The Heritage Foundation document clearly identifies ‘Communist China’ as the US’s main adversary with the potential to overtake it in terms of nuclear weapons. “Beijing presents a challenge to American interests across the domains of national power, but the military threat that it poses is especially acute and significant. China is undertaking a historic military buildup that includes increasing capability for power projection not only in its own region, but also far beyond as well as a dramatic expansion of its nuclear forces that could result in a nuclear force that matches or exceeds America’s own nuclear arsenal,” it says. To counter this, it quotes former acting secretary of defense Christopher Miller’s idea that a “denial defense” must be set up to hurt China’s efforts to expand its influence across the globe.

Connecting the dots

Interestingly, Trump has repeatedly denied having any truck with Project 2025. More so after some of its radical suggestions were flagged by Democrats during the presidential election campaign. However, several of Trump’s decisions could be linked to the Heritage Foundation’s policy blueprint.

For example, Trump has aggressively targeted the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiatives and signed multiple executive orders to abolish policies supporting the initiative. DEI is something Project 2025 has explicitly sought to eliminate, calling it a “burdensome ideological project”.

As for immigration policy, it is hard to distinguish between the Project 2025 recommendations and Trump’s orders. Both call for restricting immigration and tightening border security, mass detention of undocumented migrants and giving sweeping powers to local law enforcement agencies to target the undocumented.

Another important decision with global ramifications is slashing federal spending and eliminating humanitarian aid programmes. This also appears to have been inspired by the Project 2025 suggestion that “the President should use every possible tool to propose and impose fiscal discipline on the federal government. Anything short of that would constitute abject failure.”

Trump also reinstated military personnel who were fired for not complying with its Covid vaccine mandate, as Project 2025 urged. He also ended DEI programmes in the military after the document called for eliminating “Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs and abolish newly established diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff”.

The most striking of all Trump decisions with direct link to Project 2025 seems to be the withdrawal from climate change commitments. Project 2025 proposed leaving the Paris Climate Agreement, which Trump did on his first day in office. Also, Trump’s public speeches against climate change efforts are in line with the project document.

Shutting down the USAID, pushback against ‘woke’ policies, undoing the final rulemakings of the Biden Administration, withdrawing from the UNESCO, UN Human Rights Council and WHO, stopping funds for UN Relief and Works Agency, and ceasing funds for ‘biased’ media outlets such as National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) are among the other recommendations by Project 2025 that have been implemented in full.

According to Project 2025 Tracker, an online tool that tracks the implementation of Project 2025’s proposals, 48% of the ideas have been implemented in the first 10 months of Trump 2.0 with several policy recommendations currently in progress. However, several key decisions are stuck due to legal challenges. Critics may still dismiss Project 2025 as a right-wing wishlist. And Trump may continue to deny that he looks up to Project 2025 as his North Star. But, his induction of the document’s authors in his administration tells a completely different story.