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Sweeping Overhaul: Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 Aims to Reshape Federal Government
Project 2025 stands at the center of the most audacious effort to refashion the American federal government in a generation. Announced by the Heritage Foundation in April 2023, it’s described by its architects as a “Mandate for Leadership,” a nearly 1,000-page policy blueprint orchestrated for the next conservative administration. Its goal is to radically re-engineer almost every corner of the federal bureaucracy, starting on day one after inauguration.
The true scope of Project 2025 emerges in its detailed chapters—each targeting a federal agency, each brimming with concrete proposals and strict timelines. According to Heritage president Kevin Roberts, “We must tear apart the administrative state,” and his words echo through the policy pages. The plan’s core principle is to place the executive branch firmly under direct presidential control. This means eliminating the independence of agencies like the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Federal Communications Commission. Kiron Skinner, the main author of the State Department section, put it bluntly: “Most State Department employees are too left-wing. They should be replaced by loyal conservatives appointed to acting roles with no Senate confirmation required.”
Listeners should note the mechanism behind this overhaul: Schedule F. This little-known hiring classification, revived for this project, lets the president move career civil servants into politically appointed roles stripped of traditional protections. As the National Federation of Federal Employees explains, “Schedule F wipes out the guardrails against political overreach or abuse of power.” The vision is clear—on January 20, 2025, the new president would sign a prepared stack of executive orders, dismiss hundreds of agency leaders, and flood offices with handpicked loyalists.
Elon Musk’s stewardship of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has served as the shock troops for these changes, reports Government Executive. Entire agencies, like the Consumer Financial Protection Board and USAID, have already been eliminated. In tandem, tens of thousands of federal workers have been laid off, with over 280,000 jobs cut or slated for elimination across 27 agencies. This restructuring, according to statements from the American Federation of Government Employees, represents “an attack on the very foundation of public service.” Return-to-office mandates and the downsizing of federal office buildings, often with little coordination, have further upended daily life for civil servants.
President Trump’s executive order from February 2025 codified much of the Project’s ethos. The Department of Government Efficiency must reduce federal hiring to only essential positions, and for every four employees departing, only one replacement is allowed—excluding national security, law enforcement, and immigration. Agencies must draw up plans for large-scale reductions in force. Trump asserts this will shrink the government “for a new era of prosperity and innovation.”
But the ambition doesn’t stop at workforce reshuffling. Project 2025 targets environmental regulations, civil rights enforcement, and social policies. The Center for Progressive Reform warns that rollbacks across 20 agencies will have “devastating consequences for workers, the environment, public health, and the rights of millions.” Civil rights organizations like the Leadership Conference highlight proposals to gut the enforcement of key laws, eliminate disparate impact as a metric for discrimination, shut down diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, and retool the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to prioritize “religious exemptions” and shield employers from DEIA mandates. The stated goal is to erase what the blueprint calls “managerialist left-wing race and gender ideology.”
Supporters say these proposals will reclaim democratic accountability from an unelected bureaucracy and restore pr
Published on 2 weeks ago