Project 2025, Trump, and the Remaking of the World

Donald Trump recently celebrated the six-month mark of his second term in office as the president of the United States. He has stated that “it’s being hailed as one of the most consequential periods of any President.”ⁱ Since the inauguration in January, the Trump administration has upended trade relations with U.S. allies and shaken markets with the approach to tariffs, ramped up a far more aggressive immigration enforcement, enacted sweeping tax cuts, and implemented dramatic changes to federal government departments, as well as to those leading government agencies. While the administration has successfully passed a handful of laws, most recently the “Big Beautiful Bill”, much of the president’s agenda has been implemented by way of executive orders, and without congressional oversight has made Congress almost irrelevant to the agenda. This seems to be the very definition of consequential.

Earlier this year, the Sign of the Times reviewed the initial flurry of 75 executive orders to identify the president’s emerging priorities, finding that they not only signalled a sharp shift in US policy, but also in the means by which the administration is seeking to accomplish them.ⁱⁱ With over 170 orders now issued, it is worth considering more closely the potential origins of these priorities, given executive orders play a central role in advancing a President’s agenda. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 policy agenda is widely regarded as a major influence on the current administration, shaped by both shared ideology and senior personnel ties.ⁱⁱⁱ

This month’s Sign of the Times analyses Trump’s executive orders against Project 2025’s policy blueprint, the “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise”, highlighting key overlaps between specific policy recommendations and goals, gaps, and signals for what may come next.

Context: 180 Days of Rule by Executive Order

During the first six months of his presidency, Donald Trump has issued a record of over 170 executive orders. This total exceeds the total number orders issued by Joe Biden and Barack Obama during any of their full four-year terms in office, and is only three executive orders shy of exceeding the total number issued by George W Bush during his first term 2001-2004. Having signed a record 20 executive orders on the Inauguration Day, including rescinding a record 78 executive orders approved by his predecessor President Joe Biden, the president has continued to rely on executive decision making as his primary tool of wielding power. Previous analysis by the Sign of the Times^iv contains relevant background to US presidential executive orders, their history, uses and limitations.

As a corollary, the second Trump administration has also signed a record low of number of bills into law during the same period, with only five passed to date, compared to the 21 bills signed by Joe Biden by July 31st, or the 42 bills signed by Trump during his first administration. These statistics continue to point to an intentional pivot away from allowing Congress to play its traditional role in meeting policy goals, with Trump using the presidency as a maximalist tool, asserting dominance over policy without waiting for congressional consensus. This suggests that checks and balances have not worked real time; they may catch up and make an impact later, but not in a timely fashion.

Further to the initial executive orders, the administration’s focus continues to be a concentrated on three topics, with most executive orders focusing on government reorganization, civics and civil society, and economic, trade and investment policy. While these three categories represented c.60% of first 70 orders issued, the relative importance of government reorganization and economics and trade related orders in particular has continued to increase, and now represent over 70% of the total orders issued, with the substance pointing to a presidency increasingly focused on the concentration of executive power and economic power projection.

Project 2025 and its Influence on the Trump Administration

Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project, is a sweeping conservative policy initiative, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank, designed in 2023 as a blueprint for a future Republican presidency. Project 2025 builds on a long tradition of conservative planning, notably Ronald Reagan’s 1981 Mandate for Leadership. It involves contributions from over 50 right-leaning authors, think tanks and advocacy groups, and its flagship product is a nearly 1,000-page “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise”, a policy manual aimed at reshaping every corner of the federal government and implementing a conservative social agenda in America. Although it does not explicitly cite Donald Trump, being aimed at “the next conservative president,” the document was published during the election in 2024 and is widely understood both by supporters and critics as being closely aligned with Trump’s political agenda.

At its core, Project 2025 seeks to centralize executive power, dismantle what it calls the "administrative state," and embed long-term conservative priorities across federal agencies. Its objectives include mass civil service reform (reviving and expanding Trump’s “Schedule F” plan from 2020 to remove job protections from federal workers), aggressive immigration enforcement, the rollback of climate and DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) policies, and the assertion of presidential authority over independent agencies. It also advocates for shifting authority away from federal institutions and toward states, religious groups, and private actors. Framed as a response to what its authors view as “progressive” (meaning liberal politics) overreach, Project 2025 is not just a policy vision, it is a plan to remake the mission, structure and staffing of the U.S. federal government through an ideological perspective.

