What is Project 2025?
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Background Project 2025 is a nearly 920-page policy blueprint, published by the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, that lays out a detailed plan for restructuring the entire U.S. federal government along far-right conservative lines, written largely by former officials from President Donald Trump's first administration.
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spio.comBackground
Project 2025 is a federal policy agenda and blueprint for a radical restructuring of the executive branch, authored and published by former Trump administration officials in partnership with the Heritage Foundation, a longstanding conservative think tank. It was published in April 2023. It also incorporates a large database of ideologically vetted candidates for political appointment to executive branch positions, and a training program called the Presidential Administration Academy, to enable potential appointees to operate "from Day One of the next conservative Administration."
What it actually proposes
Background Project 2025 provides a roadmap for "the next conservative President" to downsize the federal government and fundamentally change how it works, including the tax system, immigration enforcement, social welfare programs and energy policy, particularly those designed to address climate change.
Some of the specific proposals:
- Abortion: Severely limiting abortion access nationwide by reversing the FDA's approval of mifepristone, a drug used in medication abortion, and reviving a 19th-century law, the Comstock Act, to ban abortion medications, equipment or materials from being sent through the U.S. Postal Service.
- Immigration: Targeting immigrant communities through mass deportations and raids, ending birthright citizenship, separating families, and dismantling the nation's asylum system.
- Education: Calling for abolishing the teaching of "critical race theory" and "gender ideology" in public schools, and "deleting" terms such as "diversity, equity and inclusion," "gender equity," and "reproductive health" from "every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant… and piece of legislation that exists."
- Environment: Ending initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, promoting fossil fuels, withdrawing from international climate agreements, and weakening the Endangered Species Act.
- Federal workforce: Tightening control over agencies historically seen as independent, stripping civil service protections from thousands of federal workers, ending federal unions, and stepping away from policies aimed at improving outcomes for nonwhite job candidates.
Who is behind it
Project 2025 was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, but includes an advisory board consisting of more than 100 conservative groups. The former director of Project 2025, Paul Dans, was the chief of staff of Trump's Office of Personnel Management. Russell Vought, one of Project 2025's key architects, heads Trump's Office of Management and Budget, which he has likened to the "nerve center" through which a president can exert their influence across the federal government.
Trump's public position vs. what actually happened
President Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 during his election campaign after polls indicated it was deeply unpopular with voters, at one point claiming he didn't know who was behind it. Then reality caught up with the talking point.
By February 2026, 283 of 532 specific Project 2025 recommendations had been implemented or initiated. Trump had said he had "nothing to do with" Project 2025 and had "not read it," yet within one year of taking office, 283 of its 532 tracked recommendations had been implemented or initiated. According to the Project 2025 Tracker website, the administration had implemented 54% of the 320 "objectives" tracked as of mid-July 2026.
The bottom line: whatever you think of its politics, Project 2025 is not a fringe document gathering dust on a shelf. It is an active governing framework, written by people now inside the administration, that is being worked through systematically.
Follow-ups
Who is Stephen Miller and what does he have to do with Project 2025?Stephen Miller, the hardline immigration policy architect who has been Trump's closest and longest-serving adviser, is now White House Chief of Staff as of today, and his ties to Background Project 2025 run directly through his own organization, America First Legal, which sat on the project's advisory board, and throug
Stephen Miller, the hardline immigration policy architect who has been Trump's closest and longest-serving adviser, is now White House Chief of Staff as of today, and his ties to Background Project 2025 run directly through his own organization, America First Legal, which sat on the project's advisory board, and through his appearance in its Presidential Administration Academy recruitment videos.
Stephen Miller, born August 23, 1985, in Santa Monica, California, is a political advisor and one of the longest-serving figures in President Donald Trump's inner circle, widely regarded as the chief architect of Trump's hardline immigration agenda. As of today, he has just been named White House Chief of Staff, replacing Susie Wiles, effective Monday.
His connection to Background Project 2025 is real, documented and layered, even though he tried to distance himself from it publicly.
Who Stephen Miller is
Miller has served as White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor since 2025, and before that as Senior Advisor to the President and Director of Speechwriting throughout Trump's first term. He got his start in Washington in 2009 on the staff of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, working on immigration policy. His work in the first administration centered heavily on immigration policy; he was credited as one of the architects of the 2018 policy of separating children from parents in families seeking asylum at the southern border. He also advocated for a travel ban targeting people from majority-Muslim countries.
On November 6, 2026, President Trump announced a White House shake-up: Susie Wiles is leaving her post as Chief of Staff, and Stephen Miller will take her place, effective Monday, November 9. As Chief of Staff, Miller will now control the flow of policy across the entire White House, not just the immigration portfolio.
