Trump enacted dozens of Project 2025 goals. Here's what's left
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The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 was a campaign trail boogeyman for President Trump, but much of it became reality during his first year back in office.
Why it matters: From reshaping the federal government to his push to recognize only two genders, Trump spent much of 2025 ticking off items from the conservative wishlist. However, the plan has dozens more action items awaiting his attention in 2026.
State of play: Trump disavowed the plan while campaigning. But according to an online tracker, his administration enacted several of its goals, many of which were long-held conservative desires.
- The White House and Heritage Foundation did not immediately respond to Axios' requests for comment.
Read on for some of the goals in Project 2025 that have yet to become reality:
Education goals under Project 2025
The Trump administration laid the groundwork to dismantle the Department of Education and ditched Biden-era Title IX protections for students based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
Project 2025 includes several other education goals, such as:
- Passing a federal "Parents' Bill of Rights" ensuring "their right and responsibility to raise, educate, and care for their children."
- It also calls for converting Individuals with Disabilities Education Act funding to block grants sent directly to school systems.
- Trump has said special education operations would be moved to the Department of Health and Human Services. In the president's budget proposal, he called for IDEA programs to be consolidated "to provide States and school districts greater flexibility."
The Project 2025 authors also want to require that every student in schools that receive federal funding take the military's Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test.
Zoom in: Project 2025 also sought to eliminate Head Start, which offers free early childhood education, health and nutrition services to low-income families.
- Advocates warned that would have dramatic ripple effects impacting families, staff and children.
- Trump's leaked budget proposal called for eliminating Head Start, but the White House ultimately backed off that idea.
- Head Start was still squeezed in 2025 by disrupted funds and the administration's war on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Project 2025 on abortion and health care
Advocacy group Reproductive Freedom for All says nearly half of Project 2025's recommendations targeting reproductive rights are either completed or in progress.
- Other Project 2025 goals remain, like eliminating the "week-after-pill" from the Health Resources and Services Administration's women's preventive services guidelines.
- It also demands the Food and Drug Administration reverse its approval of chemical abortion drugs, something Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said will be studied.
It also called for passage of the "Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act," legislation that has not made it through Congress.
- The bill requires medical professionals "exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child" alive after an abortion as the would any other child.
- Democratic lawmakers described the legislation as dangerous and unnecessary.
Project 2025 also calls for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to impose "time limits or lifetime caps on benefits to disincentivize permanent dependence" on publicly-funded health benefits.
Immigration crackdown
Reducing immigration and ramping up deportations have been the major goals to start Trump's second term, but several other Project 2025 recommendations are still on the table.
The plan called for reforms throughout the Department of Homeland Security, including eliminating the Office of Intelligence and Analysis that it accused of being "weaponized for domestic political purposes."
- While there were reportedly plans to significantly downsize the office, it has not been entirely eliminated.
- Project 2025 also called for a new standalone border and immigration agency at the Cabinet level, made up of agencies like the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The chapter on DHS, penned by former acting deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli, also calls on Congress to move detention of immigrant children from HHS to DHS and to repeal anti-trafficking protections for unaccompanied children that it says have failed.
Other Project 2025 policy goals
Other outstanding goals included in Project 2025 include:
- Outlawing pornography;
- Having the National Weather Service "fully commercialize" its forecasting operations;
- Congress amending the Fair Labor Standards Act to require time and a half hours for work on the Sabbath.
Go deeper: Project 2025 architects lay out 2026 policy vision
