The NPR Politics Podcast - Year In Review: The Impact Of Project 2025

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

As we approach 2026, the NPR Politics Podcast is taking a look back at the year that was in different political areas. Today, we look at how Project 2025, a document published by the Heritage Foundation to outline policy objectives in a Republican administration taking office in 2025, has influenced the Trump administration's approach to governance.This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.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 Miles Parks. We're almost to the end of 2025, and it has been a tough year for NPR and for local stations. But despite the loss of federal funding for public media, despite the attacks on the free press, we're still here for you. With your support, NPR will keep reporting the news. And here at the politics podcast, we'll keep reporting the news and tell you how it affects you in your community and get you ready for the midterms. If you're already an NPR Plus supporter, thank you so much. We see you and we appreciate you. If not, please join the community of public radio supporters right now, before the end of the year, at plus.npr.org. Signing up unlocks a bunch of different perks like bonus episodes from across NPR's podcasts. Plus, you get to feel good about supporting public media while you listen. Visit plus.mpr.org today. Thank you. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today on the show, we want to revisit Project 2025 and check in on whether it's had the impact on the Trump administration people thought it would. Franco, it's been a while since we talked about this. So can you remind folks like what is or was Project 2025?

Yeah, it was kind of this, you know, multi-pronged transition and waiting for the next presidency, a conservative presidency. It was put together by some of Trump's closest allies from his first presidency and, you know, kind of organized by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Now, those prongs included a call for young conservatives, kind of a hiring service. It was described at some point, like a conservative LinkedIn. There was also a training program. There was also many, many pre-written executive orders that Trump could roll out on day one, many of which he did. And most notably and most controversially, there was this 922 page blueprint for the next Republican president with the primary goal of expanding executive power. It was really this wish list of conservative policies for that conservative president, which many of them were kind of for thinking and expecting it would be Trump.

Yeah, and I remember Democrats used this as like it was a big part of the campaign, the presidential campaign. This was something that they wanted to use against Republicans. I mean, Trump himself distanced himself from this. I mean, why was it so controversial? What was in there that had both sides either backing away from it or, you know, using it as a as a sort of weapon against the other party. Yeah, it was definitely a major talking point for Democrats on the trail. And it was because of the controversial policies that were in that blueprint. I mean, it called for mass deport. eliminating the Department of Education, but it also had things like stricter controls on abortion and slashing climate protections. And Democrats, they zeroed in on some of the most controversial parts, such as the stricter controls on abortion. And not only did it become a big part of the campaign, it was a huge part of the Democratic National Convention. May remember when the comedian Keenan Thompson, he even carried out this like massive cartoon size version of Project 2025, that big blue book to make fun of Trump and the effort. And it really, frankly, turned into a political nightmare for Trump. As you said, he tried to distance himself from it, said he knew nothing about it. His aides went nuclear on that. Even the architect, the author of Project 2025, Paul Danz, he ended up leaving in disgrace. And Trump and his AIDS celebrated that in that kind of distancing. But as we learned later, there was a lot more overlap. Yeah, I wanted

Domenkola, why didn't this work for Democrats? Why weren't they able to more effectively use this against Trump and Republicans? Well, I think it's a lot different when something hasn't happened yet versus when something does. I think that, you know, there were a lot of Democrats who are sort of signaling that this could be a blueprint. And the Trump campaign decided to say, you know, this is getting unpopular. So we're going to say, no, I have nothing to do with this, Trump said, you know. But as those of us who cover this, How do you settle that, right? You've got people saying on the one hand, this is his blueprint. You have the Trump campaign and the other saying, no, no, no, watch what I do, not what this thing says. And while all along, people were more concerned about the cost of living. And, you know, most people aren't following politics all that closely every single day. And I think it became really difficult for Democrats to be able to say, see, this is the thing they're going to do when Trump was saying, no, it's not what I'm going to do, even though he pretty much went and did it. I actually think it did work for Democrats. It just didn't work enough. The evidence that it worked was how freaked out Trump and the Republicans and his aides were and how nuclear and kind of really went after the Heritage Foundation and how controversial it became within the Republican Party and Republican leaders in the campaign. That said, as Domenico said, there was all these other issues and Trump was at least enough able to separate himself just enough that, to get the focus back on the economy and, you know, all these other issues, Biden's mental state or his abilities to lead, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Okay, let's take a break more in a moment. And we're back. And Franco, I do want to talk about how much of Project 2025 actually made its way into the federal government. Can you give us a rundown of like how this has actually gone into effect? Yeah, I mean, it's a lot. I mean, you have tightening immigration laws. That's probably like the biggest one, you know, the larger deportation. Program Operation in American History. You have drastically reducing the size of the federal government, removing protections for civil service workers. But actually, it's not just policy. It's also personnel. Several of Trump's cabinet and agency picks were involved with Project 2025. The most notable one, of course, is Russ Vote, who was a key author of Project 2025. He's now director of the Office of Management and Budget. That was a job. he had in the first administration as well, but also Brendan Carr, who is now FCC commission chair. And there were also a bunch of contributors to Project 2025 who have big roles, Tom Holman, he's the White House border czar, John Ratcliffe, who is now the CIA director, and Pete Hoxtra,

