1. What Is Project 2025?

Project 2025 is a policy initiative published in 2023 by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, in coordination with a broad coalition of other conservative organizations. It is formally titled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” and was designed as a blueprint for a conservative presidential administration, particularly for a second Trump term.

The project consists of a roughly 900-page policy document (the “Mandate for Leadership”) proposing sweeping changes to the federal government, including expanding executive power, restructuring or eliminating federal agencies, reclassifying large numbers of civil servants as political appointees (making them easier to fire and replace), and advancing conservative priorities on immigration, energy, abortion, and other issues.

During the 2024 campaign, Trump publicly distanced himself from Project 2025, though many of its authors were former officials from his first administration. Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts led the effort; Paul Dans directed it before stepping down in mid-2024 amid the controversy. Since Trump’s second inauguration in January 2025, independent trackers have documented the extent to which his administration’s actions parallel the document’s recommendations.

2. Project 2025 Provisions Already Implemented

As of early 2026, independent trackers estimate the Trump administration has initiated or completed roughly 53% of Project 2025’s domestic policy recommendations (283 of 532 tracked actions), according to the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) and Governing for Impact tracker. Note: CPR is a left-leaning advocacy and research organization critical of the plan; the Heritage Foundation itself has separately claimed credit for much of the overlap, so the underlying facts are not seriously disputed even though the political framing of these sources differs.

Key areas with documented action:

Federal workforce: Reclassification of career civil servants under “Schedule F” rules, making them easier to fire and replace with political appointees; broad downsizing of the federal workforce; political appointees placed over policy decisions previously made by career staff (e.g., NIH grant review).
Education: Groundwork laid to dismantle the Department of Education; Biden-era Title IX protections for gender identity and sexual orientation rescinded.
Gender/sex policy: Federal recognition limited to two sexes; “gender identity” language removed from federal guidance.
Immigration: Reduced refugee admissions and expanded deportation efforts; partial downsizing (though not full elimination) of DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis.
Foreign aid / USAID: Major budget cuts, rescinded climate-related policies, and a ban on funding reproductive health and gender equality programs abroad; USAID was ultimately dismantled entirely.
Defense posture: Reduced U.S. troop presence in Europe, including partial withdrawals from Romania and Germany.
Reproductive rights: Reproductive Freedom for All estimates roughly half of Project 2025’s abortion/reproductive-health recommendations are complete or in progress.

Notable items not yet enacted:

Full elimination of Head Start (proposed, then walked back)
A federal “Parents’ Bill of Rights”
Converting special-education (IDEA) funding to block grants
The “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act” (stalled in Congress)
Medicaid/Medicare lifetime benefit caps
A standalone cabinet-level border agency
Fringe items such as commercializing the National Weather Service

3. Project 2025 Provisions Specifically Targeting Women

The following is drawn largely from the Guttmacher Institute’s year-one tracking (a reproductive-rights research organization) and cross-checked against government sources such as the Federal Register. Guttmacher, the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), and Reproductive Freedom for All are reproductive-rights advocacy and research organizations, so their framing is critical of these policies; the underlying facts — executive orders, agency rules, and legislative provisions — are independently verifiable.

Abortion access

Trump’s January 2025 executive order revoked Biden-era guidance supporting Medicaid waivers for patients traveling out of state for abortion care, and a July 2025 DOJ opinion interpreted the Hyde Amendment to block federal funds for “ancillary services” tied to abortion. The VA finalized a rule (December 2025) rescinding abortion counseling and services for veterans and their dependents, even in cases of rape, incest, or life endangerment. The Pentagon rescinded travel and leave allowances for servicemembers seeking abortion care. HHS and the FDA are reviewing mifepristone’s safety with an eye toward reinstating in-person dispensing requirements, which would eliminate telehealth medication abortion — a decision RFK Jr. has said he will defer to Trump on. Biden-era EMTALA guidance affirming hospitals must provide emergency abortion care was rescinded in June 2025, and the DOJ dropped a lawsuit against Idaho over its abortion ban’s lack of a health exception.

Contraception

Title X family-planning funding was briefly withheld from 22 grantees in April 2025 over DEI-related concerns; some grants were restored, but funding to many Planned Parenthood grantees remains withheld. Project 2025’s broader goal of narrowing ACA contraceptive-coverage mandates (e.g., excluding condoms and emergency contraception) has not yet been formally enacted but remains on the agenda.

Medicaid and Planned Parenthood

The 2025 reconciliation law (“One Big Beautiful Bill Act”) made Planned Parenthood and similar providers ineligible for federal Medicaid reimbursement for any service — not just abortion, but also contraception, STI testing, and cancer screenings. The same law imposes new Medicaid work requirements (effective January 2027) that Guttmacher estimates could strip coverage from 2.1–6 million women of reproductive age.

