Last spring and summer, The Fulcrum published a 30-part series on Project 2025. Now that Donald Trump’s second term The Fulcrum has started Phase 2 of the series has commenced.
One month in and we’re getting clarity on President Trump’s priorities. He’s certainly fixated on bureaucratic waste. He has controversial innovator and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, leaning into that effort, playing the real-life host of the decidedly un-celebrity Apprentice. The career civil servant at the Department of Veterans Affairs? You’re fired! The lifelong administrator at the Small Business Administration? You’re fired!
Trump’s also hyper-focused on global affairs: courting Vladimir Putin (again), attacking Volodymyr Zelenskyy (again), practically pulling permits for developing Gaza into the next “French Riviera,” slapping tariffs on Chinese imports, repatriating Black South African landowners from their post-apartheid homes, chastising the French President for correcting him in real time, along with threatening Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Canada under some present-day Manifest Destiny.
And, of course, America’s 47th president hit the proverbial jackpot with his executive order that imposes a 90-day pause on all U.S. foreign development assistance programs. That move united his interest in reducing government waste with his focus on foreign affairs.
But how is President Trump doing with Project 2025’s “four broad fronts that will play a big role in deciding America’s future?” How well does his early agenda map onto Project 2025’s broad ambitions?
As a reminder, Project 2025’s Foreword, written by Heritage Foundation’s President Kevin Roberts, identifies four goals for the Trump administration:
1. Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.
2. Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.
3. Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.
4. Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls the “Blessings of Liberty.”
Trump has addressed each, even if some have received more of his administration’s attention than others. Most obviously, “front” number two—on dismantling the administrative state—has commanded the most air time. In Roberts’ words, Project 2025 “lays out how to use many of tools including: how to fire supposedly ‘un-fireable’ federal bureaucrats; how to shutter wasteful and corrupt bureaus and offices; how to muzzle woke propaganda at every level of government; how to restore the American people’s constitutional authority over the Administrative State; and how to save untold taxpayer dollars in the process.”
Indeed, the Trump administration has followed this particular roadmap to a tee. He has fired the “un-fireable,” shuttered agencies, muzzled Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) talk throughout the government, and, at least according to those inside the White House, “saved untold taxpayer dollars in the process.”
The President’s accomplishments on the other three “fronts” are a little less clear.
Let’s take a look at the first goal, centered around families. “Today, the American Family is in crisis,” writes Roberts in Project 2025. As evidence, he cites the danger of fatherlessness, the damage to children by using terms like “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” the harm of exposure to DEI programs in schools and workplaces, and on and on. It is quite obvious that the Trump administration has followed Roberts’ script in prohibiting DEI programs in places receiving federal funds, outlawing certain transgender people from participating in sports, and bolstering “ parental rights.” However, he has taken it a step further by targeting programs that have historically helped families. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP as it is more commonly known, is one such program. First introduced in 1939, this initiative helps families—and especially children—get adequate daily nutrition. 41 million individuals, or about one in every eight Americans, receive the benefit. The Republican-controlled House, with President Trump’s presumptive approval, hopes to cut billions from that assistance program.
With respect to Trump's campaign pledge to secure the borders, there have been multiple executive orders—on immigration, invasion, and terrorism —that mirror the Project 2025 strategy. However, many of these orders are being challenged in the courts, so the verdict is out as to their enforceability and legality.
This brings me to liberty. Project 2025 speaks much of liberty and freedom but often refers to freedom for select groups, not for all. Curiously, Project 2025 advocates for removing terms like "sexual orientation," "gender identity," "diversity," "equity," and "inclusion" from federal rules and regulations and frames this as somehow promoting liberty. Equally curious is Project 2025’s insistence that the elites on the left define liberty too narrowly. Roberts claims, “It’s this radical equality—liberty for all—not just of rights but of authority—that the rich and powerful have hated about democracy in America since 1776. They resent Americans’ audacity in insisting that we don’t need them to tell us how to live.” Fair enough. But it works both ways, doesn’t it? I’m not sure we need the Heritage Foundation to tell us how to live either.
I’ve been saying for a long time that freedom—America’s most indispensable value—is neither the prerogative of the left nor the right. Encouraging Americans to “live freely” is not a woke concept possessed only by the left as it is portrayed in Project 2025 and by the Trump administration. But neither is it a libertarian idea, claimed exclusively by the right. It is an enlightenment idea celebrated by our Founders and hailed by those like Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, and Martin Luther King. Roberts and Trump believe in a certain vision of liberty, but it’s a narrower conception than America needs right now. “Our Constitution grants each of us the liberty to do not what we want,” Roberts insists, “but what we ought. This pursuit of the good life is found primarily in family—marriage, children, Thanksgiving dinners, and the like.”
