Democracy Forward: People's Guide to Project 2025
by Democracy Forward Foundation , June 2024. | PDF
Posted: Wednesday, July 03, 2024 at 06:23 AM UT | Updated: September 20, 2025
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2024 - 05 - Democracy Forward Foundation: Peoples Guide to Project 2025
“ The Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project is a well-funded (eight-figure) effort of the Heritage Foundation and more than 100 organizations to enable a future anti-democratic presidential administration to take swift, far-right action that would cut wages for working people, dismantle social safety net programs, reverse decades of progress for civil rights, redefine the way our society operates, and undermine our economy. ”
Project 2025 is among the most profound threats to the American people.
We read Project 2025’s entire 900+ page “Mandate for Leadership ” so that you don’t have to.
What we discovered was a systemic, ruthless plan to undermine the quality of life of millions of Americans, remove critical protections and dismantle programs for communities across the nation, and prioritize special interests and ideological extremism over people.
From attacking overtime pay, student loans, and reproductive rights, to allowing more discrimination, pollution, and price gouging, those behind Project 2025 are preparing to go to incredible lengths to create a country only for some, not for all of us.
If these plans are enacted, which Project 2025’s authors claim can happen without congressional approval, 4.3 million people could lose overtime protections, 40 million people could have their food assistance reduced, 220,000 American jobs could be lost, and much, much, more. The stakes are higher than ever for democracy and for people.
These threats aren’t hypothetical. These are their real plans.
The Heritage Foundation and the 100+ organizations that make up the Project 2025 Advisory Board have mapped out exactly how they will achieve their extreme ends. They aim to try and carry out many of the most troubling proposals through an anti-democratic president and political loyalists installed in the executive branch, without waiting for congressional action. And, while many of these plans are unlawful, winning in court is not guaranteed given that the same far-right movement that is behind Project 2025 has shaped our current court system.
To combat the threats posed by Project 2025, we have to first understand them.
What follows are some of the most dangerous proposals that make up Project 2025, specifically those that they plan to implement through federal agencies and a far-right executive branch.
The majority of Americans share the same values and priorities, but Project 2025 wants to push an extreme, out-of-touch agenda on all of us. By reading this guide and sharing it, we can begin to address these threats and go on offense towards building a bold, inclusive democracy for all people.
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In this video excerpt, Mr. Dennis Dean Kirk, Associate Director of Project 2025 at the Heritage Foundation, gives an overview of the federal government’s background check process, including what disqualifies an individual. Kirk served in the Office of Personnel Management during the 2016 Trump administration. YouTube - full video
Source: ProPublica - Project 2025 Academy
The Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project is a well-funded (eight-figure) effort of the Heritage Foundation and more than 100 organizations to enable a future anti-democratic presidential administration to take swift, far-right action that would cut wages for working people, dismantle social safety net programs, reverse decades of progress for civil rights, redefine the way our society operates, and undermine our economy.
A central pillar of Project 2025 is the “Mandate for Leadership,” a 900+ page policy playbook authored by former Trump administration officials and other extremists that provides a radical vision for our nation and a roadmap to implement it.
Proposals from Project 2025, discussed in detail throughout this guide , that they claim could be implemented through executive branch action alone — so without new legislation — include:
Cut overtime protections for 4.3 million workers
Stop efforts to lower prescription drug prices
Limit access to food assistance, which an average of more than 40 million people in 21.6 million households rely on monthly
Eliminate the Head Start early education program, which serves over 1 million children annually
Cut American Rescue Plan (ARP) programs that have created or saved 220,000 jobs
Restrict access to medication abortion
Push more of the 33 million people enrolled in Medicare towards Medicare Advantage and other worse, private options
Expose the 368,000 children in foster care to risk of increased discrimination
Deny students in 25 states and Washington, D.C. access to student loans because their state provides in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants
Roll back civil rights protections across multiple fronts, including cutting diversity, equity, and inclusion-related (DEI) programs and LGBTQ+ rights in health care, education, and workplaces
R E L A T E D I N F O R M A T I O N
2024: Democracy Forward: People's Guide to Project 2025
See also:
20250430 - Trump's First 100 Days: Incompetence, Theft, and Corruption | Senator Chris Murphy | Press Release/Transcript |
How the Media walked us into Autocracy | Chris Hedges | Ralph Nader
The Sanctuary | Chris Hedges | Fascism in the Age of Trump | Q&A
The Scheme | Senator Sheldon Whitehouse | Climate Change | COP29
Saving American Democracy | Senator Bernie Sanders | Announcement 2
The System : Who Rigged It, How We Fix It | Robert B. Reich | Prices
Corporate Profits and Inflation | Robert B. Reich | Inequality for All (film )
PBS | Bob Woodward | FEAR : Trump in the White House | WW | 92NY
Amanpour | PolitiFact Founder Bill Adair: Epidemic of Lying | PolitiFact
TRNN | Private equity runs America | Chris Hedges | Gretchen Morgenson
DDN | Oligarchs Are Gaming Democracy | George Monbiot | The Media
Democracy Now! | Project 2025 Reveals Secret Plan | AIPAC | BlackRock
Democracy Now! | Ziklag Exposed: Secretive Christian Nationalist Network Tries to Purge Voters in Battleground States | MSNBC | CREW
Vigilantes Inc. America's New Vote Suppression Hitmen (full documentary)
Renowned investigative journalist,
Greg Palast , and his investigations team bring focus to voter suppression by “Vigilante” challenges by self-appointed vote-fraud hunters, not government officials, who are targeting well over one million people to challenge and block the counting of their ballots. Most suspiciously, the vast majority of vigilante targets are young voters and minorities. Currently, the Trump-sponsored group True the Vote has gone from 88 vigilantes to over 40,000 “volunteers” in 43 states!
