Politico By Liset Cruz, Ali Bianco, Megan Messerly, Abhinanda Bhattacharyya and Anna Wiederkehr
02/05/2025 02:00 AM PST
President Donald Trump on the campaign trail last summer disavowed Project 2025, saying he knew nothing about the effort.
But many of the conservative blueprint’s ideas have made their way into his early executive orders, signaling the sweeping impact the Heritage Foundation document has already had on the Trump administration’s policy making. A side-by-side review by POLITICO found dozens of cases where the president’s early executive actions have aligned with portions of the 922-page policy document, including some instances with nearly verbatim language lifted from the report to the White House.
Several of the ideas, such as energy policies expanding U.S. oil and critical minerals production, are longtime conservative policy priorities that did not originate with Project 2025. But some of the more unconventional strategies outlined in the document, such as reclassifying federal employees to make them easier to fire and installing loyalists in senior government positions, have also shown up in Trump’s executive orders.
There have also been other Trump administration moves outside of his executive orders that appear to come directly from Project 2025, such as directing the Federal Communications Commission to investigate NPR and PBS for alleged violations of sponsorship advertising rules.
We’ve broken down the executive order similarities in social issues, immigration, government staffing and other categories below. See https://www.politico.com/interactives/2025/trump-executive-orders-project-2025/
