Former President Donald Trump denies ties to the extremist government blueprint known as Project 2025, a policy road map for a second Trump administration drafted by a consortium of conservative groups led by The Heritage Foundation. But new data shows he had a lot of love for the group’s far-right policies during his first turn in the White House.
Analysis by the American Bridge 21st Century super PAC found 87 policies adopted by Trump at the suggestion of The Heritage Foundation. In 2018, the conservative think tank announced that Trump had already embraced and implemented 64% of its suggestions.
“President Trump is a conservative president. He’s adopted many of these recommendations and pushed them forward and accomplished many of them,” Heritage Foundation director Thomas Binion told Fox Business in 2018. “Yes, they’re conservative and yes, they’re good for the country,” he added.
Heritage Foundation representatives likes to boast about how they successfully pushed Trump to leave the Paris Climate Accord, repeal net neutrality, and increase military spending when speaking about the group’s victories during the Trump administration. Here are 11 more of their dubious triumphs:
1. Trump cut child nutrition programs.
In the group’s 2018 “Blueprint for Balance,” The Heritage Foundation encouraged Trump to “inhibit funding for national school meal standards and the community eligibility provision.”
The Trump administration’s 2019 budget plan called for cutting federal child nutrition programs by $1.7 billion over 10 years. According to the Food Research and Action Center, the cuts “reduce the number of schools eligible to implement the Community Eligibility Provision, a wildly successful option that dramatically reduces the administrative work of operating the school nutrition programs for high poverty schools and school districts, and increases student participation in school breakfast and lunch.”
2. Trump banned transgender persons from the military.
The Heritage Foundation’s “Blueprint for a New Administration: Priorities for the President” said the military should “make armed forces personnel policy on the basis of military readiness, not a social agenda.” The document said “the President should reverse the transgender policy decision announced June 30, 2016, and restore the prior policy, which allowed persons with gender dysphoria to serve.”
In April 2019, President Trump banned transgender personnel from serving in the military, causing much confusion and chaos.
“The current version of the ban prohibits new military recruits from transitioning and also allows the military to discharge those currently serving if they do not present as their birth gender,” Axios reported. “This policy battle started before Trump took office.”
3. Trump eliminated grants to prevent violence against women.
In its 2017 Blueprint, The Heritage Foundation urged the president to cut funding for a federal program that helped 7 million women per year escape domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking.
“Recommendation: Eliminate Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) grants,” The Heritage Foundation wrote. “This proposal saves $83 million in FY 2018.”
From 2016 to 2017, Trump’s budget proposals included reducing such grants by $2 million.
“These programs offer technical support and training to community groups serving victims; provide collaboration among law enforcement and judicial entities; support indigenous and tribal communities affected by violence; address sexual assault on college campuses; ensure access to transitional housing; assist children and youth exposed to violence; identify and prevent gender bias; and provide access to the National Domestic Violence Hotline,” wrote the Center for American Progress. “While women of all backgrounds can experience violence, low-income women and women of color are disproportionately affected.”
This is in line with Project 2025’s new goals, including a disbandment of the Gender Policy Council created by President Joe Biden. It suggests eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the federal government and strives to remove these terms from every federal rule and regulation: sexual orientation and gender identity, DEI, gender, gender identity, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, and reproductive rights.
4. Trump slashed the Department of Justice’s civil rights divisions.
At the urging of The Heritage Foundation, Trump reduced funding for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, and the Department Of Education Office For Civil Rights. Trump’s 2017 budget was poised to eliminate 10% of employees from critical civil rights offices across the federal government.
This is in line with the Project 2025 blueprint, which proposes moving Department of Justice investigations from its civil rights division to the criminal division.
“Otherwise, voter registration fraud and unlawful ballot correction will remain federal election offenses that are never appropriately investigated and prosecuted,” Project 2025 states.
5. Trump revoked an Obama-era order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and prohibited any agency from regulating emissions.
In its 2016 “Blueprint for a New Administration: Priorities for the President,” The Heritage Foundation suggested Trump should “revoke the [Obama administration’s] Executive Order on global warming and green energy mandates for federal agencies.” 2017’s blueprint recommended that “Congress should prohibit any agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions. This proposal has no estimated savings in FY 2018.”
