transformation of its own from being this sort of, you know, more standard conservative, traditional establishment conservative

group to one that was even during the Tea Party sort of taken over a little bit more by the hard right. And they found their vehicle with Trump. And this certainly gave a roadmap for Trump's second term. I mean, Trump's first term was so marked by disorganization. He really didn't know how to govern or who to trust. And Project 2025 isn't just this policy prescription, which it is very detailed on,

but it's sort of a detailed statement of principles for the kinds of people who are gonna be in the administration and what they would sign on to. If you wanted to be in this administration, then it seems Project 2025 would have been something you had to be okay with. Look, the people that were involved with Project 2025 were all people who were loyalists, who were part or very close to Trump during the first administration. I mean, I even interviewed Paul Danz. He was a former Trump official who directed the 2025 presidential transition project. He did the whole thing. And he told me that Trump is

the best embodiment of their movement. And he said, quote, while we're candidate agnostic, we are not reality agnostic. So they were very clear knowing that this was the guy. All right, we're going to take a quick break and we will have more in a moment. And we're back. And I want to get into a few more of the specifics about how President Trump has been governing in his first 100 days and which of those ideas came from or overlaps with Project 2025? So Franco, I feel like immigration might be an area where there's a lot of overlap. Yeah, yeah.

Immigration was a huge one. You know, Trump called for mass deportation, use of military personnel to prevent crossings between ports. All that stuff was also in Project 2025. Project 2025 called for the reinstating of Remain in Mexico, which was the program from Trump's first term, which forced asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases are processed. And he also imposed sanctions on countries that refused to accept deportees. I mean, there is so much there. And I imagine there's even more in Project 2025 that is yet to come, considering

how important immigration is to President Trump. Did Project 2025 talk about using the Alien Enemies Act or militarizing the border? Alien Enemies Act was not a specific term in Project 2025. And I do think that is an example where there is a divide. I mean, very clearly, Project 2025 called for using every single tool that they could find to lower the number of border crossings. But take another example, abortion. That was one of the most controversial aspects of Project 2025 that Democrats largely seized on. That is another area where Trump tried to pull

away from to not do the federal regulations that were called for in Project 2025. So there is definitely divide. Some of it is because of political, some of it is just different ideas. And also it's only been a hundred days, so who knows what's going to come next. And there was plenty in the project 2025 about for example how the science agencies should be run or how much money should go toward them or how the United States should position itself in the world and whether or not it you know would continue the sort of do-gooder things that the right would sort of pejoratively describe like USAID or any of the other host of sort of soft power items within the federal government that Republicans have long targeted

as wasteful spending, even though they're small portions of the budget overall. For sure. I mean, you got so many of the prescriptions in project 2025 have already been implemented, you know, stripping job protections I mentioned from career civil servants, Schedule F. Let's talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Trump signed an executive order and it was like on day one, ending diversity programs at the Pentagon. Project 2025 specifically mentioned the Defense Department and quote eliminating Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs at the Pentagon.

Sex and gender, Trump signed an EO attacking gender ideology. That was also in project 2025. It really goes on and on. There's climate. Project 2025 called for ramping up oil and gas drilling in the US, which Trump carried out in one of his first executive orders. Trump withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization. The Trump administration slashing billions in NIH funding, National Institute of Health

funding. There is so many things. It sounds like a long list of things that have happened in the first 100 days of the Trump administration. I do wonder if Project 2025 and the way in which Trump is hewing to that blueprint, if that tells us anything about the difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0. I think definitely Trump 1.0 had very little roadmap to go off of.

This is not somebody who had long-held ideological views about what kind of politician he should be to go off of. This is not somebody who had long-held ideological views about what kind of politician he should be or what kind of policy prescriptions to engage in in the country. The thing that was most animating for Trump all the time was immigration, you could argue. I think that that's pretty clear given that when he came down from the escalator or whatever in Trump Tower, that was the first thing that he talked about, right? And he continued to talk about it even throughout this campaign and throughout this campaign.

And after this campaign, he said, people told me inflation really mattered most, prices were the big thing, I heard about groceries all the time, but I really always felt that immigration was the most important thing. And look, this is a group of people around him who are related with Project 2025

and now serving in his administration, who are very smart people 2025 and now serving in his administration, who are very smart people, who have long held beliefs in how to reshape the federal government and were able to sort of navigate some of what Trump believes culturally and sell him on some of this ideology of how to break apart the government and how to stop immigration and a whole host of other things they sort of put under this cultural umbrella. And those same people that Domenico is talking about it wanted to be sure that they did not make the same mistakes that were made in the first Trump administration. I mean this dates back to really the first few

months of 2017 at the beginning of the first Trump administration which was just marked by chaos and uncertainty and firings and protests at airports. I mean, Trump was ridiculed, uh, in the beginning for not being prepared. Trump actually picked former New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, to kind of help make his transition plans. And then he fired them and Trump tossed out all the work that was done, uh, and really had to start from scratch. So, you know, these these guys these loyalists wanted to make sure that they had the right people in place and the right policies in place Because they know that they only have a certain amount of time to get all the things they want done

Before her campaign season kind of kicks in before Democrats get maybe get their sea legs back They are really I mean, I would say the big difference between the first administration and the second ones is just how organized they are at pulling this stuff off. My sense is that project 2025 was a much bigger deal on the left as like a boogeyman thing to be afraid of than it was on the right of like regular voters cheering it on and being excited about it. But in the end, are Trump voters getting what they voted for? Yeah. And I think Trump voters just believe what Donald Trump says and they think that he's fighting for them, that he's pushing back against a liberal society and they trust

him on this stuff. Now, whether independence or some of those crossover democratic voters potentially who voted for him on things like prices, like all of this stuff, that's a different story, but he doesn't have to run for a second term on something that may be unpopular. All right, well, we are gonna leave it there for today. Tomorrow on the pod, we'll look at how the Trump administration has handled cultural issues

in its first 100 days. I'm Tamara Keith, I cover the White House. I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House as well. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.