Honestly, if you spent any time on the internet during the 2024 election, you saw the 900-page "Mandate for Leadership" everywhere. It was the ultimate political boogeyman. Democrats called it a "blueprint for a dictatorship," while Donald Trump spent months claiming he’d never even heard of it. But now that we’re firmly into 2026 and the second Trump administration is in full swing, the dust has settled enough to see the reality.
Does Trump agree with Project 2025? It’s a trick question.
He hates the "brand." He loves the ideas.
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Basically, the relationship between Trump and Project 2025 is like a messy breakup where the couple still lives together and shares a bank account. During the campaign, he called the plan "abysmal" and "ridiculous." He even wished its authors luck but claimed he had nothing to do with them. Fast forward to today, and your evening news is filled with the same people who wrote those 920 pages now running the federal agencies they once plotted to dismantle.
The Great Distance Act of 2024
You’ve gotta remember how toxic this thing became. The Heritage Foundation, a heavy-hitter conservative think tank, basically handed the Trump campaign a political grenade by publishing such a specific, radical plan. It became a liability.
Trump is a guy who likes to keep his options open. He doesn’t want to be tied down to a 900-page homework assignment written by "policy nerds." When the polling started showing that voters absolutely hated the ideas of banning mifepristone or gutting the Department of Education, Trump did what he does best: he disavowed it. He famously posted on Truth Social that he had "no idea who is in charge of it."
That was a hard sell even back then.
A CNN review eventually found that at least 140 people who worked in the first Trump administration were involved in the project. We’re talking about big names like Russ Vought, who ran the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and Peter Navarro. You can’t really claim you don't know the guys who sat in your Cabinet meetings for four years.
Where the Policy Actually Lines Up
If you look at Trump's own "Agenda 47" and compare it to Project 2025, the Venn diagram is almost a circle.
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There are three big areas where Trump and the Heritage Foundation are in total lockstep:
- The "Deep State" Purge: This is the big one. Both plans called for the return of Schedule F. This basically turns tens of thousands of career civil servants into "at-will" employees. Translation: the President can fire them and replace them with loyalists. Trump has already started this process in 2025, exactly as the project suggested.
- Dismantling Education: Trump hasn't technically shuttered the Department of Education yet—that takes an act of Congress—but he’s moved the "work and needs" back to the states, which is a direct quote from his campaign and a core pillar of Project 2025.
- Mass Deportations: The Project 2025 plan for "sweeping raids" and "giant camps" is no longer a theory. It’s the daily reality of the border czar's office.
The Things He Actually Disagrees With
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows between Trump and the Heritage Foundation. Trump is a populist; Project 2025 is, in many ways, old-school corporatist and Christian nationalist.
For instance, Project 2025 suggested cutting Social Security and Medicare by raising the retirement age. Trump knows that's a death wish with his base. He’s repeatedly promised not to touch those programs. He also stayed quiet on the Project's more extreme calls to criminalize pornography or ban the "Comstock Act" to stop abortion pills from being mailed.
While Trump prides himself on being the guy who "ended Roe v. Wade," he’s always been wary of a national abortion ban. He prefers the "leave it to the states" approach because it’s a safer political hedge. Project 2025 wanted a more "muscular" federal crackdown.
The "Personnel is Policy" Reality
There’s an old saying in D.C.: "Personnel is policy."
If you want to know if Trump agrees with Project 2025, just look at his 2025/2026 cabinet.
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- Russ Vought is back at OMB. He's one of the primary architects of the Project.
- Stephen Miller is driving the immigration policy. His organization, America First Legal, was a key partner for the Project.
- Brendan Carr now chairs the FCC. He literally wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC.
It's sorta like saying you don't like a specific cookbook, but then you hire the chef who wrote it and tell him to "cook whatever you want."
Why This Matters for 2026 and Beyond
We're now seeing the "Mandate for Leadership" being implemented in real-time, even if the "Project 2025" name has been scrubbed from the White House website. The administration has already implemented about 40% of the policies related to reproductive health restrictions that the Project suggested, according to recent trackers from groups like Reproductive Freedom for All.
The 2026 midterms are shaping up to be a referendum on this very topic. Democrats are running on the "I told you so" platform, pointing to the government shutdown and the purging of federal agencies as proof that the plan was real all along.
Actionable Insights for Navigating This Landscape:
- Track the "Schedule F" Implementation: Watch the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). If the reclassification of federal workers continues, the "Deep State" overhaul is effectively the Project 2025 roadmap in action.
- Monitor Executive Orders: Most of the Project's goals are being achieved through the stroke of a pen rather than legislation. Trump’s "Day One" executive orders mirrored nearly two-thirds of the Project’s early-action suggestions.
- Ignore the Brand, Watch the People: Don't look for the words "Project 2025." Look for the names of the contributors in high-level positions. Their policy preferences haven't changed just because the campaign ended.
The reality of 2026 is that the debate over whether Trump "agrees" with the plan is over. He's living it. Whether he's doing it because he believes in the ideology or because it's the most efficient way to consolidate power doesn't really matter to the average person. The results are the same.
To stay informed, you should keep an eye on the Federal Register and the "Department of Government Efficiency" reports. These are the places where the line-item removals of federal programs—suggested by the Heritage Foundation years ago—are now being made official policy.