News commentary

How Project 2025 Kneecapped the US Press

Columbia Journalism Review · Ivan L. Nagy · last updated

The Heritage Foundation’s road map for a conservative presidency proposed sweeping media reforms. Trump carried out most of them—and he has three years left.

For most of his 2024 campaign, Donald Trump distanced himself from Project 2025, the sweeping Heritage Foundation policy proposal for a conservative presidency. But the nine-hundred-page document, officially titled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” and released more than two years ago, has been nothing short of a blueprint for his second term, calling for measures from ending DEI programs to enforcing the death penalty, enlisting local and state law enforcement to detain immigrants, and cutting foreign aid.

The Mandate defined the media, along with Washington, DC, and academia, as a “center of Leftist power.” It called for gutting federal media agencies, making it easier to subpoena journalists, and grabbing power in the White House press room, all of which have happened since Trump took office.

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