What to Know about Project 2025’s Dangers to Science
Project 2025, the sweeping right-wing blueprint for a new kind of U.S. presidency, would sabotage science-based policies that address climate change, the environment, abortion, health care access, technology and education. It would impose religious and conservative ideology on the federal civil service to such an extent that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has, dubiously, tried to distance himself from the plan. But in 2022 Trump said the Heritage Foundation—the think tank that authored Project 2025—would “lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.” The project’s main document, a lengthy policy agenda, was published the following year.
Although Trump is not among its 34 authors, more than half are appointees and staff from his time as president; the words “Trump” and “Trump Administration” appear 300 times in its pages. At least 140 former Trump officials are involved in Project 2025, according to a CNN tally. It’s reasonable to expect that a second Trump presidency would follow many of the project’s recommendations.
Project 2025 presents a long-standing conservative vision of a smaller government and describes specific, detailed steps to achieve this goal. It would shrink some federal departments and agencies while eliminating others—dividing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention into two weaker entities, for instance, and abolishing the Department of Education (ED) entirely.
