Trump’s Shutdown Remarks Signal Implementation of Project 2025 at 50%
Josh Ebner
In a Truth social post on Thursday, October 2, 2025, President Trump made a dramatic proclamation about the recent US government shutdown. In the post, he announced that “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.”
This statement was a sharp reversal for the Trump administration. Despite continuous disavowals of the Heritage Foundation's controversial Project 2025 plan, his name drop of Russ Vought, a key architect of the plan, strongly suggests that the plan is being put into action.
Project 2025
Project 2025, created by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, is a political initiative that seeks to centralise power in the executive. Its policies, set out in the policy paper ‘Mandate for Leadership’, include replacing career federal employees with Trump loyalists, consolidating partisan control of major agencies, dismantling departments such as Homeland Security and Education, and rolling back or eliminating most federal regulations.
It additionally advocates for the implementation of a flat tax system, elimination of Medicare and Medicaid, termination of diversity/equity/inclusion policies, mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, and socially conservative measures such as a nationwide abortion ban.
Post Election
Trump and his administration publicly disavowed the plan during the 2024 presidential election, claiming he knew ‘nothing’ about the plan. However, his appointment of several Project 2025 contributors to key government posts prompted immediate scrutiny.
In light of this scrutiny, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a statement stating that "President Trump never had anything to do with Project 2025". Despite this, Trump’s early executive orders largely mirrored recommendations from the plan.
The Project Now
Eight months on from Trump’s inauguration, his statement about Russ Vought and government shutdown has reignited scrutiny of Trump and his association with Project 2025. Trump has seemingly abandoned his disavowal of the project. Any denial at this stage would appear absurd.
As of the time of the government shutdown, which itself is seemingly part of Project 2025’s plan, a significant proportion of Project 2025’s policies have been enacted. According to the Project 2025 Tracker, an open source spreadsheet of the project’s policies and their implementation, it is already 48% complete. This begs the question, what comes next for the United States?
The Project’s Future
Many of Project 2025’s main objectives are yet to be implemented. If completing all of the project’s goals is Trump’s aim, as some have suggested, then America can expect a number of dramatic changes in the next few years.
The Department of Education could be dismantled, social welfare slashed, and tax reforms skewed to benefit the wealthy. Additional federal agencies may be defunded or eliminated, and abortion could be outlawed nationwide.
Most consequentially, presidential authority could be expanded even further under the project’s “unitary executive” theory, a doctrine asserting that the president should have never-unchecked powers. In Trump’s own words, this would give him the right “to do whatever I want as president.”
Whether Project 2025 will be implemented in full remains uncertain. But if the past eight months are any indication, the U.S. is on track for sweeping and potentially transformative changes.