As delegates arrived at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee earlier this week to officially nominate former President Donald Trump as their 2024 running mate, a right-wing policy think tank held an all-day event nearby. The Heritage Foundation, a key sponsor of the convention and a group that has influenced Republican presidential policy since the 1980s, gathered his supporters to present Project 2025A 900-plus page policy blueprint that seeks to fundamentally restructure the federal government.
Dozens of conservative groups contributed to Project 2025, which recommends changes that would touch every aspect of American life and transform federal agencies — from the Department of Defense to the Department of the Interior to the Federal Reserve. Although it largely has attracted attention for its proposed suppression of human rights and individual libertiesthe blueprint would also undermine the nation’s extensive network of environmental and climate policies and change the future of American fossil fuel production, climate action and environmental justice.
Under President Joe Biden’s leadership, the majority of the federal government’s vast system of departments, agencies and commissions let undertake the arduous task of incorporating climate change in their operations and procedures. Two summers ago, Biden also had the Inflation Reduction Actthe largest climate spending bill in US history with the potential to help cut greenhouse gas emissions 42 percent below 2005 levels.
Project 2025 seeks to undo much of that progress by slashing funding for government programs across the board, weakening federal oversight and policymaking capabilities, rolling back legislation passed during Biden’s first term, and eliminating career staff. The policy changes it proposes — which include executive orders that Trump could single-handedly implement, regulatory changes by federal agencies and legislation that would require congressional approval — would make it extremely difficult for the United States to meet its climate goals. under the Paris Agreement of 2015.
“It’s very bad,” said David Willett, senior vice president of communications for the environmental advocacy group the League of Environmental Voters. “This is a real plan, by people who were in government, for how to systematically take over, take away rights and liberties and dismantle government in the service of private industry.”
Trump did trying to distance himself from the blueprint. “Some of the things they say are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” he wrote in a social media post last week.
At least though 140 people who worked in the Trump administration contributed to Project 2025, and policy experts and environmentalists fear that Project 2025 will play an influential role in shaping GOP policy if Trump is re-elected in November. Some of the blueprint’s recommendations are echo in the Republican National Convention’s official party platformand Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts says he is “good friends” with Trump’s new running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio. Previous Heritage Foundation roadmaps have successfully dictated presidential agendas; 64 percent of the policy recommendations the foundation issued in 2016 were implemented or considered under Trump one year into his term. The Heritage Foundation declined to comment for this story.
Broadly speaking, Project 2025 proposals aimed to downsize the federal government and empower states. The document calls for “unlocking all of America’s energy resources” by eliminating federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands, limiting federal investments in renewable energy technologies, and easing environmental permitting restrictions and procedures for new fossil fuel projects such as power plants. “What’s designed here is a project that secures a fossil fuel agenda, both literally and figuratively,” said Craig Segall, the vice president of the climate-oriented political advocacy group Evergreen Action.
Within the Department of Energy, offices dedicated to clean energy research and implementation will be eliminated, and energy efficiency guidelines and requirements for home appliances will be scrapped. The environmental oversight capabilities of the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency would be significantly curtailed or eliminated altogether, preventing these agencies from detecting methane emissions, managing environmental pollutants and chemicals, and conducting climate change research.
In addition to these major overhauls, Project 2025 advocates getting rid of smaller and lesser-known federal programs and statutes that protect public health and environmental justice. It recommends eliminating the Endangerment Finding — the legal mechanism that requires the EPA to curb emissions and air pollution from vehicles and power plants, among other things, under the Clean Air Act. It also recommends scuttling government efforts to determine the social cost of carbon, or the damage caused by each additional ton of carbon emitted. And it seeks to prevent agencies from assessing the “side benefits” or the positive health impact of their policies, such as better air quality.
“When you think about who’s going to be hit the hardest by pollution, whether it’s conventional air water and soil pollution or climate change, it’s very often low-income communities and communities of color,” says Rachel Cleetus, the policy director of the climate- and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit science advocacy organization. “The undermining of these kinds of protections is going to have a disproportionate impact on these very communities.”
Other proposals would wreak havoc on the country’s ability to prepare for and respond to climate disasters. Project 2025 proposes eliminating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service housed within it and replacing those organizations with private companies. The blueprint appears to leave the National Hurricane Center intact, saying the data it collects must be “presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support either side in the climate debate.” But the National Hurricane Center gets much of its data from the National Weather Service, as do most other private weather service companies, and eliminating public weather data could Destroying Americans’ access to accurate weather forecasts. “It’s ridiculous,” said Rob Moore, a policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Action Fund. “There is no problem being addressed with this solution, it is a solution in search of some problem.”
The document also advocates moving the Federal Emergency Management Administration, or FEMA, which sets up the federal disaster response, out from under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security, where it has been housed for more than 20 years, and into the Department of the Interior . or the Department of Transport. “All of the agencies within the Department of the Interior are federal land management agencies that own a lot of land and manage those resources on behalf of the federal government,” Moore said. “Why would you put FEMA there? I can’t even fathom why this is a starting point.”
The blueprint recommends eliminating the National Flood Insurance Program and shifting flood insurance to private insurers. That idea flies in the face of the fact that the federal program was initially established because private insurers found that it economically unfeasible to insure the country’s flood-prone homes – long before climate change started wreaking havoc on the insurance market.
Despite the alarming implications of most of Project 2025’s climate-related proposals, it also recommends a small number of policies that climate experts say are worth considering. Its authors call for the costs of natural disasters to be shifted from the federal government to states. That’s not a bad conversation to have, Moore pointed out. “I think there are people within FEMA who feel the same way,” he said. The federal government currently shoulder at least 75 percent of the cost of national disaster recovery, paving the way for development and rebuilding in risky areas. “You discourage states and local governments from making wise decisions about where and home to build because they know the federal government is going to pick up the tab for whatever mistake they make,” Moore said.
Quillan Robinson, a senior adviser at ConservAmerica who has worked with Washington DC Republicans on setting emissions policies, was encouraged by the authors’ call to end what they called “unfair bias against the nuclear industry.” Nuclear power is a reliable source of carbon-free energy, but it has been plagued by safety and public health concerns, as well as strong opposition from some environmental activists. “We know this is an important technology for decarbonisation,” Robinson said, noting that there is growing bipartisan interest in the energy source among lawmakers in Congress.
An analysis conducted by the UK-based Carbon Brief found that a Trump presidency would lead to 400 billion metric tons of additional emissions in the US by 2030 – the emissions of the European Union and Japan combined.
Above all, Segall, of Evergreen Action, is concerned about the effects Project 2025 will have on the workforce that makes up the federal government. Much of the way the administrative state works is secured in the minds of career professionals who pass their knowledge on to the next cadre of federal workers. When this institutional knowledge is curbed, as it was through budget cuts and hostile management during Trump’s first term, the government loses vital information that helps it operate. The staff is “scattering,” he said, disrupting bottom-line operations and bringing the government to a standstill.
Although Project 2025’s proposals are radical, Segall said their effects on government officials will reflect a pattern that has been playing out for decades. “This is a common theme in Republican administrations dating back to Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan,” he said. “What you do is break the government, make it very difficult for the government to function, and then you announce out loud that the government can’t do anything.”