Autocratic Coincidence: The Indistinguishable Differences Between Trump’s Agenda and Project 2025

“I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read this—on purpose,” the convicted felon and Republican presidential candidate said on the Sept. 10 debate stage.

However, from economics, immigration and education policy to civil rights and foreign affairs, there are common ideas and shared ideology between Project 2025 and Trump’s plan for the next term – from his official list of Agenda 47, the Republican platform that he personally approved of his other radical statements.

There are subtle differences: Project 2025, led by the Heritage Foundation and written by many conservatives who worked in or with the Trump administration, offers more detail about some of the most extreme plans than the former president, at least on paper. Here’s a look at how Trump’s 2024 campaign and Project 2025 agree and technically diverge on how to carry out the dismantling of America’s nearly 250 years of constitutional democracy:

KEY TAX PROPOSALS COULD BENEFIT THE RICH

TRUMP: His tax policies generally target corporations and wealthier Americans. This is mainly due to his promise to extend the overhaul in 2017, while reducing the corporate rate to 15% from the current 21%. It would also eliminate Inflation Reduction Act levies that fund energy measures aimed at combating climate change. Beyond those ideas, Trump has put more emphasis on his plans aimed at working- and middle-class Americans: exempting earned tips, Social Security payments and overtime wages from income taxes. His tipping proposal, however, could provide behind-the-scenes tax breaks for the highest earners by allowing them to reclassify part of their wages as tip income—a prospect that, in the worst case scenario, could lead to hedge fund managers or presenters lawyers will take advantage of this. provisions that Trump is pitching as help for restaurant servers, bartenders and other service industry workers.

PROJECT 2025: The document goes further than Trump, calling for two federal income tax rates — 15% and 30% — while eliminating most deductions and credits. It imposes a “nearly flat tax on wage income above the standard deduction” by adjusting what income is subject to payroll taxes that pay for Social Security and Medicare. In effect, a flat tax at the federal level would increase the overall share of taxes paid by poorer and middle-class Americans. That’s because many state and local tax codes, based on transaction taxes and lower income taxes, are more regressive than current federal tax rates. Prop 2025 also calls for a two-thirds vote in Congress to raise corporate or individual income taxes in the future.

BOTH WANT TO REINTRODUCE TRUMP’S EPO IMMIGRATION RESTRICTIONS

TRUMP: “Build a wall!” from 2016 was the creation of “the largest mass deportation program in history.” Trump has called for the National Guard and police to be deployed, although he has not said how he would ensure they only illegally target people in the US. He proposed “ideological screening” of potential applicants and the abolition of birthright citizenship (which would likely require constitutional changes). He also said he would reinstate first-term policies such as “Remain in Mexico,” limiting the number of migrants on public health grounds and severely limiting or banning entry from some Muslim-majority countries. In general, his approach will not only suppress illegal migration, but also limit immigration in general.

PROJECT 2025: There are many detailed proposals for various US immigration laws, executive rules and agreements with other countries – for example, to reduce the number of refugees, work visa recipients and asylum seekers. Perhaps Project 2025’s most instructive statement is its call to restore “all immigration-related policies that were enacted” during Trump’s 2017-2021 presidency.

BOTH WOULD INCREASE EXECUTIVE POWER AND THE POWER TO FIRE FEDERAL EMPLOYEES

TRUMP: He calls cutting regulation an economic panacea. He promises sharp reductions in utility bills for American households by eliminating barriers to fossil fuel extraction, including opening all federal lands to exploration. (U.S. energy production and exports are at record highs under President Joe Biden.) Trump has promised to increase the housing stock by cutting regulations, although most building regulations come from state and local governments.

Two broad proposals and ideas stand out: The first would make it easier to fire federal employees by classifying thousands more of them as outside the protections of civil service. This will almost certainly weaken the government’s power to enforce laws and regulations by reducing the number of employees involved in the work. Second is Trump’s assertion that the president has sole authority to control federal spending, despite Congress’ appropriations authority. Trump argues that lawmakers “set a ceiling” on spending, not a floor – meaning the president’s constitutional duty to “faithfully execute the laws” gives him the authority to decide whether to spend the money.

PROJECT 2025: The authors repeatedly call on the President, Cabinet and other political appointees to cut regulations, reclassify federal workers so they can be more easily fired, cut “unaccountable federal spending” and set the West Wing on course. “The administrative state is here to stay until Congress takes action to wrest its power from bureaucrats and the White House,” they write. “Meanwhile, there are many tools of the executive branch that a bold conservative president can use to handcuff the bureaucracy (and) force the administrative state into submission.”