Rooted in themes of religious liberty, parental rights, and the rejection of “woke” ideology, the plan also calls for a sweeping reversal of recent advancements in civil rights, gender equality, and diversity efforts, as well as a far-reaching approach to abortion that dramatically restricts women’s reproductive rights. Political analysts have already covered the extensive ideological overlaps between Project 2025 and the president’s campaign promises or his first 100 days in action.^v Others have pointed to the extensive personnel overlap between Project 2025 authors and senior White House officials.^vi However, with the Mandate for Leadership containing by some estimates more than 700 specific policy proposals,^vii it is worth explicitly mapping the president’s executive orders to Project 2025 to determine exactly how much influence, and in what areas, the blueprint has had not just on the president’s agenda and how much it has translated into execution.

Several key observations arise from the overall level of overlap, the areas of occurs and the timing of executive order issuance, as follows:

Observation 1: Project 2025 is a key source of specific policy guidance. Overall, 62 executive orders (42% of the total),¹ appear be direct matches with specific policy recommendations in the Mandate for Leadership, with a further 21% closely aligned with the goals of the policy brief, pointing to close ideological alignment overall between the White House and Project 2025.

Some of this alignment would likely occur with any Republican administration, given that all modern conservative US governments have shared priorities like military and national defence, law and order, tax cuts and supply-side economics, and pro-business deregulation, themes that are reflected in Project 2025. However, the fact that two thirds of the executive orders aligned with the Mandate for Leadership are directly linked to policy recommendations highlights a deeper and more intentional connection between the Trump Administration and the authors of Project 2025.

Observation 2: Project 2025 was prioritised for early execution. The White House appears to have prioritized Project 2025 early in the president’s second term, with 29 of the first 46 executive orders (equal to 63%) aligning with specific policy recommendations. Since then, this percentage has halved, with approximately one third of subsequent executive orders matching Project 2025 policies. The president’s team likely relied heavily on Project 2025 during the presidential transition, using it as a source of ready-made policies for the initial wave of executive orders that set the term’s direction. . With 700 policies to choose from, it seems the most important were selected first. While the initial orders were strategic, many later ones, such as revoking Syria sanctions (EO 14312) or extending the TikTok enforcement delay (EO 14310), were tactical responses and did not draw from Project 2025. This perhaps suggests the administration has already implemented the project's highest-priority items, and if so, its influence on future orders may be more limited.

Observation 3: Project 2025 is impacting all policy priorities. Project 2025 policy recommendations are appearing in executive orders across a wide range of topics. The highest absolute number cover Civics and Civil Society (19 orders) and Government Reorganization (15), which aligns with Project 2025’s core goal of centralizing executive power and dismantling the “administrative state,” while promoting a traditionalist, conservative vision in government. More surprising is the relative impact of Project 2025 in foreign policy, energy and environmental policy, and immigration and national security. Though these areas have fewer executive orders overall, about half align of these with specific Project 2025 recommendations, suggesting either strong ideological alignment or significant influence from the project's authors on White House decision-makers.

Observation 4: Some parts of Project 2025 are more influential than others. Of the 62 executive orders linked to Project 2025, more than half are concentrated in just five chapters of the document, namely, Energy (9 policies), Education (8), Homeland Security (6), and State and Justice (5 each). This concentration suggests a particularly strong ideological alignment in these areas and/or direct influence by the authors of these chapters. Notably, four of these five chapters were authored by former Trump administration officials, while the Education chapter was written by an individual now serving as a senior official in the Department of Education.

Project 2025 in total spans 30 chapters across topics such as administration, defence, the general welfare, the economy, and regulatory agencies. Nine of these cover several federal agencies, the Departments of Commerce, Housing and the Interior, and the Export-Import Bank, among others have not contributed to policies thus far, and a further eight chapters covering the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, transportation, veteran affairs, among others have resulted in one executive order each. This could be indicative of a difference in prioritization or substance between Project 2025 and the White House.

As the Sign of the Time’s earlier analysis had noted, the president’s coordinated execution of executive orders indicates a disciplined, premeditated policy strategy, very much unlike his first term.^viii The systemic alignment of these orders with Project 2025 further demonstrates that Trump’s executive actions are not reactive bursts but reflect a larger coordinated effort with the conservative movement’s intellectual and institutional apparatus. While the president’s own mercurial nature will always ensure an element of uncertainty to any potential future actions, Project 2025 provides the ideological underpinnings determining the general direction of travel for the Trump administration. The implications of this ideology for America and the world are transformative.

