[18][20] It proposes criminalizing pornography,[21] removing legal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,[22][23] and terminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs[5][23] while having the DOJ prosecute anti-white racism instead.

[13] Nearly half of the project's collaborating organizations have received dark money contributions from a network of fundraising groups linked to Leonard Leo, a major conservative donor and key figure in guiding the selection of Trump's federal judicial nominees.

[80] By reclassifying tens of thousands of merit-based federal civil service workers as political appointees in order to replace them with Trump loyalists,[8][37] some fear they would be willing to bend or break protocol, or in some cases violate laws, to achieve his goals.

[18][95][108] The Mandate for Leadership outlines four main aims: restoring the family as the centerpiece of American life; dismantling the administrative state; defending the nation's sovereignty and borders; and securing God-given individual rights to live freely.

[15][110] Roberts writes that the U.S. in 2024 is a place where "inflation is ravaging family budgets, drug overdose deaths continue to escalate, and children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries".

[citation needed] Media Matters reported that several Project 2025 partners praised the 2024 Supreme Court decision Trump v. United States, which grants broad immunity from prosecution for acts committed in the course of a president's official duties.

[96] On the campaign trail, Trump avoided giving specific foreign policy plans,[169] but Kiron Skinner, who wrote Project 2025's State Department chapter, considers China a major threat, and is critical of any conciliatory move toward it.

[170] in Mandate, Max Primorac suggests significant changes to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)'s mission[96] due to "divisive political and cultural agenda that promotes abortion, climate extremism, gender radicalism, and interventions against perceived systemic racism".

[172] The Mandate argues that the U.S. should maintain its nuclear umbrella only for member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and that these countries should be responsible for deploying their own conventional forces to deter Russian aggression.

[citation needed] To achieve this, it proposes removing protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual or gender identity, and eliminating provisions pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)—which it calls "state-sanctioned racism"—from federal legislation.

[185] Project contributor Jonathan Berry explains, "The goal here is to move toward colorblindness and to recognize that we need to have laws and policies that treat people like full human beings not reducible to categories, especially when it comes to race.

[187] In the view of Project 2025, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has become "a bloated bureaucracy with a critical core of personnel who are infatuated with the perpetuation of a radical liberal agenda" and has "forfeited the trust" of the American people due to its role in the investigation of alleged Trump–Russia collusion.

[190] Like Trump, Project 2025 believes that the District of Columbia is infested with crime and as such suggests authorizing the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service to enforce the law outside of the White House and the immediate surroundings.

[191] But despite the affairs Trump was alleged to have had in 2006 with adult-film actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal,[192] Roberts was unconcerned, telling CNN, "We understand our Lord works with imperfect instruments, including us.

[17][196][197] In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that, contrary to Roe v. Wade, state abortion bans are constitutional, but Project 2025 encourages the next president "to enact the most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support".

[citation needed] Severino told a Students for Life conference that Project 2025 was developing executive orders and proposing regulations to roll back Biden's abortion policies and solidify a new environment in the wake of Dobbs.

[18] For example, the Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force Biden created would be replaced by a dedicated pro-life agency that would advocate for health of unborn children and women with newfound authority.

[11] Severino also recommends that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "update its public messaging about the unsurpassed effectiveness of modern fertility awareness-based methods" of contraception, such as smartphone applications that track a woman's menstrual cycle.

[85] On September 24, 2024, Heritage Foundation president and Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts was due to release the book Dawn's Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America, with a foreword by Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance.

In addition, his push to weaken FEMA is part of a broader Project 2025 strategy to reduce the federal government's role in disaster relief and shift responsibility to state and private entities.

She said the project's intent to abolish federal departments and agencies "is to destroy the legal and governance cultures of liberal democracy and create new bureaucratic structures, staffed by new politically vetted cadres, to support autocratic rule".

Doing away with the separation of church and state is the goal of many architects of Trumpism, from Project 2025 contributor Russ Vought to far-right proselytizer Michael Flynn, who uses the idea of "spiritual war" as counterrevolutionary fuel ... Bannon, Roberts, Stephen Miller, and other American incarnations of fascism are convinced that counterrevolution leading to autocracy is the only path to political survival for the far right, given the unpopularity of their positions (especially on abortion) and their leader's boatload of legal troubles.

She notes this has occurred in countries such as Hungary, Nicaragua, and Turkey, but is new to the U.S. She adds, "if Project 2025 is implemented, what it means is a dramatic decrease in American citizens' ability to engage in public life based on the kind of principles of liberty, freedom and representation that are accorded in a democracy.

[32]Michael Bromwich, who was Justice Department inspector general from 1994 to 1999, remarked, The plans being developed by members of Trump's cult to turn the DOJ and FBI into instruments of his revenge should send shivers down the spine of anyone who cares about the rule of law.

[32]Max Stier of the Partnership for Public Service and others have voiced concern that the project would revive the early-American spoils-and-patronage system that awarded government jobs to those loyal to a party or elected official rather than by merit.

[252] In Mother Jones, Washington bureau chief David Corn called Project 2025 "the right-wing infrastructure that is publicly plotting to undermine the checks and balances of our constitutional order and concentrate unprecedented power in the presidency.

As for making the Justice Department an instrument of White House political retribution, Vought would unblinkingly jettison the norm of independence that presidents and attorneys general of both parties have carefully nurtured since Watergate.

[255] In June 2024, Steven Greenhut wrote a column for the libertarian magazine Reason criticizing Project 2025 for increasing government power and risking authoritarianism and abuse by centralizing control of the executive in the president.

"[269][270] In April 2024, historian Emma Shortis wrote, "The Mandate's veneer of exhausting technocratic detail, focused mostly on the federal bureaucracy, sits easily alongside a Trumpian project of revenge and retribution ... [plans] more broadly aim for nothing less than the total dismantling and restructure of both American life and the world as we know it. ...

In July 2024, Oren Cass, author of the labor chapter, criticized the project's leadership, saying, "Gaining productive power requires focusing on people's problems and explaining how you are going to solve them, not pounding the table for Christian nationalism or a second American revolution.