USA Project 2025

 Project 2025

Heritage Foundation policy plans for 2025 presidential administration

Project 2025 is a political initiative published in April 2023 by the Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think tank, to reshape the federal government of the United States and consolidate executive power in favor of right-wing policies. It constitutes a policy document that suggests specific changes to the federal government, a personnel database for recommending vetting loyal staff in the federal government, and a set of executive orders issued by the U.S. president to implement the policies. The project's policy document Mandate for Leadership calls for the replacement of merit-based federal civil service workers by people loyal to "the next conservative president" and for taking partisan control of key government agencies, including the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Commerce, and the Federal Trade Commission. Other agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Education, would be dismantled. 

Services: Recruitment and training of government workers loyal to Donald Trump

Director: Paul Dans (until August 2024)

President: Kevin Roberts

Publication: Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (2023)

Parent organization: The Heritage Foundation

Budget: $22 million

What could be the reason behind the US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth summoning hundreds of US military generals to an unannounced meeting?

This is the scariest Trump thing yet. He’s done immense damage in many ways, but this is ominous.

There’s no reason to summon all the top US commanders from around the world to come back to Washington. The US military has superb communication and there’s zero need for a face-to-face meeting. It’s also poor strategy because a large bomb could completely decapitate the military leadership.

The obvious worry is will Hegseth require the commanders to swear allegiance to the president, or be dismissed. In the 1930s the German military was forced to swear an oath to Hitler.

The Trump world is protesting being called “fascist.” Yet here is the potential for a monumentally fascist occasion. The reason for the extraordinary summons has not been provided. You’d think an administration so senstive to being called “fascist” would go out of its way to avoid speculation like this.

Trump requested Hegseth to do it, because he needs a loyalty pledge from the generals and admirals.

Trump is very open about what he’s doing — he wants to pursue “the enemies within.”

He is going to send military to American cities.

Trump isn’t the mastermind behind it.

He is just a figurehead for Heritage Foundation (Project 2025) — if you want to know the blueprint, read the document, they’ve spelled out their entire plans over a year ago.

Hegseth is Trump’s puppet, Trump is Heritage’s puppet (while he believes he runs the show).

COMMENTARY Conservatism

(Conservatism

Conservatism is an ideology rooted in American founding principles. It prioritizes individual choice and rights over big government, one-size-fits-all solutions and viewpoints.) 

Project 2025

COMMENTARY BY

Spencer Chretien

Former Associate Director

Spencer was an Associate Director at The Heritage Foundation.

When conservatives do finally make it into an administration, they often don’t know what to do or how to seize the gears of power effectively.

Key Takeaways

1

It’s past time to lay the groundwork for a White House more friendly to the right.

2

The policy book Mandate for Leadership represents the work of more than 350 leading conservatives and outlines a vision of conservative success.

3

The usual suspects in the permanent political class will be ready for the next conservative administration. Will we be ready for them?

  

With the Biden administration half over and with the immediate dangers inherent to one-party rule in Washington behind us for now, it’s past time to lay the groundwork for a White House more friendly to the right. For decades, as the left has continued its march through America’s institutions, conservatives have been outgunned and outmatched when it comes to the art of government.

One reason is because the Republican establishment never moved on from the 1980s. Beltway conservatives still prioritize supply-side economics and a bellicose foreign policy above all else. Belief in small government, strangely enough, has manifested itself in a belief among some conservatives that we should lead by example and not fill all political appointments. Belief in the primacy of the national security state has caused conservative administrations to defer political decisions to the generals and the intelligence community.

The result has been decades of disappointment.

Fortunately, this situation is changing. The conservative movement increasingly knows what time it is in America. More and more of our politicians are willing to use the government to achieve our vision, because the neutrality of “keeping the government out of it” will lose every time to the left’s vast power. The calls for a “new Church Committee” represent a momentous shift in energy; while conservatives used to lament liberal Sen. Frank Church’s original project as a kooky leftist attack against “The Brave Men And Women of Our Intelligence Community,” we’re now the ones agitating for Congress to go after the three-letter agencies.

This new vigor of the right can be found at Project 2025. Organized by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 has brought together 45 (and counting) right-of-center organizations that are ready to get into the business of restoring this country through the combination of the right policies and well-trained people. The Project’s foundation is built on four interconnected pillars.

>>> Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project

The first pillar, the upcoming production of the policy book Mandate for Leadership, represents the work of more than 350 leading conservatives and outlines a vision of conservative success at each federal agency during the next administration. Presidential candidates won’t be able to ignore what the conservative movement demands in this book.

The second is our online personnel database. This “Conservative LinkedIn” will launch in March and will provide an opportunity for rock-solid conservatives to place themselves in contention for roles in the next administration. This pillar will bring Mr. (and Mrs.) Smith to Washington.

The third is our Presidential Administration Academy. When conservatives do finally make it into an administration, they often don’t know what to do or how to seize the gears of power effectively. Through their action, inaction, and their encyclopedic knowledge of volumes of technicalities about the federal workforce, certain career federal employees are masterful in tripping us up. Our interactive, on-demand training sessions will change that. They will turn future conservative political appointees into experts in governmental effectiveness.

The fourth and final pillar of Project 2025 is our Playbook, which will take the policy ideas expressed in Mandate for Leadership and transform them into an implementation plan for each agency to advocate to the incoming administration. What regulations and executive orders must be signed on Day One? Where are the greatest needs for more political appointees? How can we effectively use the mechanisms of government to face our most challenging problems? Our Playbook will put our movement to work answering questions like these.

