Donald Trump claims Project 2025, a nearly 1,000-page blueprint for a far-right shift in American government and society, does not reflect his priorities for a White House encore.
I have never read it. “I intentionally don’t want to read it,” the Republican presidential candidate said on stage during a debate on September 10th.
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But on everything from economic, immigration and education policy to civil rights and foreign affairs, Project 2025 and President Trump’s official Agenda 47 timeline, the Republican Party platform and other statements that Trump personally endorsed, are intertwined. There is a common way of thinking and a common ideology.
There are also differences. Project 2025, led by the Heritage Foundation and written by many conservatives who worked or collaborated in the Trump administration, provides more detail on some issues than the former president.
Let’s take a look at how President Trump’s 2024 campaign and Project 2025 align and diverge.
Major tax proposal could benefit the wealthy
Trump: His tax policy is broadly pro-corporations and wealthy Americans. This is largely due to his promise to reduce the corporate tax rate to 15% from the current 21% while extending the review period in 2017. He also plans to repeal the Inflation Control Act levy that funds energy measures aimed at combating climate change.
Those ideas aside, President Trump is more focused on a plan aimed at working- and middle-class Americans that exempts earned tips, Social Security contributions and overtime pay from income taxes. But his proposal on tips could give backdoor tax breaks to high earners by allowing them to reclassify a portion of their paychecks as tip income, and in the most extreme cases, hedge fund managers and top lawyers. may take advantage of this. This provision was established by President Trump to help restaurant staff, bartenders, and other service workers.
Project 2025: This document goes further than Trump’s, calling for two federal income tax rates of 15 percent and 30 percent while eliminating most deductions and exemptions. The idea is to impose a near-uniform tax on employment income that exceeds the standard deduction by adjusting the income that is subject to the payroll tax that is used to pay for Social Security and Medicare.
Effectively flattening federal taxes would increase the overall share of taxes paid by poor and middle-class Americans. That’s because many state and local tax laws are based on transaction taxes or flat income taxes, which are more regressive than the current federal income tax spectrum.
Project 2025 also calls for future increases in corporate and personal income taxes to require a two-thirds majority in Congress.
Both want to reimpose Trump-era immigration restrictions
Trump: Build the wall! Since 2016, the largest mass deportation program in history has been instituted. President Trump has called for the mobilization of the National Guard and police, but has not said how he will ensure they only target those in the United States illegally. He advocates ideological screening of applicants to the country and an end to birthright citizenship, which would likely require constitutional reform. He also said he would restrict immigration for public health reasons and reinstate first-term policies such as Remain in Mexico, which severely limited or banned people from some Muslim-majority countries. .
His approach, taken together, amounts to not just cracking down on illegal immigration, but restricting immigration altogether.
Project 2025: For example, there are many detailed proposals for various U.S. immigration laws, executive branch regulations, and agreements with other countries to reduce the number of refugees, work visa recipients, and asylum seekers. Perhaps Project 2025’s most useful statement is its call to reinstate all immigration-related regulations issued during President Trump’s 2017-2021 term.
Both would increase executive power and the power to fire federal employees.
TRUMP: He sees regulatory cuts as an economic panacea. He promises to significantly lower utility bills for American households by opening all federal lands to exploration and eliminating speed limits for fossil fuel production. (U.S. energy production and exports are at record highs under President Joe Biden.) President Trump has promised to increase housing stock by cutting regulations, but most construction regulations is determined by state and local governments.
Two broad proposals and ideas stand out. The first would make it easier to fire thousands of additional federal workers by classifying them as exempt from civil service protections. That would almost certainly reduce the number of employees on the job and weaken the government’s ability to enforce laws and regulations.
The second is President Trump’s assertion that the president has exclusive authority to control federal spending, despite Congress’ spending authority. President Trump said lawmakers have set spending limits but not minimums, meaning the president’s constitutional obligation to faithfully execute the law gives him discretion over how to spend money. It is claimed that it is given to
Project 2025: The authors urge the president, Cabinet members, and other political appointees to reduce regulations, reclassify federal employees to make them easier to fire, reduce unaccountable federal spending, and encourage We have repeatedly requested that a policy be established.
They write that the administrative state will go nowhere until Congress acts to take power back from the bureaucracy and the White House. On the other hand, there are many executive tools available to a brave conservative president to handcuff the bureaucracy (and) bring the administrative state to its knees.