BOTH WILL DISMISS DEI AND LGBTQ PROGRAMS

TRUMP: The former president wants to end government diversity programs by using federal funding as leverage, and he will target existing LGBTQ protections. On transgender rights, he promises to end “boys in girls’ sports,” a practice he insists, without evidence, is rampant. Trump will reject Biden’s extension of Title IX Civil Rights to transgender students and ask Congress to allow only two choices of sex at birth.

PROJECT 2025: The government must “reaffirm that children need and deserve both the love and care of their mother and the play and protection of their father.” This philosophy permeates Project 2025, which defines the ideal family and individual in narrow, traditionalist terms. The authors envision a consolidation of federal civil rights efforts within the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, with enforcement of the law accomplished only through litigation. It would effectively concentrate the choice of how and when to enforce civil rights law on the attorney general—and, by extension, the White House.

BOTH WAS TO CANCEL THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

TRUMP: The Ministry of Education will be liquidated. This doesn’t mean Trump wants Washington out of the classroom. Among other maneuvers, he would use federal appropriations as leverage to eliminate diversity programs at all levels of education and force K-12 schools to eliminate tenure-track positions and implement merit pay for teachers. It calls for money to be withdrawn from “any school or program that promotes critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content for our children.”

Trump is calling for university donations to be redirected to an online “American Academy” offering college degrees to all Americans without charging tuition. “It will be strictly apolitical, and no awakening or jihadism will be tolerated,” Trump said on November 1, 2023.

PROJECT 2025: Congress should “shut down” the Department of Education and “return control of education to the states,” Project 2025 argues, echoing Trump’s argument that the U.S. education infrastructure imposes progressive indoctrination. The authors propose, among other things, eliminating the Head Start program, turning the Title I program into block grants and eventually phasing out that federal funding, and using the tax code to incentivize home-based child care, something the vice presidential candidate has proposed for Republican J.D. Vance. defenders.

BOTH EXPLOSIVE CLIMATE POLICIES

TRUMP: Trump falsely claims climate change is a “hoax” as he disparages Biden’s spending on cleaner energy to reduce US dependence on fossil fuels. Trump will tie energy and transportation policies to fossil fuels: roads, bridges and internal combustion engine cars. Trump says he is not opposed to electric vehicles, but he is promising to end incentives that encourage the electric vehicle market. And it will lower fuel efficiency standards.

PROJECT 2025: The document criticizes the Biden administration’s “climate bigotry.” He proposes eliminating or limiting many environmental protection and regulation programs, including those that many Americans take for granted. Among them: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which will be eliminated as part of Project 2025, and the National Weather Service, which the document will direct exclusively to selling weather data to private forecasters. As a result, the National Hurricane Center will remain in place, although the NHC depends on the National Weather Service for forecasts. The plan wouldn’t repeal laws like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, but its regulatory and bureaucratic cuts would reduce their impact.

“PROJECT 2025” SUPPORTS UKRAINE’S DEFENSE, AND TRUMP IS SUPPORTING THE USA IN DOUBT

TRUMP: Its strategy is more diplomatically isolationist, militarily non-interventionist, and economically protectionist than the United States has been since World War II. But the details are more complex. Trump promises military expansion, promises significant Pentagon spending and proposes a missile shield, a Reagan-era idea. He insists he can end Russia’s war in Ukraine and the war between Israel and Hamas, although he has not explained how. He remains an open critic of NATO and senior US military leaders. “I don’t consider them leaders,” he says. And he repeatedly praises authoritarian politicians such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

PROJECT 2025: Echoing Trump’s spirit, the document calls for “tough love” in international relations, but with a difference from Trump. On military readiness, Project 2025 would reduce the number of generals but increase the number of enlisted men, although the authors do not call for reinstating the draft, as critics claim. Project 2025 is perhaps even more aggressive than Trump in its rhetoric toward China: “Economic engagement with China must be ended, not rethought,” it says in the preface.

As for NATO, the draft echoes Trump’s emphasis on getting other members to pay more for their own defense, but it does not carry the inherent skepticism of NATO alliances that Trump has predicted for years. And while Trump has steadfastly refused to criticize Putin for invading Ukraine, Project 2025 says, “Regardless of viewpoints, all sides agree that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is unjust and that the Ukrainian people have the right to defend their homeland.”