In November 2016, American conservatives stood on the verge of greatness. The election of Donald Trump to the presidency was a triumph that offered the best chance to reverse the left’s incessant march of progress for its own sake. Many of the best accomplishments, though, happened only in the last year of the Trump administration, after our political appointees had finally figured out the policies and process of different agencies, and after the right personnel were finally in place.

The usual suspects in the permanent political class will be ready for the next conservative administration. Will we be ready for them? That’s where Project 2025 comes in. We have two years, and one chance, to get this right.

This piece originally appeared in The American Conservative

open search

Donate

COMMENTARY Conservatism

The U.S. Media’s Big Lie About Charlie Kirk Is Chillingly Predictable

Sep 22, 2025 3 min read

COMMENTARY BY

Simon Hankinson

@WatchfulWaiter1

Senior Research Fellow

Simon is a Senior Research Fellow in the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation.

Charlie Kirk speaks at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025 in Orem, Utah.

Key Takeaways

1

Charlie Kirk was not was a radical, or a Nazi, or a fascist, or any of the other ridiculous epithets that have been thrown at him since his untimely death at 31.

2

Kirk was a rising star of the conservative Right, and for young people in particular, because he was cheerful, informed, and unafraid.

3

Charlie’s loss will be incalculable to those who will never get a chance to hear him speak in person and, just maybe, change their minds.

  

“Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.” - Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

Austen’s heroine, Elinor Dashwood, was listening to a relative talk rubbish she felt wasn’t worth her time to rebut. These days, it seems difficult to convince anyone to change their mind, so many of us have simply given up and retreated to our bubbles of friends and friendly media.

Charlie Kirk, however, was willing to talk to anyone. His signature event was an open-mic debate with all comers on the campus of an American university, nearly all of which are dominated by Left-wing group-think.

It was under just such a tent, with the slogan “prove me wrong” on it, that Kirk was taken from us by an assassin’s bullet on Sept 10. The legacy U.S. media did what it does in these circumstances, attempting to find a Right-wing motive for his killer despite clear evidence that the suspect was motivated by ideologies from the far-Left.

It has also done almost everything possible to misrepresent Kirk’s own work. He was an organizer for conservative youth; he helped mobilize young voters; he held public events; he had a podcast; and he was a frequent guest on other shows. One thing he was not was a radical, or a Nazi, or a fascist, or any of the other ridiculous epithets that have been thrown at him since his untimely death at 31.

>>> A Tribute to Charlie Kirk (1993–2025)

At 56, little shocks me. But I was staggered by the Left-wing reaction to Kirk’s death. I expected to hear parts of the media mis-characterize his activism, cherry-picking from longer conversations to make a mainstream Christian patriot sound like a raving Right-wing nut.

What I did not expect to see were countless civilians—politicians, teachers, law enforcement, civil servants, librarians and other gainfully-employed “normal” people—willing to go on video or social media with gleeful expressions at the death of a young husband and father of small children, simply because they disagreed with something they thought he had said. I doubt any of them had listened to him first-hand.

In the 1960s, no doubt there were some who cheered the death of Martin Luther King and the Kennedy brothers. But they did so in their own homes or other places out of sight of the normal majority, who reacted in sadness at such brilliant lives cut short. Today, those expressing hateful reactions to a public assassination have X, TikTok, Instagram, and a host of other channels to expose themselves. And what a horrific sight it has been.

Kirk was a rising star of the conservative Right, and for young people in particular, because he was cheerful, informed, and unafraid. Most of all, he was willing to engage with those who didn’t share his views and to hope they might be convinced. He paid them the compliment of rational opposition.

Kirk was a Millennial, but he spoke most clearly to Gen-Z, those still in college or newly looking for work. Indebted by the Boomers, coddled but also abandoned to iPhones by their Gen-X parents, and now facing a frightening housing and employment market, this generation badly needs hope. They are not getting it from politicians, nor from doom-peddlers like Greta Thunberg or the Gaza mob. Charlie Kirk provided young conservatives, especially young men, the optimism they crave.

Watching him debate on college campuses, one could see that so many young students had never encountered an opposing voice, let alone one who was polite and prepared. I have listened to Kirk many times and find the caricature of him by the Left and its pet media to be risible, yet deliberate. His views on guns, crime, family, economics, gender ideology, and foreign affairs are normal opinions shared by half the country.

>>> The Family: The Foundation of America’s Next 250 Years

I have never heard Kirk advocate violence against anyone. He believed in the right to bear arms, as entrenched in the Second Amendment, though he understood that, like all freedoms, it was not without cost. He believed in healthy families headed by married mothers and fathers. He opposed the ideology that tells people they can change sex through drugs or surgery. He believed in strong nations with secure borders.

Millions of Americans share these beliefs. Enough of us to elect a president and a majority in Congress.

I dislike “hot takes” and glib predictions. I do not know what Charlie Kirk’s assassination portends. I suspect, even though it is the opposite of what he’d have wanted, that it will mean less willingness on all sides to talk across the increasingly thick lines of dogma separating us.

While many of us share Kirk’s convictions, few of us have his physical courage to go open heart and open microphone into the lion’s den of intolerant progressivism and invite a debate.

Charlie’s loss is huge for those who loved him, but it will be incalculable to those who will never get a chance to hear him speak in person and, just maybe, change their minds.