New research on how Americans perceive Project 2025, an initiative developed by the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, has been published by a progressive group that opposes it.

Project 2025 essentially outlines an overhaul of the federal government. It was designed in the hopes of being implemented if Donald Trump wins reelection in November—though the former president has denied associations with it.

Former President Donald Trump said he does not know anything about Project 2025, a presidential transition framework led by the Heritage Foundation that conservatives have lauded as a way to reshape the federal government should Trump be reelected. 

From his home office in small-town Kentucky, a seasoned political operative is quietly investigating scores of federal employees suspected of being hostile to the policies of Republican Donald Trump, an effort that dovetails with broader conservative preparations for a new White House.

Democrats are already preparing to push back against Donald Trump’s use of executive power if he wins control of the Oval Office, with the hope of crafting the sort of pre-written resistance playbook they lacked when he first won office in 2016.

Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., is spearheading a task force to oppose Project 2025, the plan crafted by conservative groups to replace much of the current federal bureaucracy with reliably right-wing personnel and pursue dramatic policy changes through administrative fiat.

Donald Trump used his first rally since his criminal conviction to rail against migrants entering the United States illegally, echoing harsh characterizations in the “Project 2025” policy blueprint for a second term drafted by some of his allies.

In April 2022, conservative American think tank the Heritage Foundation, working with a broad coalition of 50 conservative organisations, launched Project 2025: a plan for the next conservative president of the United States.

The Project’s flagship publication, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, outlines in plain language and in granular detail, over 900-plus pages, what a second Trump administration (if it occurs) might look like. I’ve read it all, so you don’t have to.

Every new administration that wins power away from the opposing party contends that whatever its predecessors did was terrible and that victory constitutes a popular mandate to fix or get rid of it all. Elections have consequences, politicians love to remind us, and a big one entails trying to change everything, right away.

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s $22 million effort aimed at staffing up and preparing the next Republican administration, has signed on just over 100 coalition partners for its advisory board. The lineup is a mix of traditional issue advocacy groups and New Right political organizations that offer a glimpse at the shifting landscape of Donald Trump’s Republican Party.

Lindsey Burke’s job is to do things such as, when testifying before a House Education Committee in April, proclaiming that we should abolish the Department of Education.

With more than a year to go before the 2024 election, a constellation of conservative organizations is preparing for a possible second White House term for Donald Trump, recruiting thousands of Americans to come to Washington on a mission to dismantle the federal government and replace it with a vision closer to his own.