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By Brad Heath and Mike Spector
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s early actions in office have in many cases expanded upon proposals from Project 2025's conservative policy blueprint that the Republican tried to distance himself from on the campaign trail, a Reuters review found.
From actions halting U.S. aid abroad to fortifying the southern border and restrictions on transgender athletes, Reuters identified more than a dozen Trump executive orders or other policy moves that exceed in ambition or scope what Project 2025’s 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” book advocated in a series of detailed policy proposals.
The conservative initiative caused an uproar on the campaign trail, with Democrats calling it a set of extremist ideas that would form the basis for Trump's potential second-term agenda if elected. Trump, however, repeatedly distanced himself from Project 2025 during the presidential campaign, saying he had not read the policy blueprint.
While Trump has so far not adopted some of Project 2025's most aggressive ideas, his blizzard of more than 50 executive orders and series of other policy moves during his initial weeks in office have gone beyond some of its other proposals.
For example, Project 2025 recommended “scaling back” roughly $40 billion of annual U.S. aid spending through the U.S. Agency for International Development, which administers much of America's foreign assistance. But the administration, after tapping billionaire Elon Musk to downsize the federal bureaucracy, has moved to dismantle the agency altogether.
A U.S. judge on Thursday extended for one week a pause on the administration's plan to put thousands of the agency's workers on leave.
Where Project 2025 advocated Congress fund a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, Trump simply declared an “emergency” and ordered U.S. troops and Homeland Security officials to build it.
And Trump's order effectively barring transgender girls from women's sports goes beyond Project 2025's recommendation to roll back some of President Joe Biden’s efforts to extend civil rights protections to transgender students.
Trump has installed one of Project 2025's architects, Russ Vought, as the head of the Office of Management and Budget.
Vought on Friday became acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and told its nearly 2,000 employees to stop working. Project 2025 had called for the agency’s elimination. A union of Treasury employees filed a lawsuit this week seeking to block the stop-work order.
The White House said Trump's moves are the fulfillment of pledges he made on the campaign trail.
The president “had nothing to do with Project 2025,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said.
"In his first few days in office, President Trump has delivered on the promises that earned him a resounding mandate from the American people – securing the border, restoring common sense, driving down inflation, and unleashing American energy,” Fields said.
Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
Ellen Keenan, a spokesperson for the Heritage Foundation, which organized Project 2025, said: “This is about President Trump delivering on his promises to make America safer, stronger, and better than ever before, and he and his team deserve the credit.”
Trump’s administration has so far not taken on some of the blueprint’s most contentious ideas, including rescinding approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. And where Project 2025 recommended banning TikTok, Trump has said his administration won’t enforce a law that blocks the popular short video app.
Courts have begun issuing orders blocking some of the administration’s more aggressive actions, including its efforts to unilaterally halt government spending, end birthright citizenship and move transgender women inmates to men's prisons.
Still, a federal judge on Wednesday allowed Trump to proceed with a buyout offer to federal workers, which the government said 75,000 people accepted.
Despite Trump's campaign promises, his push to reshape Washington through unilateral executive action – which has upended U.S. foreign aid, thrown the top ranks of federal law enforcement into disarray and moved to redefine who can be a U.S. citizen – has surprised even allies in the conservative legal movement.
"There are broad divisions within the conservative legal movement about whether any of this is appropriate," said Jonathan Adler, a Case Western Reserve University law professor and conservative legal scholar.
(Editing by Deepa Babington)