As soon as Trump was sworn in as president in 2017, his administration removed the page on climate change from the White House website and published a new page suggesting “An America First Energy Plan” that will “refocus the EPA on its essential mission of protecting our air and water,” suggesting the abandonment of regulating greenhouse gasses.
On March 28, 2017, Trump revoked President Barack Obama’s executive order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce energy use by federal agencies.
Project 2025 proposes eliminating nearly all federal regulations for carbon emissions. Experts say this would wreak havoc on an already fragile climate at the tipping point.
6. Trump weakened several efficiency standards for home appliances.
The Heritage Foundation 2016 blueprint said, “Refrain from Developing New Energy Efficiency Standards for Appliances and urge Congress to Repeal Energy Conservation Standards Set in the Energy Policy and Conservation Act.”
Over the course of his administration, a New York Times analysis showed that Trump weakened the standards for dishwashers, water heaters, washers and dryers, and other household devices that use green “energy saving thresholds.”
7. Trump ended cost-sharing reduction payments to Affordable Care Act recipients.
According to The Heritage Foundation’s 2016 Blueprint, “The new President should instruct the IRS through the Treasury Department to follow the law and immediately cease all Obamacare cost-sharing payments.”
Cost-sharing benefits are grants and subsidies for out-of-pocket health care expenses. These include financial help with copays when you visit the doctor, deductibles, and out-of-pocket maximums. The less income you bring in, the you qualify for cost-sharing benefits.
Trump eliminated the ACA’s cost-sharing program in 2017.
CNBC called it “a bombshell move that is expected to spike premium prices and potentially lead many insurers to exit the marketplace. The decision to end the billions of dollars worth of so-called cost-sharing reduction payments came after months of threats by President Donald Trump to do just that.”
8. Trump cut hundreds of millions to the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees.
In The Heritage Foundation’s 2018 “Blueprint for Balance” said “returning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to its original purpose saves $179 million in FY 2018.”
In 2018, the Trump administration withheld $65 million of its $120 million in aid contributions to the UNRWA. According to Daily News Egypt, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert made clear that the Trump administration “felt that other countries should contribute more significantly to UNRWA and ‘step up to the plate and provide additional money.’”
9. The Trump administration pulled out of the World Health Organization in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic
According to The Heritage Foundation’s 2016 “Blueprint for a New Administration: Priorities for the President,” the organization urged Trump to “review U.S. participation in all International Organizations.”
In 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump abandoned the World Health Organization.
“The Trump administration has formally notified the United Nations that the United States will withdraw from the World Health Organization,” wrote the New York Times, “a move that would cut off one of the largest sources of funding from the premier global health organization in the middle of a pandemic.”
This led the U.S. to have one of the worst pandemic responses of any developed democracy, resulting in mass casualties and leaving millions of disabled Americans in its wake.
10. The Trump administration sought to cut funding for PBS and NPR.
A 2018 Blueprint for Balance recommendation “eliminates federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). This proposal saves $486 million in FY 2018.”
The New York Times reported in 2017, “The White House budget office has drafted a hit list of programs that President Trump could eliminate to trim domestic spending, including longstanding conservative targets like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Legal Services Corporation, AmeriCorps and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities.”
Trump went after them again in 2018.
Project 2025 proposes ending government funding for nonpartisan media funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting such as National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service.
11. Trump’s budget prohibited federal funding to entities that provide abortion care.
According to the Heritage Foundation’s “Blueprint for a New Administration,” the Trump regime was urged to “disentangle women’s health from funding abortion. The Secretary should allow states to maintain the integrity of their Medicaid systems by clarifying that state governments have the authority to disqualify certain abortion providers from receiving Medicaid reimbursements.”
Trump’s 2021 budget ensured that “federal funds protect life and conscience rights. The budget prioritizes the value of human life by ensuring that Federal funding does not support abortions. The Budget proposes to prohibit Federal funding, such as in the Title X Family Planning and Medicaid programs, for certain entities that provide abortion services. The Budget also protects conscience rights, prohibits coercion in healthcare, and allows private parties to enforce such rights in Federal court. With these protections, the Administration will continue to ensure robust protection of conscience rights and religious liberty.”
Once again, this harkens back to Project 2025. The Center for Reproductive Rights says that implementing the plan’s recommendations would “destroy abortion care” by ending medication abortions, denying life-saving abortion care, prosecuting doctors, harassing patients, and creating a surveillance system.
