Hello, and welcome to The Exert. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday, May 15, 2025, and this is a special episode of The Exort.

For over 40 years, beginning with Ronald Reagan's presidency, the Conservative Washington

Think Tank Heritage Foundation has issued a mandate for leadership to guide incoming

Republican administrations. The centerpiece of its latest version is Project 2025, a roughly

900-page blueprint created with input for more than 100 conservative groups.

It outlines how President Donald Trump's second administration could reshape the federal government.

What are the goals of Project 2025 and what roadmap does it lay out for deconstructing the administrative state?

During his campaign, Donald Trump disavowed any ties to

Project 2025, but have his policy choices so far aligned with it. Author David A. Graham,

a staff writer with The Atlantic, is out with a new book on this very topic, The Project. A Project

2025 is reshaping America is on bookshelves now.

David, thank you for joining me.

Thank you for having me.

What can you tell us about the Heritage Foundation and is what's proposed in this policy paper

radically different from the traditional conservative push for limited government.

Heritage is, as you suggested, a long-running think tank. So it was founded in the mid-1970s.

And at the time, the founders believed that the Republican Party was too enthrall to a kind of Eisenhower

republicanism, which was fiscally conservative but not socially conservative

enough. And they wanted to do both of those things. And it's waxed and waned over the years.

And I think this Project 2025 was partly a bid to reclaim some influence in the movement by setting the agenda for the next Republican administration.

I think if you look at the policies, some of them are,

in fact, in line with a traditional Heritage Foundation approach. But I think what really sets this

...