After the 2024 U.S. elections, a meme (archived) spread across social media in posts arguing that by electing former President Donald Trump to a second term in office, the country had voted for a list of agenda items allegedly laid out in Project 2025, a controversial blueprint for conservative policies published under the title "Mandate for Leadership" by the Heritage Foundation:
As of this writing, the above X post had received 28.1 million views, 464,000 likes and 136,000 shares. People appeared to believe it was accurate and true. "I don't even live in the states and I'm going to throw up," one commenter said. "I am so so sorry for you all."
Though framing it in terms of the election results was new, the meme had been circulating since at least September 2024. For example, the X account @TheDemocrats shared it on Sept. 24 (archived):
Snopes has covered Project 2025 extensively. As we'll show, many — but not all — of the items in this meme exactly match the project's actual proposals. For example, the first item in the meme reads "Seize power within the federal government," which isn't explicitly stated in Project 2025. (We contacted @TheDemocrats, which is run by the Democratic Party, to ask if they had authored the meme, and if so, what they meant by that line. We have not yet received a reply.)
However, before he left office at the end of his first term, Trump did issue Executive Order 13957, which sought to create a new classification for civil servants — known as "Schedule F" — that would have allowed him to lay off as many as 50,000 government employees and replace them with partisan allies. Though President Joe Biden reversed this executive order, Project 2025 proposes to reinstate it (pages 80 and 81), lending indirect credibility to the meme's "seize power" claim, and direct credibility to this one: "Replace nonpartisan government employees with politically appointed Trump Loyalists."
The meme included items on various topics, so we've compiled them by category to examine their veracity.
Abortion and Reproductive Health Care
On these topics, the meme includes the following items:
- Implements a national "backdoor ban" on abortion — without Congress — and jail health care providers
- Force states to report women's miscarriages and abortions to Trump's federal government
- Ban abortion medication
- Puts limits on contraception access
- Rip away protections for a woman's right to life-saving medical care
Project 2025 did not explicitly outline an abortion ban, but as Snopes reported in July 2024, it did call for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to stop promoting abortion as health care. It also argued that the Food and Drug Administration should reverse the approval of the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol, which according to Project 2025 are dangerous to the person who is seeking the abortion (though evidence has shown they are safe in most cases).
Further, the plan aims to apply the Comstock Act of 1873 — a law that prohibits the mailing of materials deemed obscene, which included not only pornography but contraceptives — to the mailing of mifepristone and misoprostol, essentially criminalizing health care providers who prescribe the abortion pills at a distance, for example in a telehealth setting. While Project 2025 does not use the name by which the law is best known, it refers to it by its official codification as "18 U.S. Code §§ 1461 and 1462" — "Mailing obscene or crime-inciting matter" and "Importation or transportation of obscene matters," respectively — on Page 562:
Announcing a Campaign to Enforce the Criminal Prohibitions in 18 U.S. Code §§ 1461 and 1462 Against Providers and Distributors of Abortion Pills That Use the Mail. Federal law prohibits mailing "[e]very article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion." Following the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs [the decision that struck down Roe vs Wade, the 1973 landmark decision that made abortion legal in the U.S.], there is now no federal prohibition on the enforcement of this statute. The Department of Justice in the next conservative Administration should therefore announce its intent to enforce federal law against providers and distributors of such pills.
The Comstock Act slowly fell into disuse and became largely unenforceable, but Project 2025 aims to enforce it again. This is the reason the Center for American Progress deemed Project 2025 a "backdoor abortion ban." In effect, there would be no need for Congress to pass legislation to restrict access to abortion.
In addition, Project 2025 does seek to restrict access to contraceptives in a variety of ways, including by allowing insurance companies to refuse to cover the emergency contraceptive Ella, which can help slow ovulation or prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the lining of the uterus, as well as condoms (Page 485). In 2021, the Health Resources and Services Administration recommended that these should be covered by insurance companies at no extra cost. Project 2025 aims to reverse that.
In addition, the plan does recommend that miscarriages and abortions be reported to the CDC (Page 455), and that they should be classified by cause.
Abortion and contraceptives can be live-saving interventions, according to the evidence compiled by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Justice and Law Enforcement
- Pack the Supreme Court with MAGA ["Make America Great Again," Trump's political slogan] extremists
- Pardon violent January 6 criminal insurrectionists
- End the independence of the Department of Justice and FBI
- Turn the Department of Justice and FBI into enforcement arms of the White House
"Packing the Supreme Court" means adding more justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who favor one's political leanings. It's not a recommendation of Project 2025. Like other presidents before him, Trump would simply take the opportunity to replace outgoing justices with new ones who have demonstrated stances more to his liking in previous court decisions (a practice not unique to Republican presidents).
