Project 2025, an extreme right-wing policy framework organized by The Heritage Foundation to guide the next conservative administration, proposes gutting several federal offices that oversee efforts to address climate change and rolling back the bulk of the Inflation Reduction Act. 

While the Trump campaign has sought to distance itself from the widely unpopular project, both the former president and his running mate JD Vance have extensive ties to it. And although Project 2025 architect Paul Dans resigned from his position at The Heritage Foundation in July, the Trump campaign’s rhetoric on the Inflation Reduction Act appears to align with that of Project 2025, as laid out in an over 900-page policy book called Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.

• Project 2025 calls for eliminating electric vehicle subsidies, a move for which Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance has shown support. In William Perry Pendley’s Mandate chapter on the Department of the Interior, he urges the next president to “end federal mandates and subsidies of electric vehicles.” In September 2023, Vance introduced the Drive American Act, which would “gut the Biden administration’s electric vehicle tax rebate program,” according to Quartz, and instead “place up to a $7,500 rebate on all new gasoline- and diesel-powered cars, trucks, and SUVs.” Vance has also claimed the IRA is “subsidizing an industry that benefits Communist China more than it does American workers.” Trump made a similar comment, writing on Truth Social that a new lithium battery plant in Michigan would “put Michiganders under the thumb of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.” [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; Quartz, 7/16/24; The Washington Post, 8/12/24; The Blade, 9/19/23; Twitter/X, 8/20/24]
   
• Trump parroted Project 2025’s plan to “support repeal of massive spending bills like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)” and rescind “all funds not already spent by these programs” at the Republican National Convention. At the Republican National Convention, Trump said he would “redirect” any unspent money allocated to IRA initiatives. “All of the trillions of dollars that are sitting there not yet spent, we will redirect that money for important projects like roads, bridges, dams and we will not allow it to be spent on meaningless Green New Scam ideas.” [The Hill, 7/19/24; Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023]
   
• Project 2025 chapter author Bernard McNamee and Trump have both suggested that renewable energy doesn’t work. During an exclusive interview with Fox host Jesse Watters, Trump said, “The whole world is going woke, their world is going woke. The Green New Scam, we’re spending all our money on things that don’t work.” In Mandate, McNamee calls renewable energy unreliable, backing his statement with an endnote that includes no citation and falsely claims that “the challenges to the grid are coming mainly from subsidized renewable resources.” Meanwhile, most power outages are triggered by severe weather. Renewable energy is particularly resilient because it is modular, and can adapt more easily even if one component of a system is damaged. McNamee also argues that “electric reliability is decreasing in many parts of the country,” citing “the blackouts and shortages in California (August 2020, summer 2022) and Texas (February 2021, summer 2022)” in an endnote. In reality, widespread blackouts and shortages did not occur in California or Texas in 2022, and a multitude of factors caused the blackouts in 2020 and 2021. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 7/22/24; Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; Climate Central, 4/24/24; Media Matters, 2/19/21; Utility Dive, 11/22/22; ABC News, 9/9/22; Natural Resources Defense Council, 9/12/22, 3/3/21]
   
• Like the architects of Project 2025, Trump has publicly opposed equity-related initiatives throughout the federal government, which would seemingly include billions in IRA funding dedicated to helping underserved communities. McNamee writes: “The next Administration should stop using energy policy to advance politicized social agendas. Programs that sound innocuous, such as ‘energy justice,’ Justice40, and DEI, can be transformed to promote politicized agendas.” Trump has also attacked equity-focused programs, writing on Truth Social in 2023 after Biden signed an executive order focused on advancing racial equity, “It is time to eradicate Joe Biden's sinister ‘equity’ Executive Order that has led to the woke takeover of the U.S. Government!” These statements lay bare the threats to initiatives and programs like the $3 billion Environmental and Climate Justice Grant program, a product of the IRA that aims to reduce the impacts of climate change and pollution in low-income communities. [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; Newsweek 3/2/23; United States Environmental Protection Agency, accessed 8/16/24]

• Trump has referred to Biden’s climate initiatives collectively as the Green New Deal, or the “Green New Scam,” but often appears to be specifically referring to the Inflation Reduction Act. Trump and his allies in right-wing media have incorrectly conflated the Inflation Reduction Act and the Green New Deal (both of which Trump refers to as “the Green New Scam,” even though the Green New Deal was never made law and is much more aggressive than the IRA). He has used nearly identical language to describe the two, calling them “socialist.” At a Wisconsin campaign rally in May, Trump referred to the IRA by name, vowing to “impose an immediate moratorium on all new spending grants and giveaways under the Joe Biden mammoth socialist bills like the so-called Inflation Reduction Act.” At a December 2023 rally in New Hampshire, he called the “Green New Deal” the “Green New Scam.” “You're going to be in the poor house to fund his big government Green New Deal, which is a socialist scam, and you know what, you have to be careful. It's going to put us all in big trouble. … Let's call it from now on the Green New Scam," he later said. “I do like that term. I just came up with that.” [Spectrum News, 5/1/24; Newsmax, 12/16/23, 8/17/24; Twitter/X, 8/20/24; Media Matters, 8/19/22; CSPAN, 8/14/24 
   
• Fox News has mentioned the IRA more than twice as much as CNN has and 40% more than MSNBC has since 2022, often referring to the legislation as both “the Green New Deal” and “the Green New Scam.” Fox News’ early coverage of the IRA included attempts to falsely brand the policy as the “Green New Deal,” a proposal the network has spent years demonizing as a “totalitarian” “takeover” by the government that would supposedly ban Americans from enjoying air travel and cheeseburgers. On an August 14 segment of Jesse Watters Primetime, guest host Rachel Campos-Duffy said, “Kamala cares more about the Green New Scam than your rising energy costs. And that’s why Trump’s resonating.” [Media Matters, 8/21/24, 8/19/22; Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 8/14/24]
   
• The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022, is the largest clean energy investment in history. The law allocates $369 billion in climate and energy provisions. According to the nonprofit Climate Power, tax credits provided by the IRA to companies have so far created more than 334,500 clean energy jobs and spurred 646 clean energy projects. [Climate Power, 8/14/24, 8/14/24]
   
• The Inflation Reduction Act has benefited red states the most. According to Climate Power’s report, the IRA has created nearly 200,000 jobs across 160 Republican districts. Four out of five of the states with the most new, next-generation energy projects made possible by the IRA are red or swing states, including Texas, Michigan, Georgia, and South Carolina. On August 6, more than a dozen House Republican lawmakers wrote to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) asking him not to get rid of the clean energy tax credits laid out in the IRA should conservatives maintain or expand their majority in the House. [The Hill, 8/7/24; Climate Power, 8/14/24]