His ties to Project 2025
After Trump left office following his first term, Miller started an advisory group called America First Legal, which went on to contribute to Project 2025, the sweeping conservative blueprint for the next Republican president created by the Heritage Foundation.
Miller appeared in a Project 2025 promotional video for its Presidential Administration Academy, an effort to recruit MAGA activists into government service. His role in the video was limited to stating his title: "senior adviser to the President." He was flanked in the video by Project 2025's nearly 900-page policy book, titled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.
The ACLU lists him as a contributor to Project 2025, describing his role as having "led an interest group that advised Project 2025 on policy."
The public distancing
When Project 2025 became a political liability during the 2024 campaign, Miller pulled back. He attempted to distance himself and America First Legal from the project, stating: "I have zero involvement with Project 2025. I made an advice video a long while back for students. I have no involvement with the project whatsoever."
After Trump publicly disavowed Project 2025, many advisory board members were scrubbed from the website, including America First Legal. On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly distanced himself from Project 2025, claiming he had no idea who was behind it, despite its close ties to Miller and other crucial figures in his orbit.
Why it matters now
Miller's focus has never been limited to the southern border. Reducing legal immigration has long been his explicit and documented goal. Immigration was Miller's gateway into the MAGA movement and Trump's inner circle, but he is now being consulted across policy areas. With the keys to the entire White House now in his hands, the policy vision that Project 2025 laid out on paper has its most powerful advocate sitting at the top of the executive branch.
Why did Susie Wiles leave as White House Chief of Staff?Susie Wiles, the first woman ever to serve as White House Chief of Staff and the longest-serving person in that role under President Donald Trump, resigned Thursday night and was replaced by Stephen Miller, in a shake-up driven directly by Republican losses in the midterm elections.
Susie Wiles, the first woman ever to serve as White House Chief of Staff and the longest-serving person in that role under President Donald Trump, resigned Thursday night and was replaced by Stephen Miller, in a shake-up driven directly by Republican losses in the midterm elections.
The midterms triggered it
President Trump said Friday that Stephen Miller was replacing Susie Wiles as White House Chief of Staff, mere days after Republicans lost control of Congress in the midterm elections. The staffing shake-up came as Trump remained angry over Tuesday's losses, and represents a gamble on reinforcing the administration's policy agenda and perhaps moving further to the right, posing a sharp contrast with voters' decision to make the largest shift to the left in half a century.
Wiles was being blamed for advocating for Trump's super PAC's massive spending in the midterms ($400 million), which amounted to a whole lot of nothing for the party. Former White House adviser Steve Bannon said Wiles should be "removed immediately" over the GOP's loss, saying "because of the results, they should be removed and removed immediately."
Trump himself told reporters he "wanted to make a change."
How it happened
A White House official said Wiles gave her resignation on Thursday night. Wiles posted on X: "Today is my last day as White House Chief of Staff." Trump, for his part, was publicly gracious: he wrote on Truth Social that "Susie Wiles, who has done an outstanding job, will be moving over to the Trump Political Operation," adding "I want to thank her for her service as Chief of Staff. She has done a great job!"
Who Susie Wiles is
She has been credited with steering the most disciplined of his three presidential bids. She built a reputation as a strict manager who reduced the staff turnover and volatility of press leaks that plagued Trump's first term. Wiles was widely viewed as the most powerful person in the White House outside the president himself, and she achieved something few in his orbit could: earning his trust, influencing his decisions and bringing discipline to an administration defined by historic infighting and upheaval.
What it signals
Trump tapped Miller to succeed Wiles, elevating an adviser who reportedly helped develop plans to advance the administration's agenda without congressional approval, as Democrats prepare to take control of Congress in January. An architect of Trump's explosive first hundred days exerting executive authority, Miller had been working on plans to keep operating a muscular White House even in the face of big Democratic majorities.
Wiles is not fully leaving Trump's orbit, though her resignation follows a pattern of other top female officials who have left or been fired from Trump's second administration and been replaced by men. Her resignation brings the number of prominent women who have left the Trump administration this year up to 7.
Isnt Steve Miller a known racist?Yes, Stephen Miller is widely and credibly documented as holding white nationalist views, based on evidence considerably harder to dismiss than political opinion alone.
Yes, Stephen Miller is widely and credibly documented as holding white nationalist views, based on evidence considerably harder to dismiss than political opinion alone.
The leaked emails: the clearest evidence
The Southern Poverty Law Center reviewed more than 900 emails between Stephen Miller and Breitbart News editors and found that Miller regularly promoted white nationalist literature and racist propaganda as he shaped the far-right website's coverage of issues related to immigrants.
