The press helped Project 2025 succeed [View all]

[marmar]

Project 2025 has been a success — with the help of the press
Mainstream media outlets dismissed Trump's ties to Project 2025. Now it's facing unprecedented crackdowns

By Sophia Tesfaye
Senior Writer
Published December 31, 2025 9:00AM (EST)


(Salon) As 2025 comes to a close, Project 2025 stands vindicated as the defining policy plan of Donald Trump’s second presidency. A detailed governing blueprint written largely by veterans of his first administration, including Russell Vought, who now directs the Office of Management and Budget, much of the political press insisted during the 2024 campaign that the document was not truly the GOP candidate’s plan and dismissed warnings as progressive hysteria. For his part, Trump repeatedly feigned ignorance about the 920-page compendium released by the Heritage Foundation in April 2023. But on his first day in office, the president signed a bevy of executive orders that mirrored its proposals. By fall, he was openly embracing the governing roadmap by name. As of mid-December, independent trackers estimated that roughly half of Project 2025’s goals have been achieved.

The bitter irony is that while the Heritage Foundation’s ideas now shape federal policy, the institution itself is increasingly fractured by internal conflict. Project 2025 succeeded, yet Heritage may not survive its own victory.

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Too often, mainstream journalists treated Project 2025 as a claim to be adjudicated rather than a document to be analyzed. They asked whether it was “Trump’s plan” instead of examining how likely its proposals were to be implemented by a Trump administration staffed with its authors.

CNN published a “fact check” pushing back on claims from Harris’ campaign, stating in September 2024 that “Project 2025 is not Trump’s initiative,” even while acknowledging Trump’s extensive ties to it. USA Today went further, rating a statement that “Trump has made his authoritarian intentions quite clear with his Project 2025 plan” as “false” on the grounds that the project belonged to the Heritage Foundation, not Trump. After Harris confronted Trump about Project 2025 during their only debate, the newspaper published yet another piece insisting, “That’s still not right.” Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler emphasized in bold text that “Project 2025 is not an official campaign document,” as if the absence of a campaign logo somehow negated the document’s authorship, intent or utility. On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” host Norah O’Donnell cut Harris off during an interview to remind viewers that Trump had “disavowed Project 2025.” ..................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/12/31/project-2025-has-been-a-success-with-the-help-of-the-press/