Patient privacy

A Trump-appointed judge vacated Biden-era HIPAA protections shielding reproductive health records from law enforcement, particularly relevant to abortion patients traveling from ban states. Trump also pardoned 23 people convicted under the FACE Act for targeting abortion clinics, and the DOJ has largely stopped enforcing that law.

Global reproductive health

The global gag rule was reinstated, funding to the UN Population Fund was terminated, and USAID (a major funder of international family-planning programs) was dismantled entirely — going further than Project 2025 itself proposed.

Workplace and discrimination protections

Project 2025 called for narrowing Title VII’s definition of “sex” to a strict biological binary and weakening EEOC authority. The administration rescinded Biden-era Section 1557 ACA guidance that had included gender-identity discrimination protections (a federal court vacated related provisions in November 2025). Broader items — such as formally exempting religious employers from sex-discrimination law or denying pregnancy accommodations to those who have had abortions — are described in Project 2025 but do not yet appear to have been formally enacted.

Fertility / IVF

Trump’s October 2025 IVF “fact sheet” fell short of his campaign promise of mandated insurance coverage. Advocacy groups (NWLC) say its framing echoes Heritage-backed “Restorative Reproductive Medicine” (RRM), an approach critics say stigmatizes women for infertility rather than expanding access to IVF itself.

4. Heritage Foundation’s “Saving America by Saving the Family”

Released January 8, 2026, this report — co-authored with Heritage’s DeVos Center for Human Flourishing — is titled “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years.” Press coverage has informally dubbed it “Project 2026,” though it is currently a policy proposal and vision document, not something being implemented. It functions the way Project 2025 did prior to 2025 — as a blueprint Heritage hopes will shape administration and congressional action.

Traditional gender roles, codified

The report explicitly rejects treating mothers and fathers as “generic and interchangeable,” framing men as breadwinners and women as caregivers as biologically “complementary” roles. Legal scholars who reviewed it (e.g., Joanna Grossman of SMU) note it does not address whether women are happy, fulfilled, or safe under this framework, and does not grapple with research showing marriage often benefits men more than women.

Marriage and family defined narrowly

The report’s “ideal family” is a heterosexual couple, married before age 30, with three or more biological children, where one parent stays home. Same-sex couples and cohabitating couples are not part of the vision. Critics (American University’s Jessica Waters) argue the practical effect targets women toward a specific role: “a white woman marrying a white man who then has a lot of children, and the woman does not work.”

Tax and welfare incentives tilted toward stay-at-home mothers

Proposals include a $2,500 “Trump Account” deposit for newborns, an adoption-style tax credit extended to married parents (with a 25% bonus for three or more children), and extending childcare tax benefits to cover at-home parenting — effectively subsidizing one parent (typically the mother, given the report’s framing) leaving the workforce rather than funding daycare or Head Start-style programs.

Government-funded “marriage bootcamps”

These would target cohabitating couples with children, using financial incentives and mentorship to push them toward formal marriage rather than improving relationship skills broadly — including proposed group “graduation” ceremonies where couples marry.

IVF and fertility care

The report is skeptical of IVF, arguing subsidized access does not meaningfully raise birth rates and may lead women to delay childbearing. It instead promotes “Restorative Reproductive Medicine” (RRM), which the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says is not evidence-based, can involve unnecessary invasive procedures, and is tied to “fetal personhood” framing that could restrict IVF itself, since IVF involves creating and sometimes discarding embryos. The report explicitly calls for protecting “life from fertilization” in law.

Higher education discouraged

The report frames college enrollment as suppressing marriage and birth rates by causing “extended adolescence,” which critics say could translate into policy discouraging women — who now outpace men in college completion — from pursuing degrees.

A sweeping executive-order mechanism

Perhaps the broadest-reach proposal: the report calls for an executive order requiring every federal grant, contract, regulation, and enforcement action to be evaluated for whether it “helps or harms marriage and family,” with preference given to actions supporting the report’s defined family structure. If implemented, this could reshape funding and policy across every federal agency around a specific, narrow definition of family that a large share of American women and households would not fit.

A note on balance

Heritage’s own materials present this report as pro-family and pro-women — removing “marriage penalties” and supporting stay-at-home parenting as a valid choice. The critical analyses cited here — legal scholars, journalists, and advocacy commentators — read the same provisions as narrowing women’s options rather than expanding them. Since this report has not been enacted, its real-world effect on women remains speculative; what is documented, is the direction it points federal policy if adopted towards what the Heritage Foundation and the Trump administration determine is a “family”.