20250124 - Update: Trump Lost. Vote Suppression Won. |
EAC |
ETA
Greg Palast: If all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia, Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.
Hartmann/Palast | Trump's Victory was Rigged through Voter Suppression
20250204 - Election Truth Alliance (ETA):
Analysis of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election and seeking to #VerifyTheVote in key counties. PDF | PPT
FMN | Anthony Davis | Dr. Steven Hassan | Psychological election operations
Freedom of Mind : In our journey to understand the dynamics of human influence, control, and freedom of mind, the
Influence Continuum (PDF) serves as a crucial framework to empower individuals to navigate the complex spectrum of influence, from healthy persuasion and education to undue coercion and manipulation. Dr. Steven Hassan's books, such as
Combating Cult Mind Control,
Freedom of Mind, and
The Cult of Trump, draw upon decades of research and personal experiences to support and expand upon this theory.
ProPublica | Documented | Inside Ziklag, the Secret Organization of Wealthy Christians Trying to Sway the Election and Change the Country
ACW | CodePink | NPR | Slate | RE: Christians United for Israel (CUFI)
APA | Misinformation and disinformation | Elections | The Conspiratorial Mind
2023: The Trump Campaign’s Collusion With Israel
See also:
PBS | Frontline | Democracy on Trial (full documentary) | PBS
PBS | Frontline | Plot to Overturn the Election (full documentary) | PBS
PBS | Frontline | United States of Conspiracy (full documentary) | PBS
PBS | Frontline | The Mueller Report (full documentary) | DOJ Archive
Unfit (2020, 84 minutes) | Donald Trump Documentary | Full Movie
How Donald Trump's election lies cost Fox News $1 billion | Four Corners | AP
Dave Marcus | Roy Cohn / Donald J. Trump: Deny, Delay, and Distract
PBS | Frontline | The Choice 2024 | Roy Cohn / Donald J. Trump
PBS | American Experience | Roy Cohn | Joseph McCarthy / Roy Cohn
Democracy Now! | Matt Tyrnauer | Roy Cohn / Roger Stone / Donald Trump
Matt Tyrnauer | Where's My Roy Cohn? (2019, 97 minutes, full documentary)
The Lincoln Project: Jeffrey Sonnenfeld & the Mirage of Trump, "the Businessman"
Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig with Peter Baker - Lucky Loser : How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success
Secret Probe of Trump/Egypt $10 Million Bribe - the FBI Was Investigating, then Attorney General Barr Closed the Case | Democracy Now! | Washington Post
DOJ: Pardons Granted by President Donald J. Trump (2017-2021) | Wikipedia
Editors' Note:
On the morning of January 20, 2021, the last day of his presidency, U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned Aviem Sella , the Israeli handler of American-born Jonathan Jay Pollard , a former intelligence analyst for the United States government. In 1987, as part of a plea agreement, Pollard pleaded guilty to spying for and providing top-secret U.S. classified information to Israel and was sentenced to life in prison for violations of the Espionage Act.
The U.S. intelligence community maintained that the damage to U.S. national security due to Pollard's espionage was far more severe, wide-ranging, and consequential than publicly acknowledged. At his sentencing hearing, U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger gave the court a memo that read:
“It is difficult for me, even in the so-called 'year of the spy,' to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by the defendant in view of the breadth, the critical importance to the U.S., and the high sensitivity of the information he sold to Israel. That information was intentionally reserved by the United States for its own use, because to disclose it, to anyone or any nation, would cause the greatest harm to our national security. ”
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On November 20, 2020, during the Trump Administration, Jonathan Pollard's parole expired and all restrictions were removed. On December 30, 2020, Pollard and his second wife moved to Jerusalem, Israel. The Pollards flew to Israel from the US state of New Jersey on board a private jet owned by US billionaire Sheldon Adelson , a Republican supporter of the Trump Administration. Upon their arrival at the Ben Gurion Airport outside of Tel Aviv, they were greeted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both knelt and kissed the ground before greeting him.
