Project 2026? Group behind Trump’s return to the White House outlines next agenda

The right-wing think tank behind the 900-page blueprint for Donald Trump’s administration is looking ahead to 2026 with a theme inspired by the president’s own message: a “golden age” is coming.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and its core policy book Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise were drawn up by a constellation of Trump aides and allies who would go on to find jobs in the administration.

Project 2025’s plans for the Republican administration included a radical expansion of executive authority, drastic cuts in spending and social services, gutting the federal workforce, stripping LGBT+ rights and implementing a sweeping anti-immigrant agenda.

By the end of the year, with the plan’s co-authors installed in key roles across the federal government, more than half of the items inside the Heritage Foundation’s mammoth wishlist have been implemented.

The group’s 2026 agenda, published earlier this year as a plan for “Restoring America’s Promise,” pledges to “engage in Washington to dismantle the deep state and in the states to restore the family, rebuild American institutions, and restore opportunity for all” as the country heads into its 250th anniversary.

A new ad running on cable networks declares, “the golden age is a choice.”

“It’s a choice to prioritize families and empower local communities,” narrators say alongside a cinematic score and a montage of iconic American scenes — sunset from a mountain, blue-collar workers, an aircraft carrier, a baby, fireworks, and Charlie Kirk.

“A choice to find dignity in prosperous and honorable work,” they say. “A choice to prioritize our nation’s safety, protecting our homeland and standing strong against foreign threats. A choice to cherish the greatest gift we’ve been given — waking up every day an American citizen.”

A spokesperson for Heritage told The Independent that the organization’s mission to “build a better America” has not changed.

“We will always research, develop, and advocate for conservative policy solutions,” the spokesperson said. “But our strategy is shifting.”

The group is now building on “Four Cornerstones,” including “The American Family, The Dignity of Work and the Future of Free Enterprise, National Security, and American Heritage and Citizenship.”

The national ad campaign intends to “reset and reframe the conversation,” the spokesperson added.

Heritage did not respond to The Independent’s questions as to whether it intends to work with the Trump administration to implement those ideas.

“Heritage will continue to work with lawmakers and officials at every level of government, just as we have done for more than 50 years,” the spokesman added.

That “vision” includes nine priorities that echo right-wing campaigns that have dominated the Trump era, from boosting immigration enforcement to investing in Big Oil.

Chief among them is “countering the Chinese Communist Party,” which Heritage defines as “the most persistent and consequential foreign threat facing the American people today.”

Heritage is also taking aim at eliminating federal regulations that it believes are strangling business and the economy; ending “immigration chaos” by surging federal resources into the administration’s mass deportation campaign; ensuring “election integrity” by requiring proof of U.S. citizenship at the polls and expanding “education freedom” by getting rid of the Department of Education.

The group also wants to “restore digital sovereignty” by targeting Big Tech, put “family first” with an anti-abortion agenda, and “unleash American energy” by ditching regulatory frameworks intended to combat the climate crisis.

Plans to “root out the deep state” call for centralizing presidential control of the federal government, including “opposing any expansion of authority for independent agencies” that seek to hold it accountable.

Heritage has separately published an 800-page, clause-by-clause analysis of the Constitution, co-written by a fleet of conservative federal judges on the shortlist for the Supreme Court.

“The Heritage Guide to the Constitution” — with a foreword by conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and contributions from more than 30 similarly ideologically aligned judges — appears to be a judicial counterpart to the Project 2025 manifesto.

The guide also includes an 18-member “judicial advisory board,” none of whom were appointed by Democratic presidents.

All but three of them were appointed by Trump, and most of their names have been floated as possible Supreme Court nominees at one point.

Trump initially said he had “no idea” who was behind Project 2025 while Democratic campaigns were raising alarms during the 2024 election.

His presidential transition chair and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said he wouldn’t touch it, and Trump repeatedly tried to distance himself from the group during the campaign, claiming that he both knows “nothing” about Project 2025 and has “no idea who is behind it” while also saying he disagrees with some of its “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal” proposals.

Meanwhile, the chief political action committee supporting Trump was running online ads promoting Project 2025, explicitly calling it “Trump’s Project 2025.”

The authors of Project 2025 were quickly all over the administration.

Trump picked Russell Vought as the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, a key role that oversees spending across the administration. Vought is also among the architects of the 2025 plan and wrote the chapter on transforming the executive branch.

Months later, after decimating the federal government and waging legal battles to keep the cuts permanent, Trump bragged that he was meeting with Vought and explicitly mentioned his Project 2025 connection.

“I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent,” Trump posted on Truth Social in October. “I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity. They are not stupid people, so maybe this is their way of wanting to, quietly and quickly, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Brendan Carr, Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, authored Project 2025’s chapter on the agency, which regulates television, radio, the internet, and communications.

Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan — a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — also is listed among the contributors to Project 2025, and was a visiting fellow with the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, where he drafted a series of articles about immigration policy for the group.

John Ratcliffe, Trump’s nominee for CIA director, was among the authors of Project 2025’s chapter on U.S. intelligence.

Stephen Miller returned to the Trump White House as a deputy chief of staff for policy, overseeing a bulk of Trump’s anti-immigration agenda. His organization, America First Lega,l was initially listed among the contributors to Project 2025, but the group’s name was removed from its website after Trump and his allies began to criticize the proposal.

In August, Trump nominated Heritage Foundation economist EJ Antoni to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics after firing commissioner Erika McEntarfer following a soft jobs report and the president’s bogus claims that employment statistics were cooked up to politically hurt Republicans. After widespread criticism and what one group called “like hiring a flat-earther to run NASA,” Antoni withdrew from consideration.

But by the end of the year, reports surfaced that the Heritage Foundation was facing “open rebellion” as president Kevin Roberts struggled to contain the growing uproar he incited by defending right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson in the wake of his interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes.

That fallout appeared to reflect a broader schism within the American conservative movement, one that’s bracing for life after Trump’s presidency and drafting a plan to stay alive without him.