Project 2025 Is at the Center of Trump 2.0

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump tried to distance himself from Project 2025—a detailed policy battle plan from the Heritage Foundation that was backed by over 100 right-wing organizations. In theory and in practice, Project 2025 is an attempt to reverse engineer American society to what it was well over 100 years ago by undoing social-safety-net programs that emerged from World War II, such as Social Security; neutralizing environmental protections; ending policies meant to address legacy social inequity and racism; and dismantling the administrative state. 

Now, more than three months into Trump’s second term, he appears to be following through on much of the Project 2025 agenda. Paul Dans, the former head of Project 2025, said Trump’s actions were beyond his “wildest dreams.” “This is deconstructing the administrative state and walking back a lot of this progressive architecture that had been built up by FDR,” Dans told NBC News. 

Over 40 percent of Project 2025’s recommendations have been achieved or are in progress overall, according to the Project 2025 Tracker. On the initiative’s environment and energy-related proposals, 60 percent have been or are being implemented. The Natural Resources Defense Council says that the Trump administration has averaged at least one destructive action or proposal each day during the course of its first three months—over 100 in total. Meanwhile, a Guardian analysis finds that Trump and his team have initiated 145 anti-environment actions over his first 100 days in office—more rollbacks than Trump completed during his entire first term. 

“It’s the most anti-environment, anti–public health administration in the history of the country,” Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and a former EPA regional administrator, told Sierra. “It’s really hard to fathom the level of damage being done. This damage is going to be felt for decades.”  

“We’re seeing an all-out assault on federal climate activities and federal science at large,” Gretchen Goldman, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists and a former official in the US Department of Transportation and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said during a recent press briefing. “It’s already harming people across the nation with only fossil fuel polluters and billionaires standing to benefit.” 

Putting the plan into action 

Trump signed several executive orders on his first day in office dealing with energy, including one that directed agencies to immediately pause disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act. Project 2025 called for the repeal of those two laws. And in January, Trump’s Department of Energy immediately lifted the Biden administration’s pause on new LNG export approvals, which aligns with Project 2025’s recommendation for the department to stop “political and climate change interference” with these approvals.

Since then, his administration has methodically proceeded with a strategic gutting of the Environmental Protection Agency, as envisioned by the right-wing policy blueprint. Under the helm of EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, there have been significant layoffs and an exodus of employees, termination of grants and programs, and a steering of the agency’s focus away from its core mission. The agency’s environmental-justice office has been shuttered. 

Zeldin also recently announced some additional internal reorganizations, including shifting the Office of Research and Development into a new, much smaller office under the Office of the Administrator. The move is part of a larger restructuring effort to downsize the agency, with the aim to reduce employment levels to “near those seen when President Ronald Reagan occupied the White House,” according to the EPA’s announcement.  

“Even though Project 2025 laid it out, it’s even scarier, I think, in person watching it happen,” Kyla Bennett, director of science policy at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, told Sierra. “I used to work at EPA, and when I talk to people who are still there, they’re thinking about leaving because they just can’t stay there and watch it unravel,” she added. “It’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever experienced.” 

The White House’s recently unveiled budget plan would take a sledgehammer to the EPA’s funding, reducing it by more than half from current levels—the largest budget cut in the EPA’s history. “This is sabotage,” said Michelle Roos, executive director of the Environmental Protection Network, a coalition of former EPA employees. “This isn’t about government efficiency. It’s about putting the interests of large polluters above the rights of people to breath clean air and drink safe water.” 

Following Project 2025’s recommendation, the EPA is also implementing a massive deregulatory agenda. In March, Zeldin announced 31 planned actions and rollbacks in what he touted as the “greatest day of deregulation” in US history. In that announcement, Zeldin said he intends to revoke the 2009 endangerment finding for greenhouse gases. This decision follows an instruction from Trump in a day-one executive order for the EPA head to submit recommendations on the “legality and continuing applicability” of the endangerment finding, an instruction that matches with Project 2025’s call to “establish a system, with an appropriate deadline, to update the 2009 endangerment finding.” 

The Trump administration is also trying to shut down federal climate science and weather forecasting operations, in line with the Project 2025 agenda. The policy blueprint specifically recommended eliminating the Global Change Research Act of 1990, which requires federal scientific research and reports on climate change (called National Climate Assessments). While the Global Change Research Act itself has not been repealed, the Trump administration recently fired all of the nearly 400 scientists working on the next National Climate Assessment report. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the main agencies working on climate science, has also come under attack. Project 2025 said that NOAA should be “broken up and downsized”, claiming it has become “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” This downsizing is already happening. 

There has been a 20 percent reduction in NOAA’s workforce since late February, Tom Di Liberto, a former scientist and public affairs specialist at NOAA, said during a press briefing last month. The Trump administration intends to slash much of the agency’s research, including weather satellites and forecasting, and is ending NOAA’s tracking and reporting of billion-dollar weather and climate disasters. Under Trump’s budget plan, NOAA’s budget would be cut by $1.5 billion. 

“The president’s proposed budget is right in line with what corporate polluters and Project 2025 have been asking for,” Joanna Slaney, the Environmental Defense Fund's vice president for political and government affairs, said in a statement. “These proposed cuts make us less healthy, safe, and secure, while allowing corporate polluters to continue dirtying our air and water with vastly reduced oversight.” 

Trump is also testing the bounds of his authority in ways that are unprecedented, from targeting law firms and universities to withholding federal funds already appropriated by Congress and defying court orders. “What Trump is doing at the federal level is trickling down to states and municipalities,” Bennett said. He has ordered his Department of Justice, for example, to go after states for their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and hold fossil fuel polluters accountable. 

That also includes targeting public media and public education, for example, following the guidance outlined in Project 2025. The 900-plus-page manifesto criticized NPR and PBS for being too liberal and recommended stripping them of federal funding by defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. On May 1, Trump signed an executive order directing a halt to funding for NPR and PBS. Project 2025 also said the Department of Education should be eliminated. Trump signed an executive order on March 20 ordering his secretary of education to facilitate the department’s closure. 

Environmental experts say the Trump administration’s assaults on science, public health, and the environment will be detrimental to many Americans.   

“This means more asthma attacks, more climate change, more acidic lakes in the Northeast, more toxics in drinking water, and more plastic pollution,” Enck said. “There’s going to be tremendous levels of pollution and illness just during these four years.” 

Bennett noted that when it comes to tackling the climate crisis, time is of the essence, which makes the Trump administration’s anti-climate agenda even more dangerous. “Part of the problem is we don’t have the luxury of time,” she said. “If we do indeed have three and a half more years of this, I fear it will be too late.”

Amid all the chaos and destruction, Bennett said it is important for people to reconnect with nature. “We can try to understand and educate people that without bees, for example, humans will not survive. Without biodiversity, humans will not survive. Without clean water and air, we will not survive.”