The Jewish/Israel Lobby actively works in the U.S. and U.K. to influence prospective government candidates and elected officials to move each country's foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction, oftentimes using antisemitism to restrict criticism and political activism.
Since the inception of Israel in 1948, there has been an international consensus that the future of Jerusalem must be the subject of negotiations between Israelis and the Palestinians, the indigenous people of Palestine . However, during the 2016 Trump Administration, President Donald Trump, the most litigious and pro-Israel president in American history, provided Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with these unprecedented decisions :
Recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel
Moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem
Closed the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, which functioned as a de facto embassy to the Palestinians
Recognition of Israeli sovereignty of the township in the Golan Heights area, named as the Trump Heights
President Donald Trump effectively quashed the two-state solution in the Middle East with these dictatorial decisions, which have further emboldened Israel in its genocide of Gaza, Palestine .
Further Readings:
2022: Iraq Tribunal: The Israel Connection (Alison Weir)
2021: Israel’s Secret Arsenal: It’s Not So Secret Anymore
2019: The Planned Extermination of the Assyrian People and Culture
2017: International campaign is criminalizing criticism of Israel as ‘antisemitism’
1998: Israel's Economic Espionage in the United States
1995: Israel's Unauthorized Arms Transfers
1967: The Day Israel Attacked America, USS Liberty | Special Series (video) | Military Archive | Atour Archive
False or misleading statements by Donald Trump | Washington Post (Archive )
AP: Trump Investigations : tracking the civil and criminal cases | USA Today
Wikipedia: Trump fake electors plot | January 6th Committee Final Report
Wikipedia: Donald Trump Access Hollywood tape
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On October 7, 2016, one month before the United States presidential election,
The Washington Post published a video and article about then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and television host Billy Bush having a lewd conversation about women in September 2005.
PBS: All the assault allegations against Donald Trump | The Guardian - Timeline
Wikipedia: E. Jean Carroll v. Donald J. Trump | NPR | Washington Post | USA Today
Politico: Trump teen rape accuser abruptly calls off news conference | Independent
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Politico: 20160930 - Jane Doe vs. Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein (PDF)
Politico: 20160620 - Jane Doe vs. Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein (PDF)
Politico: 20160416 - Katie Johnson vs. Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein (PDF)
Narativ: Video Affidavit of Katie Johnson | Narativ: Katie Johnson
WWW: Speaking of an Alleged Rape by Donald Trump: Remembering a 13-year-old girl
The Sexual Misconduct of Donald J. Trump: Toward a Misogyny Report (PDF)
PBS: Researchers report stunning surge of misogyny in schools | PERIL | NIJ
PERIL : Not Just a Joke: Understanding & Preventing Gender- & Sexuality-Based Bigotry helps educate and equip adults across caregiving capacities with information and resources that will help them recognize vulnerabilities and intervene safely and effectively. As the third guide in a growing suite of resources developed by SPLC and American University’s Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL), the guide delivers the support caregivers need to ensure all young people are safe, healthy and embraced by their communities.
AP: Trump says he didn’t know his immigration rhetoric echoes Hitler.
That’s part of a broader pattern. (PBS archive )
Ivana Trump , Donald Trump's first wife, stated in a 1990 Vanity Fair profile that Donald kept a book of Adolf Hitler's collected speeches, titled "
My New Order, " in a cabinet by his bed and would read from it from time to time. Donald Trump denied reading the book and claimed a "Jewish friend" had given him a copy of Mein Kampf, though the friend, Marty Davis, later clarified he had given him "My New Order."
The Daily Beast: Listen To The Jeffrey Epstein Tapes:
‘I Was Donald Trump’s Closest Friend’ (Archive )
The Guardian: Jeffrey Epstein details close relationship with Trump in newly released tapes by journalist Michael Wolff
Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury podcast:
20241031 - Episode 22 - Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump
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Archive: audio file | transcript
Transcript excerpt
Michael Wolff: Marla Maples got you know, before they were married, got pregnant, and according to Epstein, they spent, he and Trump, spent a lot of time about how to deal with this, which Trump clearly did not want to have the child, and what were his options, what were his recourses, and how could he convince Marla Maples not to have the child, which he seems not to have succeeded in doing.
. . .