While Trump repeatedly said during his 2024 presidential campaign that he would seek to pardon convicted supporters who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, this also is not a recommendation of Project 2025.
As we reported in July 2024, Project 2025 does advocate a change to the way the FBI operates, in part by making its director report directly to the president, thereby putting an end to its independence. As for the Department of Justice, it would be subjected to the Schedule F personnel replacements discussed above. In fact, among all the reforms the plan suggests for the DOJ, it explicitly calls for political appointees (Page 569):
Ensure the assignment of sufficient political appointees throughout the department. Ensuring adequate accountability throughout the DOJ requires the intentional devotion of sufficient resources by the Administration—not simply replicating what was done under prior Administrations and reflected in the Plum Book. The number of appointees serving throughout the department in prior Administrations—particularly during the Trump Administration—has not been sufficient either to stop bad things from happening through proper management or to promote the President's agenda.
An end to these agencies' independence would mean they would indeed answer directly to the White House, and potentially act as enforcement arms should the president wish to use them that way.
Climate Change
- End climate protections and gut clean energy programs
- Withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement
- Replace climate advisors with fossil fuel lobbyists
As Snopes reported in July 2024, Project 2025 calls for the elimination of federal clean energy investments and reversal of climate-mitigating policies. It also calls for the country's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement (Page 709):
Virtually all nations, for example, that signed the Paris Agreement have not met their treaty obligations. Such routinely violated treaties weaken the U.S. economy with no offsetting societal benefits. To that end, the next conservative Administration should withdraw the U.S. from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.
As for who would lead the U.S. Department of Energy and advise the president on climate matters, Project 2025 doesn't name anyone in particular, but Reuters reported names of people on the short list of the president-elect's transition team, citing an anonymous source. These include Trump's former energy secretary, Dan Brouillette, who had just resigned from the Edison Electric Institute — a lobbying organization — and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. We could not verify this independently, however.
Personal Liberties
- Repeal protections for LGBTQ+ Americans
- Go after marriage equality
- Reinstate Trump's transgender military ban and expel transgender service members
As per our July 2024 report, Project 2025 does call for eliminating protections for members of the LGBTQ+ community, including statutes that specifically prohibit discrimination on the basis of "sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics."
While the plan does not explicitly call for the end of same-sex marriage, it does seek to favor heterosexual people in programs that support married couples, and it does seek to protect the right of adoption agencies to match children with heterosexual married couples.
On Page 104, Project 2025 proposes to "reverse policies that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military."
On Immigration
- Reinstate and expand Trump's Muslim ban
- Put immigrants in mass detention camps
- Rip immigrant children from the arms of their mothers
The plan explicitly calls for the reinstatement of immigration rules created during Trump's first mandate, presumably including the so-called Muslim ban of 2017 (Page 568):
At a minimum, pursue through rule making—and in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security where appropriate—the promulgation of every rule related to immigration that was issued during the Trump Administration.
Project 2025 does not call specifically to create mass detention camps, though it does call for the funding to reach 100,000 beds for detained aliens (Page 143).
Lastly, as Snopes reported in July 2024, the plan does not explicitly call for family separation, contradicting Biden's claim that it suggested ""ripping mothers away from their children" at the border. However, the application of certain policy proposals of Project 2025 might result in family separations.
Health Care at Large
- Guts Medicare and Social Security.
- Line Big Pharma's pockets by ending prescription drug price caps for seniors.
- Repeal Medicare's ability to negotiate lower drug prices.
Project 2025 does not propose gutting Medicare and Social Security per se.
However, it does propose changing how people are enrolled in Medicare. There are two ways people obtain Medicare: one is Traditional Medicare, or Original Medicare, and the other is Medicare Advantage. Traditional Medicare includes Part A and Part B — inpatient hospital care and outpatient/medical coverage, respectively. Medicare Advantage, on the other hand, looks similar to regular health insurance, with health maintenance organizations, preferred provider organizations or private fee-for-service. The advantages are different between Traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage, but Medicare participants currently are split between the two systems, with 55% of them in Medicare Advantage as of April 2024, according to experts Paul Ginsburg and Steve Lieberman at the University of Southern California. Ginsburg and Lieberman say Medicare Advantage costs taxpayers and beneficiaries about $83 billion more because of more expensive Part B premiums — about 22% more than if the government was administering these programs — than Traditional Medicare costs.
Project 2025 says Medicare Advantage should be the "only default enrollment option" (Page 465). Creating this new rule without reforming Medicare Advantage, experts warn, could make Medicare unsustainable in the long run. Ginsburg and Lieberman say one way to improve Medicare Advantage would be to standardize the plans offered and expand their market from county-level to broader areas.
