What will another Donald Trump presidency look like? The MAGA leader has given us a pretty good idea, outlining administration goals in a platform called Agenda 47.
At the same time, the Heritage Foundation, one of Washington’s most prominent right-wing think tanks, put together a nearly 900-page blueprint for how it plans to push the U.S. government and society to the far right, called Project 2025. The conservative public policy research group began creating policy plans for Republican administrations in 1980, when Ronald Reagan was about to take office, and it did so again during Trump’s second campaign.
Despite Trump having repeatedly denied any connection with the Heritage Foundation or with Project 2025, at least 140 members from the previous Trump administration worked on it. Vice-president–elect JD Vance also has very close ties to the group and its members, with the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, having praised him and said he’d be a “leader” of the movement. Vance also wrote the forward to Roberts’s new book, Dawn’s Early Light.
Below, see the differences and similarities between Agenda 47 and Project 2025 in four key issues, and learn how the Republican’s second presidency will affect everyone.
They both want to close the border.
Trump’s plan: Trump has promised to lead the “largest deportation program in American history” once he re-enters the White House in January 2025. Not only does he want to expel migrants who have crossed the border unlawfully (he and Vance have been unclear about whether this includes unaccompanied children), he also wants to kick out the Dreamers, reverse the Democrats’ “open borders policies,” and refuse hundreds of thousands of asylum claims. He is also pushing for a reduction in the legal immigration pathways needed for migrants to become U.S. residents or citizens.
Project 2025: The conservative group wants to reinstate “every rule related to immigration that was issued” during Trump’s 2017–2021 administration. It calls for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to launch immediate and mass deportations across the country—even if that means conducting raids for illegal immigrants in schools, hospitals, and religious institutions.
It stands with Trump on building a wall on the southern border and wants to militarize the border, expand immigrant detention centers, end protections for hundreds of thousands of Dreamers and refugees, and allow state and local police officers to enforce federal immigration laws.
They both want to get rid of the Department of Education.
Trump’s plan: The president-elect wants to abolish diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at all levels of education and supports pulling money from “any school pushing critical race theory, radical gender ideology, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.” He also wants to tax private universities’ endowment money to fund an online “American Academy,” which he claims will offer “a truly world-class education” and college degrees to all Americans, free of charge. “It will be strictly nonpolitical, and there will be no wokeness or jihadism allowed,” the winning candidate said.
Project 2025: The group calls for Congress to eliminate the Department of Education and what it has described as its too-progressive agenda and to “return control of education to the states.” Among other things, it supports putting a stop to direct federal funding for schools serving low-income families, eliminating the Head Start program (which provides preschool for children of low-income families), and instead encourages at-home child care. This would result in not only hundreds of thousands of qualified teachers losing their jobs but also in hundreds of thousands of children being left without a proper early education. Read more here.
They both want to restrict rights for the LGBTQ+ community.
Trump’s plan: On transgender rights, Trump—who has falsely claimed, “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation”—wants to stop gender-affirming care for minors. He has said he will reverse President Joe Biden’s Title IX expansion of protections for transgender students.
“We will get ... transgender insanity the hell out of our schools, and we will keep men out of women’s sports,” he said at a recent Madison Square Garden rally.
Project 2025: The plan is homophobic and transphobic, having outlined the belief that government should “affirm that children require and deserve both the love and nurturing of a mother and the play and protection of a father.”
It would also like to dismantle the Affordable Care Act’s protections against sex discrimination in health care.
Like Trump, the plan wants to reverse Biden’s Title IX rules protecting young students (particularly queer students and girls) from discrimination at schools and gut LGBTQ+ workplace-discrimination protections under Title VII. It also wants all educators and platforms to stop supporting, or even discussing, “transgender ideology.” The group has said educators and public librarians who spread the concept of being transgender should be registered as sex offenders.
Also like the Republican candidate, Project 2025 wants to enforce incredibly strict restrictions on gender-affirming care, but it has taken things a step further and even accused parents of trans children and doctors who perform gender-affirming surgeries of participating in “child abuse” and “mutilation.” If it were up to its architects, Medicaid funding could not be used for gender-affirming medical care.
The project also wants to criminalize pornography—something that Trump, who is currently the subject of dozens of sexual-assault allegations—surely won’t go for.
They have different views on reproductive rights.
Trump’s plan: The country’s soon-to-be-president has gone back and forth on his views on reproductive rights and women’s freedoms, but he has been clear about one thing: He wants abortion access to be left up to the states rather than have it sealed as a constitutionally protected right. And while he very much stands by his push to help the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, he has said that he will not sign a law restricting women’s access to birth control.
Project 2025: The project takes a much harsher approach on women’s reproductive rights, particularly abortion and birth control, than Trump. The group not only wants to put impossibly strict restrictions on abortion and birth control, it also, apparently, stands against all sex not meant to cause a pregnancy. In a post shared on X, the Heritage Foundation said that denying women easy and free access to birth control would “[return] the consequentiality to sex.” It wrote: “Conservatives have to lead the way in restoring sex to its true purpose, & ending recreational sex & senseless use of birth control pills.”
It believes that the next conservative president “has a moral responsibility to lead the nation in restoring a culture of life in America again.”