Michael Wolff: So he's having this conversation with me, and as I say, I'm writing Fire and Fury , I'm trying to figure out Donald Trump as confounding to me, of course, as it was to everybody, who was this guy? How did this happen? But having this conversation, Epstein on more than one occasion, would bring out these photographs that he had of Trump, and there were about a half a dozen photographs, and they were from the late nineties. They were Trump at Epstein's Palm Beach house, sitting around the pool with these young girls, and the young girls are topless, and in some of the pictures they're sitting in his lap. And then there's one I especially remember where there's a stain, a telltale stain on the front of Trump's pants, and the girls are pointing at him and laughing.
See also: Eric Weinstein: The Construct - Jeffrey Epstein | Leslie Wexner 2 3
20241103 - Episode 23 - Epstein: From Beyond the Grave
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Transcript excerpt
Jeffrey Epstein: Horrible human being... he does nasty things to his best friends' wives... he first tries to gain your trust, and then uses it...
. . .
Michael Wolff: But the interesting thing here is I ask Epstein how he knows all this stuff, and he kind of responds with some incredulity and says, well, I was Trump's closest friend for 10 years, and I think that's the point here.
Michael Wolff: So, how do you know this?
Jeffrey Epstein: I was his closest friend for 10 years.
Jeffrey Epstein: You probably know he's got scalp reduction. He had the same male pattern baldness that we all have.
. . .
James Truman: And of course the other immediate impact on Friday was the Congressman Steve Cohen brought up in Congress about the evidence that the FBI retrieved from Epstein's safe and asked that an inquiry be open to find out what happened to the photographs. Can you just remind us what the photographs were all?
Michael Wolff: The photographs of Epstein on several occasions would take out these photographs of Donald Trump and the set of girls that were at Epstein's house in Palm Beach, and in the pictures, and there were possibly a half a dozen of them, and Epstein used to kind of flick them around like playing cards. There were girls around the swimming pool. They were all topless. One specifically, I remember a girl sitting on Trump's lap, and in another Trump has a stain on the front of his pants, which the girls three or four are pointing at and laughing. Epstein used to go to his safe, take these pictures out, and then return them to the safe... that was the safe in New York, in the house on 71st Street.
See also: Eric Weinstein: The Construct - Jeffrey Epstein | Leslie Wexner 2 3
FBI Records: The Vault — Jeffrey Epstein | SE: Trump and the FBI
According to
The Telegraph : On July 6-7, 2019, during an initial search of Jeffrey Epstein's Manhattan home after his arrest on sex assault charges, FBI officers broke open a locked safe with a saw, finding photographs, CDs, jewellery, computer hard drives, loose diamonds, passports and large amounts of US currency. The FBI photographed the evidence.
DOJ Press Releases:
20190708-Jeffrey Epstein |
20220628-Ghislaine Maxwell
In June, 2023, the DOJ completed the
investigation on Jeffrey Epstein's
suicide .
Select January 6th Committee Final Report and Supporting Materials Collection
The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol released their
final report on December 22, 2022. This page provides access to the report as well as additional supporting materials provided by the committee, including videos, transcripts, and other documents on file.
January 6th Committee Full Hearings - Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 The Final Report
Department of Justice: The Office was prepared to present the evidence of Mr. Trump's alleged crimes in a public adversarial trial and to accept any verdicts rendered by a jury of his peers. As explained below, the Office commenced prosecution of Mr. Trump in the Election Case under both the original and superseding indictments because it concluded that the admissible evidence would be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction. See Justice Manual § 9-27 .220 and infra at Section III.
20250107 - DOJ Report of Special Counsel Jack Smith - Volume 1 |
DOJ
WOUB-PBS: Woody Guthrie - Old Man Trump | TKC: This Land Is Your Land
"Old Man Trump " is a song written by American folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie in 1954.
In December 1950, Woody Guthrie signed a lease at the Beach Haven apartment complex owned and operated by Fred Trump in Gravesend, Brooklyn. The song describes what Guthrie felt were the racist housing practices and discriminatory rental policies of his landlord, Fred Trump, father of former president Donald Trump.
This Land Is Your Land
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Archive: audio file | lyrics | sheet
"This Land Is Your Land " is a song written by American folk singer Woody Guthrie in 1940 and is America's treasured folk song.
The People Speak - Extended Edition
Directors: Howard Zinn, Chris Moore, Anthony Arnove
A People's History of the United States
by Howard Zinn (author)
Requiem for the American Dream
The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power
by Noam Chomsky (author)
Editors: Peter Hutchison, Kelly Nyks, Jared P. Scott
United States Constitution (September 17, 1787)
The Preamble
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Government Forum | Why Leaders Lie
United States Government Information