No. That’s not what our Constitution grants us. Our Constitution grants us a freedom essential to human dignity, a freedom that encourages the pursuit of happiness, a freedom that braces America’s experiment in self-governance, and a freedom that fosters human flourishing. The trick now is getting all of us to agree.
Samples of Phase 2 articles about Project 2025
- Project 2025: Part II
- Department of Education
- USAID
- Department of Homeland Security
- Changes to the Department of Veterans Affairs
- Elon Musk’s DOGE Pursues Partisan Agenda
- Elon Musk’s attack on the Department of Labor
Samples of Phase 1 articles about Project 2025
- A cross-partisan approach
- An Introduction
- Rumors of Project 2025’s Demise are Greatly Exaggerated
- Department of Education
- Managing the bureaucracy
- Department of Defense
- Department of Energy
- The Environmental Protection Agency
- Education Savings Accounts
- Department of Veterans Affairs
- The Department of Homeland Security
- U.S. Agency for International Development
- Affirmative action
- A federal Parents' Bill of Rights
- Department of Labor
- Intelligence community
- Department of State
- Department of the Interior
- Federal Communications Commission
- A perspective from Europe
- Department of Health and Human Services
- Voting Rights Act
- Another look at the Federal Communications Commission
- A Christo-fascist manifesto designing a theocracy
- Voters oppose the far-right playbook
- The Schedule F threat to democracy
- The Department of Justice
- A blueprint for Christian nationalist regime change
- How anti-trans proposals could impact all families
- The Federal Reserve
- A threat to equitable education
An Independent Voter's Perspective on Current Political Divides
In the column, "Is Donald Trump Right?", Fulcrum Executive Editor, Hugo Balta, wrote:
For millions of Americans, President Trump’s second term isn’t a threat to democracy—it’s the fulfillment of a promise they believe was long overdue.
Is Donald Trump right?
Should the presidency serve as a force for disruption or a safeguard of preservation?
Balta invited readers to share their thoughts at newsroom@fulcrum.us.
David Levine from Portland, Oregon, shared these thoughts...
I am an independent voter who voted for Kamala Harris in the last election.
I pay very close attention to the events going on, and I try and avoid taking other people's opinions as fact, so the following writing should be looked at with that in mind:
Is Trump right? On some things, absolutely.
As to DEI, there is a strong feeling that you cannot fight racism with more racism or sexism with more sexism. Standards have to be the same across the board, and the idea that only white people can be racist is one that I think a lot of us find delusional on its face. The question is not whether we want equality in the workplace, but whether these systems are the mechanism to achieve it, despite their claims to virtue, and many of us feel they are not.
I think if the Democrats want to take back immigration as an issue then every single illegal alien no matter how they are discovered needs to be processed and sanctuary cities need to end, every single illegal alien needs to be found at that point Democrats could argue for an amnesty for those who have shown they have been Good actors for a period of time but the dynamic of simply ignoring those who break the law by coming here illegally is I think a losing issue for the Democrats, they need to bend the knee and make a deal.
I think you have to quit calling the man Hitler or a fascist because an actual fascist would simply shoot the protesters, the journalists, and anyone else who challenges him. And while he definitely has authoritarian tendencies, the Democrats are overplaying their hand using those words, and it makes them look foolish.
Most of us understand that the tariffs are a game of economic chicken, and whether it is successful or not depends on who blinks before the midterms. Still, the Democrats' continuous attacks on the man make them look disloyal to the country, not to Trump.
Referring to any group of people as marginalized is to many of us the same as referring to them as lesser, and it seems racist and insulting.
We invite you to read the opinions of other Fulrum Readers:
Trump's Policies: A Threat to Farmers and American Values
The Trump Era: A Bitter Pill for American Renewal
Federal Hill's Warning: A Baltimorean's Reflection on Leadership
Also, check out "Is Donald Trump Right?" and consider accepting Hugo's invitation to share your thoughts at newsroom@fulcrum.us.
The Fulcrum will select a range of submissions to share with readers as part of our ongoing civic dialogue.
We offer this platform for discussion and debate.