Heritage Foundation is the leading think tank behind Project 2025, an extreme right-wing initiative to provide policy and personnel to the next Republican presidential administration. The effort involves more than 100 partner organizations, and its nearly 900-page policy book — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise — represents a major threat to democracy.

Project 2025 proposals would severely inhibit the federal government’s protections around reproductive rights, LGBTQ and civil rights, and immigration, as well as its climate change efforts. On their own platforms, Project 2025 partners speak frequently in even more draconian terms.

During a June 2018 roundtable on tax reform in Las Vegas, Trump bragged about implementing “top agenda items” suggested by the Heritage Foundation in his first year.

“The Heritage Foundation just came out recently, and they said that we've already implemented 64 percent of our top agenda items. And that's ahead of anybody, including Ronald Reagan,” Trump said. “So we've done a lot of work in a very short period of time. And you know, the bottom line is: America is open for business.”

Trump, Heritage, and then-Heritage President Kay C. James all gloated about his successful implementation of Heritage’s recommendations.

These remarks stand in stark contrast to the Trump campaign’s recent attempts to distance itself from Heritage and Project 2025 as the effort becomes a toxic election issue.

Trump began to distance himself from the initiative after Heritage President and Project 2025 spokesperson Kevin Roberts said that “we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

• Trump previously gushed over Roberts as “so incredible” during a 2022 speech at the Heritage Foundation. Trump also praised the organization, saying, “For nearly 50 years, this legendary institution, which is what it is, has been at the forefront of the conservative movement, helping lead the fight to defend our cherished American history, culture, and traditions.” [Media Matters, 7/8/24]

• Paul Dans, the director of Project 2025, said that Heritage has a “great” relationship with the former president, and he is “very bought in with this.” [Media Matters, 7/11/24]

• Roberts confirmed to The New York Times in April 2023 that “Heritage and its project partners have already briefed Mr. Trump” on Project 2025. [New York Times, 4/20/23]

• Heritage has repeatedly touted its connections to Trump in its fundraising and blog posts. [The Heritage Foundation, accessed 7/23/24, accessed 7/23/24, accessed 7/23/24, accessed 7/23/24, accessed 7/23/24]

• Former Trump staffer and Project 2025 senior director John McEntee said that he would “integrate a lot of our work” with the Trump campaign later this year. [Media Matters, 4/22/24]

• Roberts said that Project 2025 staffers and the Trump campaign “have been in conversation throughout the campaign on the matters of policy." [BlazeTV, Blaze News Tonight, 7/11/24]

• Roberts argued that the “overlap is tremendous” between Trump’s campaign platform and Project 2025. [WMAL News, The Vince Coglianese Show, 7/10/24]

• Thirty-one of the 38 core authors and editors of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership worked in the Trump administration. Additionally, CNN reported that at least 140 former Trump staffers had a hand in creating Project 2025. [Media Matters, 7/11/24; CNN, 7/11/24]