President Donald Trump has enacted nearly half of Project 2025 during his first nine months in office, according to a tracker.
Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment via email.
Why It Matters
Project 2025, a 900-page blueprint developed by conservative groups to reshape the federal government, became a major topic during the 2024 presidential election. At the time, Trump sought to distance himself from it amid backlash over parts of the agenda. But critics have said many of the policies of his administration reflect Project 2025, and he touted Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought’s ties to the initiative in a Truth Social post last week.
What To Know
According to a Project 2025 tracker, a website created by two Reddit users who keep tabs on which aspects of the blueprint have been enacted by the Trump administration, Project 2025 is 48 percent complete as of October 13.
The U.S. Agency for International Development—which the Trump administration has sought to dismantle, has been among the most affected entities. It has been subjected to budget cuts, the rescinding of policies addressing climate change and prohibition from funding “sexual reproductive health and reproductive rights” or “gender equality” programs, according to the tracker.
Some of the latest Project 2025 objectives enacted include the Ambler Road Project, which is designed to support mining in Alaska, the reversal of the Biden administration’s IRS expansion and allowing Secret Service officers to serve as law enforcement in Washington, D.C., according to the tracker.
In total, 119 objectives were completed, while 66 were in progress, the tracker found.
Fifty of those were completed in January, the earliest days of Trump’s new administration when he implemented several wide-reaching executive orders. The administration has continued enacting pieces of Project 2025 in the following months.
Kendall Witmer, spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, told Newsweek on Monday that Trump spent months “misleading voters” over Project 2025.
“Donald Trump and his administration are doing what they do best: betray Americans in order to consolidate power among Trump and his billionaire friends. After spending months on the campaign trail misleading voters by claiming that he had ‘nothing to do with Project 2025,’ he now admits he’s working directly with the chief architect to fundamentally alter the government while he keeps it shut down,” she said.
On the campaign trail, Trump dismissed Democrats’ attempts to tie him to Project 2025. “I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it,” he wrote in a July 2024 Truth Social post, describing attempts to link him to it as “pure disinformation.”
He wrote in another post, “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”
However, in December 2024, after his presidential election victory against former Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump told Time magazine that he doesn’t “disagree with everything in Project 2025, but I disagree with some things.”
What People Are Saying
Witmer also told Newsweek: “Americans are suffering under the chaos and dysfunction of Trump’s Project 2025 takeover and they’re not hiding their overwhelming disapproval.”
Adrienne Cobb, one of the tracker’s creators, told The Cut: “I don’t think the absence of progress on these goals can be interpreted as an unwillingness to complete them.”
Trump, on Truth Social this month: “I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent. I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity. They are not stupid people, so maybe this is their way of wanting to, quietly and quickly, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DJT”
What Happens Next
Trump is expected to move forward with enacting his conservative agenda. Many of his policies continue facing legal scrutiny.
