Heritage Foundation, Project 2025, and its implementation

Case

Project 2025 (the '2025 Presidential Transition Project') is a 920-page policy blueprint published April 2023 by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, laying out 1,913 recommendations to consolidate executive power and reshape the federal government along right-wing policy lines. Its stated model is Reagan's 1981 transition, when Heritage claims over 60% of its recommendations became policy.

Key people
Kevin Roberts (Heritage Foundation president since December 2021, previously headed the Texas Public Policy Foundation) wrote the foreword and has publicly described Heritage's role as 'institutionalizing Trumpism.' He was one of the principal advocates for overturning the 2020 election result.
Paul Dans directed Project 2025 until stepping down in August 2024, during the campaign, as Trump sought to distance himself from the project publicly.
Russell Vought, a chief Project 2025 architect, became Trump's OMB Director; a 2023 speech resurfaced during his confirmation in which he said he wanted federal bureaucrats 'traumatically affected' (see the separate 'flood the zone' entry in this document).
A CNN analysis found at least 140 people who worked on Project 2025 also worked in Trump's administration. Heritage executive Mike Howell separately called the 2024 election illegitimate before any votes were cast, without evidence.

Trump's denial versus the documented record
During the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly denied involvement, saying 'I know nothing about Project 2025... I haven't read it and never will,' and called some of its ideas 'seriously extreme.'
Roberts said in April 2024 that he had discussed the project with Trump directly; the Trump campaign denied this at the time. Trump previously endorsed Heritage at a 2022 dinner, saying the group would 'lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do' upon a future mandate.
By May 2026, Roberts stated on C-SPAN that of the plan's 1,913 recommendations, 1,055 (roughly 55%) had been implemented, explicitly crediting Trump: 'The person who deserves credit for that is one Donald J. Trump.' A separate December 2025 analysis (The 19th, citing crowd-sourced and advocacy-org trackers) independently estimated roughly half of the document's goals had been implemented by the end of 2025.
Cited examples of implementation include mass deportation efforts, DOGE-driven federal workforce cuts (see the DOGE entry in this document), tariff actions, rollback of DEI programs, and rapid changes to public-lands policy.

The Heritage/Fuentes controversy
In autumn 2025, after podcaster Tucker Carlson conducted a friendly interview with Nick Fuentes - a Holocaust denier and self-described white nationalist - Roberts released a video defending Carlson and stating Heritage does not 'cancel our own people,' referring to a 'venomous coalition' of critics.
The fallout was severe: at least a dozen Heritage employees left or were fired, including nearly the entire legal and economic departments, and at least two additional board members departed by December 2025. National Review headlined its coverage 'The Heritage Foundation Implodes.'
Roberts subsequently promoted a follow-on plan, 'Heritage 2.0' / 'Project 2026,' organized around four priorities ('The American Family,' 'The Dignity of Work and Free Enterprise,' 'National Security,' 'American Heritage and Citizenship'), announced at Turning Point USA's America Fest and continuing to praise 'the great successes of the Trump-Vance administration.'

Note
Heritage's 1,055-of-1,913 figure is self-reported, though independent trackers estimate roughly half have been implemented.

Sources
[1] The 19th (https://19thnews.org/2025/12/project-2025-heritage-foundation-progress/)
[2] Center for Western Priorities, cited in Substack roundup (https://martindvasquez.substack.com/p/the-heritage-foundation-is-the-agency)
[3] Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Roberts_(political_strategist))
[4] Advocate.com (https://www.advocate.com/politics/project-2025-continues-into-2026)
[5] Crooks and Liars (https://crooksandliars.com/2026/05/heritage-foundation-president-brags-about)
[6] Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025)
[7] VPM/NPR (https://www.vpm.org/npr-news/2025-04-30/heritage-foundation-president-on-trumps-first-100-days/)
[8] ACLU (https://www.aclu.org/project-2025-explained)

Connections

Related — CFPB under Vought: medical-debt protections rolled back, and who runs it now
Same actor: Vought is a central Project 2025 architect; dismantling the CFPB fits that agenda.

Same actor — DOJ senior counsel Michael Velchik — Hitler essay/Mein Kampf praise, Harvard case, press ban brief
Velchik was also the sole DOJ lawyer arguing the Harvard funding-cuts case, where his Hitler-essay history surfaced amid an antisemitism-based rationale for cutting Harvard's research funding.

Same actor — Heritage Foundation's "Saving America by Saving the Family" report
Same think tank behind Project 2025, now applying its agenda to family and gender policy.

Related — Kennedy Center takeover, renaming, and closure/demolition threat
Both are examples of institutional capture/restructuring aligned with a broader ideological program.

Related — Schools and libraries: book bans, 'patriotic education,' religion in classrooms, and dismantling the Education Department
Project 2025 called for eliminating the Education Department and 'parental rights' curriculum control.

Related — Synthesis: Big Oil's return on investment across the whole administration
Project 2025's energy chapters called for much of this agenda (fossil expansion, rollback of climate rules).

Same actor — Synthesis: manosphere ideas becoming government policy
Heritage, the Project 2025 author, backed Hegseth's confirmation and shapes the military policy moves discussed here.

Same actor — Who funds and spreads the masculinity and pronatalist agenda, and where policy is following
Same think tank and donor network behind Project 2025.