who is the U.S. ambassador to Canada. So, you know, they say personnel is policy, well, there's so much overlap. In terms of, like, real world effects, like how would voters or like people have actually experienced these changes in government? I mean, look, the playbook was already written by the time, you know, the billionaire Elon Musk came onto the scene. But many of the actions that Musk took, remember his, his Doge group took, were basically kind of foreshadowed in Project 2025. Project 2025 called for the rehalling of USAID and ending the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. We've reported a lot of all the cuts at USAID. Project 2025 also empowered the Office of Personnel Management, which is this little

known office at the White House that is like the human resources of the White House. And basically, it empowered that agency to basically overhaul the federal workforce. If you remember that fork in the road email that Musk wrote to essentially everyone, that came out of the office of personnel management. And also, you know, another world world experience is during the shutdown, if you remember, you know, Trump distanced himself so much from Project 2025 during the campaign. But during the shutdown, Trump actually trolled Democrats using Project 2025, noting how Russ vote was part of Project 2025. And now he's going to get the opportunity to do the things that he wanted, basically threatening Democrats that if they didn't lift

the shutdown, he'd continue to do Project 2025 type things and slashing the federal government and having Russ vote as kind of the weapon to do that. Yeah. And Franco, I am curious. I mean, this was written for Donald Trump. I mean, is this partly why so much of it has been carried out because this was tailor made to a second Trump presidency? Ashley, I think there's no question that this was, you know, quote unquote, more successful

because Trump was the president. I mean, so many of the authors involved were former. Trump allies, former members of the administration. You know, Paul Danz, who was the author of this, was in the administration. Russ Vote, obviously, was a huge part of Project 2025, was also part of the first administration. Let's say if Nikki Haley won, she could potentially have pulled from some of these aspects. But look, mass deportations, eliminating the Department of Education, slashing the federal government, there was overlap with Trump's first administration, efforts. that he was trying to do, some of which he was unable to do in the first administration. And

they were simply trying to put it in. And even when I spoke to Paul Dan's, he said that, you know, this was for any Republican candidate. They're in the service for any standard bear. But he said, we're candidate agnostic, but we're not reality agnostic, which to me was very clear that this was for Trump. I mean, Domenico, a lot of what we're talking about here, I mean, this is like a a wish list of long time conservative goals, right? Some of these are dating back to the Reagan years. I mean, how significant is it like when we think about American politics broadly that this is now federal policy, a lot of these ideas? Well, I think there's a couple things here. But first, you know, a lot of this was done by executive order. So it could be undone by a future president.

But it's damaged a lot of confidence that people have in wanting to join the federal government. I mean, the federal government was always seen as a solid, secure job. Now that's not exactly. exactly the case because now federal workers have become a target. And federal workers were never really the kind of people who wanted to really be involved in politics. They were always seen as civil servants who served in multiple, you know, bipartisan administrations so that they could just keep the government running and were always seen as a pillar of that. But Trump decided to make them into a big target, Project 2025, did so. And I think that that might be the most last. effect that that might not be able to be undone where you're going to see Republican presidents in the future probably see them as villains instead of seeing them as people who are, you know, doing the job to keep the government running. Yeah, I mean, I just add like kind of on the point on what took them so long is, I mean, I think like a lot of, you know, new presidents, they come in and they kind of veer a little bit to the

center and some of these things in this wish list were much farther to the right. where Trump has, you know, taken a much more aggressive, dominant type of approach, especially in this second administration now that he has all this loyalists involved. And he's able to push through many of these things that, you know, all these other farther right conservatives have kind of dreamed about for so long. Trump's like, we're going to do it and we're going to do it any way possible and we're going to use every avenue we can, whether it's the courts or we'll do this and we'll make them try to stop us. Yeah. I mean, beyond us, a slew of executive order sort of reversing a lot of this stuff. I do wonder if Democrats are going

to sort of respond in the next presidential election by having, you know, something like a project 2029. Is this something that you think will be replicated by the other party? I don't know if it'll be replicated as clearly. There is a project 2029, by the way, that has cropped up. If you Google that, you could find it and starts to sort of outline some of the ideas that Democrats have or people the left of the political spectrum have. Each party is always going to come up with a platform of ideas. I mean, that's generally what the platform at the Republican National Convention or the Democratic National Convention is about. They vote on these things. They talk about basic tenants that they have. This was very different. Project 2025 was very detailed, 900 pages. I don't know that you're

going to have this sort of live inside one think tank from the left being able to then push its ideas and roll into a new Democratic administration. 2028 is going to be wide open on both the left and the right. So, you know, anything kind of goes. But there are definitely some ideas from the left of people trying to coalesce around some tenants and principles for sure. I agree with what Domenico's saying in the sense that, you know, I don't think you're going to have like a big, thick 900 page book for for Democrats.

But, you know, you see this things. I mean, you have so many groups that, you know, kind of lean to the left or, you know, Democrat, you have the Center for American Progress, just one example. I mean, they are definitely putting out policy ideas. They are putting out executive orders that they would like to see. And not only the think tanks, but also activist groups that are trying to push their ideas into friendly politicians' hands. So I think the Democrats, it's going to be a little bit more disparate, a little bit less organized. It's not going to be in one book. but I do think you're going to see, you know, those aspects.

And because of Project 2025, I think they will potentially be much more aggressive about it. All right. Let's leave it there for today. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.