What is Project 2025?

What is Project 2025?

Project 2025 is a 900-page conservative blueprint advocating for extreme abortion restrictions and the repeal of key reproductive health protections. It was created by the Heritage Foundation, alongside dozens of anti-abortion and other extremist organizations, to destroy access to the full spectrum of reproductive health care during Trump’s second term. Despite his claims to the contrary, President Trump has close ties to the authors and ideology in Project 2025.

The Center has been tracking President Trump’s handpicked officials since day one of his second term. Of the more than 30 individuals featured in Repro Red Flags: Agency Watch, 1 out of every 4 have close ties to Project 2025, including serving as authors or contributors. Overall, more than half of Project 2025’s 300 authors and contributors have direct connections to President Trump, and a staggering 70% of his second term cabinet are tied to Project 2025.

Given that the same abortion opponents who wrote Project 2025 are now serving in President Trump’s administration, it’s no surprise that many of his second term policy actions are pillars of Project 2025. With this roadmap, President Trump has been able to limit access to reproductive health care nationwide, decimate the global health safety net, and dismantle key agencies working to advance reproductive rights and health in just one year. In that time, the Center tracked President Trump’s notable actions related to reproductive health and access and found that 85% stemmed from Project 2025 policy recommendations.

Read on to learn which Trump administration actions are copied from Project 2025, and where they stand at the end of Trump’s (second) first year.

Gutting global health funding

Gutting global health funding

Status: Complete

An unrelenting focus of both Project 2025 and the second Trump administration has been decimating global health funding and gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Project 2025 has a chapter on USAID, including a section called “Protecting Life in Foreign Assistance” (page 260), which serves as an anti-abortion dog whistle encouraging cuts to global health funding.   

Soon after taking office, President Trump began implementing foreign policy recommendations right out of Project 2025. He reinstated the Global Gag Rule (Page 261 & 493), a harmful and regressive policy that prohibits U.S. foreign aid for organizations that provide, counsel, or advocate for legal abortion services, regardless of local laws or non-U.S. funding sources for that work. He also fired thousands of USAID employees and dramatically cut their budgets (page 254), and he put in place a global foreign aid funding freeze (page 260) which has resulted in more than 46 million women and girls being denied contraceptive care.

 USAID is currently under the control of Russell Vought, Project 2025 author and OMB Director, to “oversee the closeout” of the agency.  Vought opposes abortion in all circumstances, including for rape, incest or life of the pregnant person, and has called anti-abortion causes his “most important issue.” 

Banning abortion care for veterans

Banning abortion care and counseling for veterans

Status: Complete

Project 2025 proposes banning access to essential abortion services for veterans and their dependents, stating that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the agency responsible for providing health care for veterans, should “rescind all departmental clinical policy directives that are contrary to principles of conservative governance starting with abortion services” (page 644). Once again, the connections between President Trump and Project 2025 are blatant—the author of this chapter was a VA official during President Trump’s first administration.  

In December 2025, the VA issued a final rule doing just what Project 2025 demands: banning all abortion counseling and care at VA facilities, including in instances of rape, incest, or health emergencies, with only a narrow lifesaving exception. The rule, initially proposed in August 2025, is one of the strictest abortion bans in the country as it applies to all VA health centers across the US, even in the 14 states with constitutional protections for abortion. Notably, instead of following the formal process to finalize such a rule, the VA relied on a Department of Justice opinion to quietly announce in an internal memo that the new policy was in effect.   

Defunding abortion providers

Defunding abortion providers

Status: Complete

Project 2025 calls for “prohibiting Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds,” a goal anti-abortion extremists have been fighting toward for decades (page 471). Notably, the chapter of Project 2025 that calls for this prohibition was written by Roger Severino, who is vocally anti-abortion and served as the Director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) during President Trump’s first term. 

In July 2025, the Trump administration checked another box off the Project 2025 agenda by revoking Medicaid funding for Maine Family Planning and Planned Parenthood in the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill.”  The impact of this bill went far beyond reproductive health care, undercutting the foundation of U.S. health care affordability and resulting in up to 15 million people losing coverage.  

Hiding health information

Hiding critical health information

Status: Complete

Project 2025 seeks to sow confusion and spread misinformation by omitting critical facts related to reproductive health care from government resources. It states that the next conservative administration should “remove references to ‘abortion,’ ‘reproductive health,’ and ‘sexual and reproductive rights’ and controversial sexual education materials” (page 259).  

Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, his administration removed ReproductiveRights.gov, a web page launched by the Biden administration which included essential information about reproductive health care, abortion, and patient rights. Since then, the administration has also scrubbed agency websites of Biden-era abortion policies in addition to information related to HIV, LGBTQ+ people, and COVID vaccines for pregnant people.  

Additionally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website now suggests “adoption” when users search for “abortion,” a tactic the administration openly admitted using to redirect people away from information about abortion care. Once again, the administration’s actions directly align with Project 2025’s strategy to deny that abortion is health care (page 455). By eliminating critical health information from government resources, the Trump administration is falsely painting reproductive health care as non-essential care and restricting knowledge and access to these services.  

Restricting medication abortion

Restricting medication abortion

Status: In progress

The Trump administration and Project 2025 are united in their goal of restricting and stigmatizing abortion pills. Project 2025 explicitly calls for revoking the FDA’s approval of medication abortion, claiming a “politicized approval process” (page 458). In reality, the abortion drug mifepristone, originally approved in 2000, has been shown by extensive research to be extremely safe and effective, with more than 99% of users experiencing no serious complications.  

Despite this overwhelming evidence, the administration wasted no time in seeding doubt about the safety of medication abortion. In May 2025, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called on Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Makary to do “a complete review and to report back” on mifepristone. Kennedy has stated that final decisions around mifepristone policy changes would be decided by President Trump. President Trump later appointed an anti-abortion advocate and Project 2025 contributor, who previously worked at the organization that put forth a junk science paper baselessly attacking mifepristone, to serve as an advisor at HHS.  

What’s next & fighting back

What’s next & how to fight back

In just one year, the Trump administration has implemented over 50% of Project 2025, and the majority of President’s Trump’s actions affecting reproductive health and rights came from this extreme conservative blueprint. Looking ahead, the Center has identified three top threats to reproductive health and rights. It’s no surprise that they all come straight from Project 2025: 

• Misuse of the Comstock Act. The administration is positioned to misuse this 1873 “purity” law to investigate patients and target providers of reproductive health care for jail time. Project 2025 identified this long-time goal of the anti-abortion movement as a key DOJ priority (page 459).  
• More defunding. Title X is the only federal grant program dedicated to birth control and related reproductive and sexual health services. A new Title X rule will go out of its way to target abortion providers and supporters, and to impose costly changes for clinics able to remain in the program. Project 2025 calls for “reframing” Title X to bar abortion providers from participating (page 491), and rescinding Biden era rules governing the program. 
• Abortion pill restrictions. Project 2025 calls on the FDA to reverse its approval of medication abortion (Page 458). It may add new barriers on its own or by court order. Medically unnecessary restrictions would be devasting for abortion access across the country, as medication abortion accounts for at least 63% of clinician-provided abortions in the U.S.  

The Trump administration is shamelessly implementing Project 2025, while publicly denying any connection to this extremist vision that limits access and decimates care. The Center is committed to calling out anti-abortion extremists and fighting against their harmful policies by filing Freedom of Information Act requests (FOIAs), suing the administration, serving as a watchdog, and more. Join the fight!   

To learn more about the Trump administration’s attacks on reproductive rights during the first year of his second term, read the full report here.