The Remaking of the World

While Project 2025 has a primary focus on reshaping America, and how its government works, its proposed policies and goals have wide-ranging global implications, its secondary focus is on America’s relationship with the world, which will be profoundly affected too. As the leading actor in the liberal international order, the United States has exerted global influence through its economic weight, security alliances, multilateral leadership, regulatory standards, and soft power. A systematic reorientation of these levers, driven by ideological realignment, institutional overhaul and overt use of coercive power, would ripple outward, reshaping how nations engage with America and each other, it would reset global norms, determine the response to crises, and alter how nations position themselves geopolitically and domestically. It also provides a blueprint or a toolkit for would-be rivals of liberals in countries across the world. In this way, the reordering of America initiates a parallel remaking of the world. Resisting this is a difficult task indeed. Therefore, the current implementation of the ideology of Project 2025, through executive orders and other means, would likely drive fundamental changes in the world.

I. Erosion of Democratic Institutions and Rule of Law

1. Centralisation of Presidential Power: Global Institutional Democracy Decreases. The concentration of power in the executive branch through dismantling institutions, particularly through the manner and scale of mass firings of civil servants, politicization of agencies, and dismantling of oversight erodes America’s system of checks and balances. This in turn discredits U.S. constitutional governance as a global model and has the potential to embolden authoritarian leaders to dismiss democratic norms in their own countries.
2. Curtailment of Civil Rights: Personal and Civil Society Freedom Reduced. Project 2025 promotes defunding and tightening control over civil society groups, especially those advocating for rights, the environment, or development. While this undermines democratic accountability at home, it also does so globally by legitimising repression of NGOs and dissent, setting the tone for future crackdowns in countries that have been less extreme.
3. Politicization of the Military: Destabilizing Global Security Norms. Ideological purges within military leadership and increased presidential control, which has been a feature of Project 2025, risks normalizing the politicization of armed forces at home. If copied internationally, this could undermine norms of civilian control and embolden military influence in governance, raising the risk of coups or civilian repression, particularly in fragile democracies.

II. Human Rights and Social Regressions

4. Minority Exclusion: Global Human Rights Undermined. Project 2025’s calls to restore “Judeo-Christian values”, which has been accompanied by dismantling of DEI initiatives and rolling back civil rights protections for minorities, revoking birthright citizenship and mass deportations, alongside providing refugee status to white South Africans, are seen as indicative of a shift towards white nationalism^ix,^x, rather than just curtailing perceived liberal overreach^xi. While globally, this weakens the U.S. stance on equality and fairness, it also emboldens regimes that justify discrimination or persecution, as seen in anti-LGBTQ crackdowns in parts of Africa or Eastern Europe.
5. Weaponization of Religion: Intensified Global Religious Intolerance. Project 2025 blurs the line between church and state by integrating conservative Christian beliefs into federal policy and governance. This risks legitimizing religious nationalism abroad, empowering governments in countries such as Iran, Poland and India to marginalize minority faiths in the pursuit of cultural revival or “moral restoration”, taking any self-imposed or peer pressure to tread carefully and pay attention to more extreme parts of their societies.

III. Global Order, Alliances, and Geopolitics

6. Abandonment of Soft Power: Militarization of U.S. Foreign Policy. Project 2025 advocates weaker diplomatic institutions, politicized foreign aid, and replacing engagement with coercive tools such as sanctions and tariffs. As soft power erodes, America’s global influence declines, driving instability, spurring arms races, and regional fragmentation as countries hedge against unpredictable U.S. behaviour and forge new alliances.
7. Unilateralism and Isolationism: A Fragmented World Order. The rejection of multilateral cooperation and international law are key pillars of Project 2025, and are not inclined to be concerned about power vacuums for rivals such as China and Russia to exploit. With weakened alliances and collapsing global norms, the world is set for devolving into spheres of influence, webs of alliances, deals of convenience and a rule of might where authoritarianism thrives, and small states are left vulnerable to coercion or abandonment.
8. Economic Transactionalism: Breakdown of the Global Economic Order. By prioritizing trade protectionism and bilateral deal designed to extract maximum value from counterparties Project 2025 purposely seeks to undermine the rules-based economic system. The resulting global uncertainty, disrupted supply chains, and diminished collective problem-solving capacity, is by design, in the belief that it provides America with autonomy and leverage. However, as a result some allies may shift toward EU or China-led frameworks, while developing economies can expect to face heightened volatility and weakened investment flows.

