Lawrence Carter is an investigative journalist whose work has primarily focused on climate change and political influence. He has investigated Big Oil’s war on US climate policy, fossil fuel-funded climate sceptics, and the petrostates seeking to keep the world hooked on oil.

Project 2025, the policy agenda for Former President Trump’s potential first year back in the White House published by the far right conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, has been making waves recently. Some of the many destructive proposals within the agenda include the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education—along with federal education funding and any civil rights protections—and the diversion of public money to private school voucher programs instead.

Make no mistake: The goal is to end public education. But dismantling our public schools isn’t just the plan if Trump is reelected—it is already happening.

The independence of science is being attacked across the board in this document,” says Rachel Cleetus, policy director of the Climate and Energy program at the nonpartisan Union of Concerned Scientists. “The importance of this science is that’s how we can ensure people’s health and the environment are being safeguarded.” (Cleetus notes that her comments address the policy agenda’s contents, not the upcoming presidential election.)

Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, which penned the lengthy blueprint for a potential far-right Trump takeover and draconian dismantling of the administrative state, was speaking to reporters when the announcement was made.

New York Times reporter Nick Corasaniti described Roberts’s live reaction to hearing that Vance had been tapped. “He reacted to the news ‘with a broad smile on my face’ and said that ‘privately, we were really rooting for him,’” Corasaniti wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

A top official with Project 2025 has jumped in on Donald Trump’s effort to look like he’s not at all affiliated with the fascistic blueprint for his potential second term in the White House. Too bad for them, they already said the exact opposite.

In those terms, yes, this rumor is true. All three organizations have, in the past, contributed money to The Heritage Foundation — the leaders of Project 2025 — usually via their private foundations.

In our research for this matter, we concluded the Adolph Coors Foundation is the only organization of the three appearing to presently and publicly still disclose support of The Heritage Foundation.

"I know nothing about Project 2025,” Donald Trump said about the conservative agenda project, despite the group’s ties to his party platform committee

The official Biden-Harris HQ account shared screenshots of the platform in a post that read, "His Super PAC is running ads promoting Project 2025, calling it 'Trump's Project 2025.' Trump himself said he 'needs' the Heritage Foundation, the organization behind Project 2025, to enact his MAGA agenda."

A number of people who worked on Project 2025 have close ties to the former president. Russ Vought, who was Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget and is heading up a key committee at the Republican National Convention, authored one of the project's chapters.

Stephen Miller, a former senior adviser to Trump who is widely expected to be tapped for a top job in a second Trump administration, heads up a legal group on Project 2025's advisory board.

A “war game” presented at the right-wing foundation imagined far-fetched scenarios for election interference to justify preemptive measures.

Barbra Streisand kidnapped by Hamas. Antifa-BLM protesters taking over a migrant detention facility. The FBI arresting Donald Trump two days after winning the election.

These were among the far-fetched scenarios imagined by a simulation of threats to the 2024 election showcased on Thursday by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. The presentation, delivered at the foundation’s Washington headquarters, stated as a given that the Biden administration was already engaged in a sweeping conspiracy to use multiple forms of federal power to influence the presidential election. It did not supply any evidence.

“As things stand right now, there’s a zero percent chance of a free and fair election,” said Mike Howell, executive director of Heritage’s Oversight Project. “I’m formally accusing the Biden administration of creating the conditions that most reasonable policymakers and officials cannot in good conscience certify an election.”

Trump, if re-elected, plans to immediately test the boundaries of presidential and governing power, knowing the restraints of Congress and the courts are dramatically looser than during his first term, his advisers tell us.

Why it matters: It's not just the Supreme Court ruling on Monday that presidents enjoy substantial legal immunity for actions in office. Trump would come to office with a Cabinet and staff pre-vetted for loyalty, and a fully compliant Republican coalition in Congress — devoid of critics in positions of real power.

“248 years ago America declared independence from a tyrannical king, and now Donald Trump and his allies want to make him one at our expense,” Singer said, adding that Trump and his allies are ”dreaming of a violent revolution to destroy the very idea of America.”

“Roberts, the Heritage Foundation, and its allies in Project 2025 want to reorder American society and fundamentally change it,” Beirich said. “He’s said the quiet part out loud.”