Today, reporting from the Daily Kos highlights analysis done by American Bridge 21st Century, the largest Democratic opposition research organization in the nation, shows that during his first term in office, Donald Trump embraced and implemented 64% of the Heritage Foundation’s policy recommendations.
The analysis comes as Donald Trump continues to lie that he knows nothing about Project 2025 or its authors, despite reporting that at least 140 of his former employees have worked on the policy project intended to be a guidepost for the next Trump administration. Earlier this summer, footage released by CNN showed Project 2025 policy director, Russell Vought, confirming that Trump was “very supportive of what we do.”
“Donald Trump cannot be allowed to run from the Heritage Foundation or Project 2025 when he’s already implemented nearly two-thirds of their policy recommendations during his first term in office. It’s clear that the Heritage Foundation is the policy-making arm of Trump’s MAGA cult,” said American Bridge 21st Century spokesperson, Brandon Weathersby. “Sure, we know that Donald Trump is the oldest Republican nominee for president in history, but we also know that Trump is too lazy, too self-centered, and too inexperienced to create detailed policy on his own. Just like in his first term, the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 have done the heavy lifting for him and created an extreme agenda to restrict the rights of millions of people, seek revenge against his political enemies, and end American democracy as we know it. Trump, the Heritage Foundation, and the Project 2025 playbook cannot be allowed back in the White House for a second term.”
Learn more about Donald Trump executing two-thirds of the Heritage Foundation agenda during his first term in office:
- Analysis by the American Bridge 21st Century super PAC found 87 policies adopted by Trump at the suggestion of The Heritage Foundation. In 2018, the conservative think tank announced that Trump had already embraced and implemented 64% of its suggestions.
- “President Trump is a conservative president. He’s adopted many of these recommendations and pushed them forward and accomplished many of them,” Heritage Foundation director Thomas Binion told Fox Business in 2018. “Yes, they’re conservative and yes, they’re good for the country,” he added.
- Trump cut child nutrition programs. In the group’s 2018 “Blueprint for Balance,” The Heritage Foundation encouraged Trump to “inhibit funding for national school meal standards and the community eligibility provision.” The Trump administration’s 2019 budget plan called for cutting federal child nutrition programs by $1.7 billion over 10 years.
- Trump banned transgender persons from the military. The Heritage Foundation’s “Blueprint for a New Administration: Priorities for the President” said the military should “make armed forces personnel policy on the basis of military readiness, not a social agenda.” The document said “the President should reverse the transgender policy decision announced June 30, 2016, and restore the prior policy, which allowed persons with gender dysphoria to serve.” In April 2019, President Trump banned transgender personnel from serving in the military, causing much confusion and chaos.
- Trump eliminated grants to prevent violence against women. In its 2017 Blueprint, The Heritage Foundation urged the president to cut funding for a federal program that helped 7 million women per year escape domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. From 2016 to 2017, Trump’s budget proposals included reducing such grants by $2 million.
- This is in line with Project 2025’s new goals, including a disbandment of the Gender Policy Council created by President Joe Biden. It suggests eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the federal government and strives to remove these terms from every federal rule and regulation: sexual orientation and gender identity, DEI, gender, gender identity, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, and reproductive rights.
- Trump slashed the Department of Justice’s civil rights divisions. At the urging of The Heritage Foundation, Trump reduced funding for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, and the Department Of Education Office For Civil Rights. Trump’s 2017 budget was poised to eliminate 10% of employees from critical civil rights offices across the federal government.
- This is in line with the Project 2025 blueprint, which proposes moving Department of Justice investigations from its civil rights division to the criminal division.
- Trump revoked an Obama-era order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and prohibited any agency from regulating emissions. The Heritage Foundation’s 2017 blueprint recommended that “Congress should prohibit any agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions. This proposal has no estimated savings in FY 2018.” As soon as Trump was sworn in as president in 2017, his administration removed the page on climate change from the White House website and published a new page suggesting “An America First Energy Plan” that will “refocus the EPA on its essential mission of protecting our air and water,” suggesting the abandonment of regulating greenhouse gasses.
- Project 2025 proposes eliminating nearly all federal regulations for carbon emissions. Experts say this would wreak havoc on an already fragile climate at the tipping point.
- Trump weakened several efficiency standards for home appliances. The Heritage Foundation 2016 blueprint said, “Refrain from Developing New Energy Efficiency Standards for Appliances and urge Congress to Repeal Energy Conservation Standards Set in the Energy Policy and Conservation Act.” Over the course of his administration, a New York Times analysis showed that Trump weakened the standards for dishwashers, water heaters, washers and dryers, and other household devices that use green “energy saving thresholds.”
- Trump ended cost-sharing reduction payments to Affordable Care Act recipients. According to The Heritage Foundation’s 2016 Blueprint, “The new President should instruct the IRS through the Treasury Department to follow the law and immediately cease all Obamacare cost-sharing payments.” Trump eliminated the ACA’s cost-sharing program in 2017.
- Trump cut hundreds of millions to the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees. The Heritage Foundation’s 2018 “Blueprint for Balance” said “returning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to its original purpose saves $179 million in FY 2018.” In 2018, the Trump administration withheld $65 million of its $120 million in aid contributions to the UNRWA.
- The Trump administration pulled out of the World Health Organization in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to The Heritage Foundation’s 2016 “Blueprint for a New Administration: Priorities for the President,” the organization urged Trump to “review U.S. participation in all International Organizations.”
- In 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump abandoned the World Health Organization.
- The Trump administration sought to cut funding for PBS and NPR. A 2018 Blueprint for Balance recommendation “eliminates federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). This proposal saves $486 million in FY 2018.” The New York Times reported in 2017, “The White House budget office has drafted a hit list of programs that President Trump could eliminate to trim domestic spending, including longstanding conservative targets like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Legal Services Corporation, AmeriCorps and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities.”
- Project 2025 proposes ending government funding for nonpartisan media funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting such as National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service.
- Trump’s budget prohibited federal funding to entities that provide abortion care. According to the Heritage Foundation’s “Blueprint for a New Administration,” the Trump regime was urged to “disentangle women’s health from funding abortion.” Trump’s 2021 budget ensured that “federal funds protect life and conscience rights” and “ensuring that Federal funding does not support abortions.”
- Once again, this harkens back to Project 2025. The Center for Reproductive Rights says that implementing the plan’s recommendations would “destroy abortion care” by ending medication abortions, denying life-saving abortion care, prosecuting doctors, harassing patients, and creating a surveillance system.
Published: Sep 30, 2024 | Last Modified: Oct 1, 2024