IV. Climate, Knowledge, and Global Development

9. Climate Action Reversals: Collapse of Paris Agreement and Climate Cooperation. Project 2025 seeks to withdraw from climate commitments, dismantle regulations, and expand fossil fuel production. The aim is to withdraw from U.S. climate leadership and either trigger the failure of the Paris Agreement or to encumber others with the cost of its implementation. Major emitters may therefore abandon targets, and developing nations may lose critical financing, accelerating the climate crisis globally.
10. Rejection of Scientific Institutions: Spread of Anti-Knowledge Governance. Dismantling regulatory agencies and sidelining expertise is a mode of operation from Project 2025 and is expected to erode evidence-based policymaking that was believed to be biased towards liberal views. However, this has the effect of more generally promoting anti-science populism worldwide, harming global coordination on threats such as pandemics, AI, biotechnology, and environmental protection. It subjugates facts to ideology and weakens public trust in scientific institutions globally.

Project 2025 is based on a radically different world view to that which preceded it and would remake America and the world in fundamental ways. The executive orders and other tools used to implement its policies define a new modus operandi for the most powerful country in the world. Given America’s superpower status and leadership position in the realm of ideas, governance, economic, military and political affairs, Project 2025 is not just a project about America, and its implications are not contained to American boundaries. Based on the analysis, the world can also be transformed through Project 2025. This is particularly so since, Project 2025, Trump and his leadership team sees most of the democratic world, particularly Europe, as very much akin to the liberals he sees as his enemies at home ^xii. As the U.S. abandons its traditional leadership role, other countries face a choice: retreat into their own national and/or nationalist agendas, or band together to defend the international system, which involves learning to protect their own countries, protect each other rather than be happy to have got away lightly^xiii,^xiv,^xv, and step forward to reinforce the principles of democracy, cooperation, and multilateralism. The remaking of America is underway, but how the world responds to it will determine whether it remakes the rest of the world, and may or may not have an influence on America. The possibilities are far-reaching for power projection by its allies and rivals and augurs a profound change in the power structure of the world, how the world operates and the outcomes for both rich and poor nations. What Project 2025’s implementation makes clear is that America’s agenda on the domestic front involves a fundamental ideological battle and on the international front involves, at a minimum, extracting value from vulnerable others. For some of the ideologues, it involves spreading their ideology the world over.

Conclusion

The world shaped by the current set of policies drawn from Project 2025 as described here reflects a scenario in which the current administration is able to pursue its ideological agenda without significant resistance. However, the implementation of any ideology is shaped by numerous forces, resistance at home and abroad, as well as the beliefs, instincts, and leadership style of the president. While much of Donald Trump’s policy agenda aligns closely with Project 2025’s specific recommendations - and even more so with its overarching goals - Trump does not appear to be a doctrinaire ideologue, but rather a transactional, instinct-driven political actor, often influenced more by loyalty, fawning, media dynamics, and short-term political or financial advantage than by consistent philosophical principles. His administration has drawn on Project 2025 to advance the core pillars of a radical agenda, while bypassing recommendations that do not suit their needs and incorporating alternative policies tailored to Trump’s base or evolving political conditions. Nevertheless, the ideological imprint of Project 2025 has been significant and far-reaching.

Executive actions, like the surge in arrests and deportations being made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the regressive tax cuts in the Big Beautiful Bill (and presumably the cuts to Medicaid that are funding them), and the cuts to the federal government will likely have been met with widespread approval by idealogues and his base. Others, such as Trump’s ongoing tariff ping-pong or his lack of enthusiasm to date in more fully restricting reproductive rights for women will likely be viewed with some idealogues and the base with apprehension. Some idealogues will see the cost – the weakest US dollar since 1973, rising inflation, the America’s volatile stock market which benefits some and hurts many others, and the slowing growth prospects of the American economy - as one worth paying for the change agenda, while others may be starting to be concerned. However, polls suggest the base has remained loyal^xvi.

Despite these challenges it is of course hard to imagine any of the idealogues or the base, jumping ship. Having even half of your wish list fulfilled by the president will surely count as a win for Project 2025 and its supporters. And with more than 50 high level officials in the Trump Administration, including 70% of the cabinet, having links to conservative organizations backing Project 2025, there is always the potential for exerting greater influence over the president and his policy making in the future.

While one should not assume resistance will fail or that such a risky approach will run out of steam and ultimately fail, for now, it has the initiative. Even if Project 2025 is not being implemented in its entirety, its influence is already reshaping America and signalling significant global ramifications. The gradual incorporation of its more extreme provisions, coupled with the president’s predisposition toward authoritarian methods, threatens to normalize democratic backsliding, the erosion of civil liberties, and the weakening of institutional checks and balances both domestically and internationally.