Among the specific revelations: Miller shared articles from the white nationalist website VDARE, which traffics in the "white genocide" or "great replacement" myth that people of color are being systematically replaced by white people.
The emails also show Miller recommending that Former Breitbart write about The Camp of the Saints, a book linked to the far-right movement that portrays immigrants as dark-skinned, feces-eating invaders of white society.
The leaked emails reveal an obsession with the Confederacy and the denigration of Black and Hispanic communities, and tout eugenics and white nationalist conspiracy theories while offering news tips on how to amplify stories about Black and Hispanic crime.
Former Breitbart editor Katie McHugh, who leaked the emails, told the SPLC:
"What Stephen Miller sent to me in those emails has become policy at the Trump administration."
His own family speaks out
His bigotry is considered so notorious that even his own family members have publicly denounced him. His uncle, David S. Glosser, said he "shudder[s] at the thought" of what would have become of Miller's ancestors if they had been subjected to "the policies Stephen so cooly espouses, the travel ban, the radical decrease in refugees, the separation of children from their parents."
His denial, and the official pushback
Miller, who is Jewish and the grandson of immigrants, has rejected accusations that he is a white nationalist. The White House press secretary at the time dismissed the SPLC as a "far-left smear organization," and a deputy spokesperson, citing Miller's Jewish heritage, said Miller "loves this country and hates bigotry in all forms."
What followed
Following the SPLC's investigative series, more than 80 Democratic members of Congress called for his resignation. The chairs of House caucuses representing racial minorities and liberals issued a joint statement calling Miller a "white nationalist," and more than 50 social justice groups signed an open letter to Trump accusing Miller of "stoking bigotry, hate, and division."
The evidence isn't rumor or spin. It's his own words, in his own emails, recommending white nationalist sources to a journalist he was using to shape national coverage. He denied the label. The emails are what they are, and now he's the most powerful staff position in the White House.
What is eugenics?Eugenics is the belief that human populations can be "improved" by controlling who reproduces, and it is pseudoscience that has caused enormous harm wherever it has been applied, up to and including genocide.
Eugenics is the belief that human populations can be "improved" by controlling who reproduces, and it is pseudoscience that has caused enormous harm wherever it has been applied, up to and including genocide.
Where it came from
Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, derived the term from the Greek word meaning "good in birth" or "good in stock," and first used it in an 1883 book, Inquiries into Human Fertility and Its Development. A popular eugenics movement then emerged in the United Kingdom and spread to many countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia and most of Europe.
The science it claimed to rest on was always wrong. Eugenicists used an incorrect and prejudiced understanding of the work of Darwin and Gregor Mendel to support the idea of "racial improvement." They believed they could perfect human beings and eliminate so-called social ills through genetics and heredity, using methods such as involuntary sterilization, segregation and social exclusion to rid society of people deemed "unfit."
What it looked like in practice
The American eugenics movement focused on sterilizing the "feebleminded" while also promoting the racial ideology that white Anglo-Saxons were the "superior" race. From 1909 to 1979, around 20,000 forced sterilizations occurred in California state mental institutions alone. And it did not stop there. Nazi Germany took eugenic ideology further than any other state in history, using it as one of the core justifications for the Holocaust.
The connection to white nationalism and Stephen Miller
This is why the question matters. Eugenics has always been the intellectual skeleton underneath white nationalist ideology: the claim that some people are biologically superior to others, and that society should be arranged around protecting that "stock."
VDARE, the white nationalist site Miller promoted, regularly publishes the work of eugenicists, nativists and other extremists. Miller's emails to Former Breitbart tout eugenics and white nationalist conspiracy theories and offered news tips on how to cover immigration and amplify stories about Black and Hispanic crime. Miller also referred to legislation by former President Calvin Coolidge that limited immigration to the United States based on eugenics. A US Senate resolution introduced in response to these revelations noted that Miller encouraged Breitbart to incorporate white supremacist, racist and eugenics ideologies in its news coverage.
Eugenic ideology has also appeared in the language of highly influential politicians: during his presidential campaign, Donald Trump referred to "bad genes" when discussing immigrants.
Why it is not science
Eugenics is the scientifically inaccurate theory that humans can be improved through selective breeding of populations, and its implementation has caused widespread harm, particularly to populations that are marginalized. Every serious scientific institution, including the National Human Genome Research Institute, rejects it. Human traits like intelligence, character and behavior are shaped by an enormously complex interaction of genes, environment and experience that no selective breeding program can predict or control.
The practical application of eugenics has, without exception in history, ended in atrocity: forced sterilizations, ethnic cleansing, genocide. That is not a coincidence. It is what the logic of the ideology produces when it reaches power.
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