As for Social Security, Project 2025 does not specifically address the program. However, the Republican Study Committee proposed to increase the age of retirement — the age at which people can claim Social Security benefits — from 67 to 69, Roll Call quoted U.S. Rep. Ben Cline, a Republican from Virginia, as saying. Further, one of the authors of Project 2025 is Stephen Moore, an economist who once called for slashing Social Security. So, while the "Mandate for Leadership" doesn't evoke this plan, it is likely on the agenda for the new Republican administration.
In addition, Project 2025 calls explicitly for repealing Medicare's ability to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. Page 465 read:
Medicare Part D Reform. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) created a drug price negotiation program in Medicare that replaced the existing private-sector negotiations in Part D with government price controls for prescription drugs. These government price controls will limit access to medications and reduce patient access to new medication.
This "negotiation" program should be repealed, and reforms in Part D that will have meaningful impact for seniors should be pursued. Other reforms should include eliminating the coverage gap in Part D, reducing the government share in the catastrophic tier, and requiring manufacturers to bear a larger share. Until the IRA is repealed, an Administration that is required to implement it must do so in a way that is prudent with its authority, minimizing the harmful effects of the law's policies and avoiding even worse unintended consequences.
Medicare Part D includes a $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket spending for prescription drugs, due to take effect in 2025. Should Part D be repealed, the cap would no longer be law. The Center of American Progress estimated that such a decision would mean seniors would lose $7.4 billion in savings in 2025.
Trump said multiple times during his campaign that he would not cut Medicare or Social Security, though his administration's budgets showed otherwise during his first term in office, as we reported in September 2024.
Labor
- Let employees drastically cut overtime
- Eliminate union and worker protections
As Snopes reported in September 2024, Project 2025 would seek to reform the rules for overtime with a plan that would allow companies to pay less in overtime rates.
Further, it calls for loosening safety rules at work. For example, it would roll back rules that prohibit teenagers from working in dangerous jobs (Page 595). It also calls for the removal of what it calls "burdensome" safety regulations for smaller businesses (Page 594).
Project 2025 adds several proposals that would result in the weakening of union protections — for example, on Page 603:
Congress should amend the NLRA [National Labor Relations Act of 1935] to authorize collective bargaining to treat national employment laws and regulations as negotiable defaults. For example, this reform would allow a union to bless a relaxed overtime trigger (e.g., 45 hours a week, or 80 hours over two weeks) in exchange for firm employer commitments on predictable scheduling.
And on Page 606, it adds: "The federal government should not force a state to use nonunion labor or union labor for these positions."
Education
- Abolish the Department of Education
- Implement and expand book bans
- Reinstate crippling student debt payments
We reported in August 2024 that Project 2025 does indeed call for the abolition of the U.S. Department of Education.
While Project 2025 does not explicitly call for book bans, it deems "transgender ideology" to be pornography, hence not protected under free speech. It adds that anyone who helps spread such content should be jailed and registered as a sex offender. Page 5 reads:
Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.
Anti-book ban activists have taken this to mean that any book written by or about LGBTQ+ people must be banned, and its author criminalized.
Lastly, Project 2025 explicitly calls for the repayment of student loans. Page 322 reads:
Protecting the federal student loan portfolio from predatory politicians. The new Administration must end the practice of acting like the federal student loan portfolio is a campaign fund to curry political support and votes. The new Administration must end abuses in the loan forgiveness programs. Borrowers should be expected to repay their loans.
Taxes
- Cut taxes for the ultra-wealthy
- Increase taxes for middle-class families
Indeed, Project 2025 proposes the enactment of "a simple two-rate individual tax system of 15 percent and 30 percent that eliminates most deductions, credits and exclusions" (Page 696). Adding this flat rate to local and state taxes, which are more regressive than federal taxes, would increase the tax burden of poor and middle-class people in the U.S. It also aims to reduce the corporate tax rate from its current 21% to 18%, thereby diminishing the load for richer Americans. The plan would also make it more difficult to pass tax reform thereafter, requiring two-thirds of the House of Representatives to make it happen.
Will Trump Implement Any of These Items?
What remains unclear is whether or how much of this program the Trump administration will adopt as its own. Trump has repeatedly tried to distance himself from Project 2025, as has his running mate, Vice President-Elect JD Vance.
Instead, Trump touted Agenda47 as his official platform during the campaign. Still, many of the proposals of Agenda47 coincide with those of Project 2025, including those on tariffs, immigration, education and protections for LGBTQ+ people. Both The Associated Press and the The New York Times reported on these policy overlaps, which we were able to confirm.
Further, several of the authors of Project 2025 served in Trump's first administration, and some were expected to serve again, according to the same article by The New York Times.
Trump's transition team had yet to communicate any details on its policy priorities as of this writing. Snopes contacted the transition team for comment and will update this story if we receive a response.