Nevertheless, while Project 2025 outlines an ambitious and ideologically radical framework for America's future, it is still work in process. As America retreats from its traditional leadership role, there remains an opportunity for other international and multilateral actors to reinforce democratic norms, safeguard pluralism, and reinvigorate or reinvent the world order to safeguard stability and prosperity. If that is their will, the lesson is that the arc of history does not bend on its own, it must be deliberately shaped through sustained commitment to collective choices and actions. Today, there is no countervailing ideology or leadership with power and resources doing so.

The Leader: Endnotes

1. Scully. R. (2025) Trump touts 6-month mark: US is now ‘hottest’ and ‘most respected country anywhere’, The Hill, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5410560-trump-celebrates-six-month-term-anniversary/

2. Greater Pacific Capital. (2025, March). The President’s executive orders: Reshaping America and its place in the world. Greater Pacific Capital. https://www.greaterpacificcapital.com/thought-leadership/the-presidents-executive-orders-reshaping-america-and-its-place-in-the-world

3. The Heritage Foundation. (2023). Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (Project 2025) [PDF]. The Heritage Foundation.

4. Greater Pacific Capital. (2025, February). The President’s executive orders: Reshaping America and its place in the world. Greater Pacific Capital. Retrieved from https://www.greaterpacificcapital.com/thought-leadership/the-presidents-executive-orders-reshaping-america-and-its-place-in-the-world

5. Quinn, M. (2025, April 29). How Trump’s policies and Project 2025 proposals match up after first 100 days. CBS News. Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-project-2025-first-100-days/ Time Magazine. (2025, January 24). Trump’s early actions mirror Project 2025, the blueprint he once dismissed. Time. Retrieved from https://time.com/7209901/donald-trump-executive-actions-project-2025/ Contorno, S., & Tolan, C. (2025, January 31). Trump said he hadn’t read Project 2025 – but most of his early executive orders overlap with its proposals. CNN Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/31/politics/trump-policy-project-2025-executive-orders-invs

6. NBC News. (2025, March 12). The key Project 2025 authors now staffing the Trump administration. NBC News https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/key-project-2025-authors-now-staffing-trump-administration-rcna195107

7. Quinn, M. (2024, August 3). Hundreds of proposals in Project 2025 match Trump’s policies. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/project-2025-proposals-trump-policies/

8. C SPAN. (2021, June 30). C SPAN releases fourth Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership. C SPAN. https://www.c span.org/presidentsurvey2021/

9. National Urban League. (2025). State of Black America 2025 [Pre launch webpage]. National Urban League. https://stateofblackamerica.org/prelaunch

10. Casey, S. (2025, June 27). Making America White Again (Global Currents) Contending Modernities. Retrieved July 26, 2025, from University of Notre Dame, Keough School of Global Affairs website: https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/global-currents/making-america-white-again/

11. The White House. (2025, May). Cuts to Woke Programs [Fact sheet]. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Cuts-to-Woke-Programs-Fact-Sheet.pdf

12. Belin, C. (2025, May 7). MAGA goes global: Trump’s plan for Europe (Policy Brief). European Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved July 26, 2025, from https://ecfr.eu/publication/maga-goes-global-trumps-plan-for-europe/#think-big-act-big

13. Cullen, A., & El Chmouri, O. (2025, July 10). Trump weaponizes trade policy with 50% tariff on Brazil. Bloomberg. Retrieved July 26, 2025, from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-07-10/trump-weaponizes-trade-policy-with-50-tariff-on-brazil

14. Financial Times. (2025, July 16). Donald Trump reaps $50 bn tariff haul as world ‘chickens out’. Financial Times. Retrieved July 26, 2025, from https://www.ft.com/content/82e32f7c-47e2-4e96-bb53-a58377e18aa9

15. Sky News. (n.d.). "I like your PM": Trump praises Starmer as he touches down in Scotland. Sky News. Retrieved July 26, 2025, from https://news.sky.com/story/trump-latest-trump-to-land-in-scotland-hours-after-saying-macrons-words-on-palestine-dont-matter-13398295

16. Young, J. T. (2025, July 25). Six months in, Trump’s numbers are stronger than in his first term. The Hill. https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/5418066-trump-republicans-improving-base/ RealClearPolling. (n.d.). 2026 Generic Congressional Vote. In RealClearPolling State of the Union Polls. Retrieved July 25, 2025, from https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/state-of-the-union/generic-congressional-vote