Both would roll back DEI and LGBTQ programs
Trump: The former president wants to use federal funding as leverage to eliminate government diversity programs and would target existing protections for LGBTQ individuals. On transgender rights, he has pledged to eliminate the participation of boys in women’s sports, a practice he claims is widespread without evidence.
President Trump will ask Congress to rescind Biden’s extension of Title IX civil rights protections for transgender students and allow them to choose only two sexes at birth.
Project 2025: Governments should affirm that children need and deserve both the love and nurturing of their mothers and the play and protection of their fathers. That philosophy permeates Project 2025, which defines the ideal family and individual in narrow, traditionalist terms. The authors envision consolidating federal civil rights efforts within the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and enforcing them only through litigation.
That would effectively place the choice of when and how to enforce civil rights laws in the hands of the attorney general and, by extension, the White House.
Both would abolish the Department of Education.
TRUMP: The Department of Education will be targeted for elimination. That doesn’t mean President Trump wants to kick Washington out of the classroom. Among other maneuvers, he would use federal funds as leverage to eliminate diversity programs at all levels of education, force K-12 schools to eliminate tenure and introduce merit pay for teachers. .
He calls for pulling funding from schools and programs that push critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on children.
President Trump is calling for college endowments to be redirected to the online American Academy to provide college eligibility to all Americans without charging tuition. President Trump said on November 1, 2023 that it would be strictly apolitical and that there would be no woke or holy war.
Project 2025: Congress should close the Department of Education and return control of education to the states, Project 2025 argues, echoing President Trump’s claims that America’s educational infrastructure is imposing progressive indoctrination. There is.
The authors argue, among other things, that eliminating the Head Start program, turning Title I programs into block grants, and ultimately phasing out federal loans, as well as the at-home child care advocated by Republican Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance. suggests using tax law to encourage Defender.
Both are blast climate policies
Trump: Trump downplays Biden’s spending on clean energy aimed at reducing U.S. dependence on fossil fuels and falsely claims climate change is a hoax. Mr. Trump will center his energy and transportation policy on fossil fuels: roads, bridges, and internal combustion engine vehicles. President Trump does not oppose electric vehicles, but he has promised to eliminate incentives that encourage the development of the EV market. Fuel efficiency standards will also be lowered.
Project 2025: This document criticizes the Biden administration’s “climate fanaticism” and calls for closing or restricting many programs to protect and regulate the environment, including some that many Americans take for granted. I am proposing.
That includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which Project 2025 will eliminate, and the National Weather Service, which the document says will sell weather data exclusively to private forecasters. In this case, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) would remain in place, but the NHC relies on the National Weather Service for its forecasts.
The plan would not repeal laws such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, but it would reduce their scope by cutting regulations and bureaucracy.
Project 2025 supports defense of Ukraine, while President Trump questions US aid
Trump: His strategy is diplomatically more isolationist, militarily non-interventionist, and economically more protectionist than the United States after World War II. But the details are more complicated. Trump has pledged to expand the military, promised strong Pentagon spending and proposed a missile defense shield, an idea from the Reagan era.
He claims he can end Russia’s war in Ukraine and the fighting between Israel and Hamas, but does not explain how. He continues to openly criticize NATO and US military leadership. I don’t consider them leaders, he says. And he has repeatedly praised authoritarians like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Project 2025: Reflecting the tone of President Trump, this document calls for tough love in international relations, but is distinct from President Trump. Regarding military preparedness, Project 2025 would expand the number of non-commissioned officers while reducing the number of generals, but the authors do not call for the reinstatement of conscription, as critics have argued. .
Project 2025 is perhaps even more aggressive than President Trump in its rhetoric against China: Economic engagement with China should not be reconsidered, but should be ended, the preamble states.
As for NATO, the blueprint reflects President Trump’s emphasis on other members paying more for their own defense, but it also reflects President Trump’s inherent skepticism about the NATO alliance that he has long anticipated. No theory is included.
And while President Trump has steadfastly refused to criticize President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Project 2025 states: Regardless of your point of view, President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was unjustified; All sides agree that Ukrainian citizens have the right to defend their homeland.
(Only the headline and photo in this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff. The rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
