How much of Project 2025 has Trump enacted?

Amna Nawaz:

The director of the Office of Management and Budget was on Capitol Hill today, making the case for the Trump administration's proposed budget for next year.

Russ Vought argued that a big military spending increase means about a 10 percent cut to domestic programs.

Russell Vought, OMB Director:

Senator, I fully support this budget. We go through a long policy process. It's needed for the Department of War. It's one time. It's designed to have paradigm-shifting investments, like I mentioned in my opening comments, to be able to fund now what this president is willing to do, multiyear agreements.

And it's necessary to keep us safe.

Amna Nawaz:

Vought has been key to implementing the Trump agenda.

Before joining the administration last year, he was a driving force behind Project 2025, a controversial policy playbook by the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Liz Landers is here now for a check-in on how many of those proposals have since become official government policy.

Liz, good to see you.

Liz Landers:

Yes.

Amna Nawaz:

So let's just talk about Project 2025. Remind us what was in it and who else was behind it.

Liz Landers:

The Heritage Foundation, which is a conservative think tank here in Washington, authored this. And it was really a blueprint for the presidency should Trump win again in 2024.

And Russ Vought was one of the main authors and architects of Project 2025. In it, he talks about executive powers. Now he heads up the Office of Management and Budget, and he has a huge amount of power there over the budget and the personnel decisions happening inside this administration.

There are a number of other people within the administration right now too who had sections in Project 2025, including Peter Navarro. He wrote a section on trade. He's now one of the president's top trade advisers. Brendan Carr wrote a section about changes to the FCC. He now oversees that agency and has been pretty aggressively going after TV channels.

And then Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, is also listed as a contributor in there. The president himself, though, insisted during that campaign cycle that he didn't know what Project 2025 was. Listen to what he said in July of that year.

President Donald Trump:

I don't know what the hell it is. It's Project 25. He's involved in Project -- and then I read some of the things and they are extreme. I mean, they're seriously extreme. But I don't know anything about it. I don't want to know anything about it. But what they do is misinformation and disinformation.

Liz Landers:

But, Amna, many of the policies in Project 2025 have been tracked in the last year or so that the president has been back in office. Many of them have been implemented.

Amna Nawaz:

Meanwhile, as we just reported, the president's budget calls for a large increase in military spending. That comes as the U.S. is in the middle of this war with Iran that he launched. Is the current Trump foreign policy in line with what was in Project 2025?

Liz Landers:

Well, Russ Vought said today on the Hill that there was a more than 40 percent budget increase for this next fiscal year for military spending.

And that would help pay for, among other things, new Navy ships to grow the fleet to 400. That's an even bigger number than what Project 2025 called for. They called for 355 Navy ships. Project 2025 says that China is the biggest foreign threat to the United States.

In Project 2025, they called it a totalitarian enemy. President Trump, of course, is going to go to China soon next month. But Iran is mentioned as a concern. It's mentioned more than 50 times in Project 2025. There's a section devoted to it that talks about the opposition to the regime, criticizing the Biden and Obama administration policies, especially the JCPOA and some of their easing of sanctions.

It says that the Iranian people deserved a democratic government, but it's up to them to decide that. Here's one quote: "The U.S. must prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear technology and delivery capabilities and more broadly block Iranian ambitions."

Certainly seems to be hewing to what the president has been doing so far. Also mentions leveraging more sanctions on Iran. The first Trump administration did that, and we heard yesterday from the treasury secretary that the Trump administration is looking at doing that again.

Amna Nawaz:

Meanwhile, on the domestic front, we know a large part of the Project 2025 domestic policy agenda has already been implemented. What do we know about that?

Liz Landers:

There's analysis from the Center for Progressive Reform that says that the Trump administration has initiated or completed 53 percent of Project 2025's domestic agenda as of February this year. That's 283 of the 532 recommended actions.

Let's look at two of these examples. One of them, on LGBTQ front here, Project 2025 directed the NIH to fund studies on negative effects of gender-affirming care. One of the first things that the president signed as an executive order when he came back into office was directing HHS to -- quote -- "publish a review of the existing literature on best practices for promoting the health of children who assert gender dysphoria, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or other identity-based confusion."

Amna, another domestic policy point too was on reproductive rights. The Center for Reproductive Rights says that 85 percent of Trump's reproductive health actions have stemmed from these recommendations, one of them prohibiting Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds. That happened last summer when Congress passed their budget bill that was in there.

Amna Nawaz:

That's our White House correspondent, Liz Landers, with an important update.

Liz, thank you.

Liz Landers:

Of course.