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How Trump is following Project 2025’s radical roadmap to defund science

Much of the Trump administration’s agenda for research is laid out in the 900-plus-page blueprint. Nature read it so you don’t have to.

By 

• Dan Garisto
  
  Indiscriminate firings. Terminated grants. Cancelled programmes. The barrage of actions by US President Donald Trump has shocked the country’s research community over the past two months. Yet, much of it was planned out years in advance and laid out publicly.
  
  

  The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think-tank based in Washington DC, released Project 2025, a policy guidebook and staffing list, in April 2023, as a blueprint for what it hoped would be a second Trump presidency. Trump, however, disavowed the initiative during his 2024 presidential campaign, saying that he had no knowledge of it, after there was public backlash over the publication’s sweeping Republican policy proposals, such as banning abortion, overhauling the federal government and slashing funding for climate science.

  But Trump and his administration have closely hewed to Project 2025’s agenda, detailed in a sprawling, 922-page book, passing executive orders to defund climate initiatives and target diversity programmes. The Wall Street Journal found that more than half of Trump’s executive orders (EOs) align with Project 2025 recommendations. And most of its 40 listed authors are now key figures on Trump’s team.

  The Heritage Foundation did not respond to Nature’s request for comment. Taylor Rodgers, a White House spokesperson, said: “No one cared about Project 2025 when they elected president Trump in November 2024, and they don’t care now. President Trump is implementing the America First agenda he campaigned on to free up wasteful DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] spending for cutting-edge scientific research, roll back radical climate regulations and restore America’s energy dominance.” But policy watchers expect that the president’s upcoming budget request to the US government will contain massive cuts to science agencies.

  Here, Nature examines science-related policies from Project 2025 that have already come to pass, and which ones might be on the horizon.

  Has Trump ever followed the think-tank’s advice before?

  The Heritage Foundation has been publishing policy recommendations since 1981, often timing them for a new presidency. At the start of Trump’s first term in 2017, the foundation listed hundreds of priorities, such as opening up sites for off-shore oil drilling. According to the foundation, after a year in office, Trump had followed through on 64% of them.

  Compared with previous guidebooks, Project 2025 advises more-extreme actions. For instance, whereas the 2017 version advised the president to “rein in the administrative state”, Project 2025 advocates that the president “dismantle the administrative state”, which employs more than two million federal workers. And its proposals don’t apply only to the federal government: Project 2025 also aims to reform the US education system, including universities. The goal, its authors write, is to “defang and defund the woke culture warriors who have infiltrated every last institution in America”.
  
  

  Which policies from the project has the Trump team implemented so far?

  Project 2025 notes that the US president has sole authority over the US executive branch, which includes many science agencies, and encourages the president to exercise it. Trump has so far followed this philosophy, using EOs to accomplish his wishlist. (EOs direct the US government to take action but cannot contravene laws.) Many are being challenged by lawsuits.

  Here are some of the science-related recommendations that have already been implemented:

  Anti-diversity efforts

  “Unwinding policies and procedures that are used to advance radical gender, racial, and equity initiatives under the banner of science.” page 60

  Trump signed an EO ending “DEI programs” on 20 January. In response, agencies such as the US National Science Foundation (NSF), a key funder of basic science, paused and reviewed grants for violations of Trump’s orders; the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest funder of biomedical research, has terminated grants related to diversity. DEI offices at numerous agencies have also been shuttered.

  Defunding climate science and green energy

  “The Biden [Trump’s predecessor] Administration’s climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding.” page 60

  As he did during his first presidency, Trump has started the process to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which commits nations to reducing their greenhouse-gas emissions. He also signed an EO targeting energy regulations. The US Environmental Protection Agency has since put forward a plan to roll back dozens of regulations on fossil fuels that protect against pollution.

  Cutting funds to universities

  “Congress should cap the indirect cost rate paid to universities.” page 355

  The NIH, under the Trump team’s orders, but without the approval of Congress, issued a notice on 7 February that it would cut the indirect cost rate paid to universities for things such as electricity and equipment maintenance to 15%. This would have slashed billions from university budgets. A federal judge has halted the policy from taking effect.

  Downsizing government

  “Permanent and substantive reductions in the number of nondefense federal employees.” page 78

  
  Russell Vought, an author of Project 2025 and now director of the US Office of Management and Budget (OMB), has ordered mass ‘reductions in force’ at agencies. NASA has already closed offices, including its Office of the Chief Scientist, and fired more than 20 workers. Other agencies are preparing plans: reports indicate that the NIH will cut 1,200 people — about 6% — from its staff.
  
  

  Which proposed science policies from Project 2025 might be on the horizon?

  Project 2025 contains hundreds of recommendations, and many have not been implemented, although there are signs that the Trump administration is considering them. Here are some of those:

  Fetal-tissue research

  The US Department of Health and Human Services (the NIH’s parent agency) should “promptly restore the ethics advisory committee to oversee abortion-derived fetal tissue research, and Congress should prohibit such research altogether”. page 461

  During Trump’s first term, his administration banned the use of fetal tissue in research; this was later reversed by then-president Joe Biden’s team. Scientists use fetal tissue for a variety of research, from testing vaccine efficacy to detecting diseases. Trump 2.0 has not yet taken action.

  National security and immigration

  “Eliminate or significantly reduce the number of visas issued to foreign students from enemy nations.” page 141; “Restart the China Initiative.” page 556

  In 2017, Trump’s first administration instituted several anti-immigration programmes, such as a ‘Muslim ban’ that prevented people, including students, from seven countries from entering the United States. The team also implemented the China Initiative, which aimed to protect US laboratories from espionage and resulted in multiple arrests of scientists of Chinese heritage. Biden reversed the ban, and his administration ended the China Initiative, amid complaints of racial profiling. Back in office, Trump has signed several EOs on immigration so far, including one requiring “enhanced vetting” of visas, but he has not yet directly followed the project’s recommendations. Republican members of Congress have indicated that they expect a return of the China Initiative, and one has introduced a bill that would ban students coming to the United States from China.

  Beyond Project 2025

  Trump 2.0 hasn’t always aligned with the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint, however. In many cases, it has taken an even more extreme approach than the plan suggests — for instance, the OMB issued and then withdrew an order to put a government-wide freeze on all federal grants. Elon Musk, a billionaire entrepreneur and a close adviser to Trump, has unofficially led the US Department of Government Efficiency, an initiative working across multiple departments and agencies, to fire workers without consideration of their expertise or performance and to cut off funding already approved by Congress.
  
  

  “This is Project 2025 turbocharged,” says Rachel Cleetus, a science-policy specialist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  Perhaps Trump’s broadest deviation from Project 2025 is from the guidebook’s repeated commitment to ensuring “American science dominance”, which it recommends doing by cutting renewable energy research and preventing China from stealing US science. The Trump administration’s actions so far, from defunding cancer research to firing thousands of workers at key science agencies such as the NIH and the NSF, are poised to do the opposite, researchers tell Nature, questioning the project’s pledge to science.

  “Project 2025, and this administration are not about using science to advance this country,” says Jennifer Jones, director of the Center for Science & Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “While they may talk about it, it is a completely empty political rhetorical promise.”