Project 2025: What a second Trump term could mean for media and technology policies

In a 900-page volume titled Project 2025, a conservative movement of over 400 scholars led by the Heritage Foundation has outlined a comprehensive policy vision for what a conservative administration could implement upon taking office in January 2025. The writers and contributors make recommendations regarding foreign and domestic policy, education, and the economy to give the administration a running start into a short four-year term. Critics have called it a blueprint for autocratic takeover. This blog will look at a key aspect of Project 2025’s blueprint: Its plans for technology, media, and communications policies and the potential implications on the future of existing public policies.   

Since Ronald Reagan’s first presidential candidacy in 1981, experts from the Heritage Foundation have collated comprehensive policy agendas for prospective conservative administrations in a series titled “Mandate for Leadership.” Their suggestions have been successful: According to the authors, Reagan enacted 60% of the original volume’s recommendations in his first year in office,¹ and in 2018 then-President and current candidate Donald Trump boasted he had accomplished 64% of the 2016 Mandate’s policy plans. 

This time around, Project 2025 aims to provide a potential incoming Republican administration with a detailed policy agenda and “an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared”² personnel so that the president can accomplish as much as possible in the short presidential term.³ This proposed transition plan contains sweeping reforms to dismantle the bureaucracy of the so-called “Administrative State”⁴ and the civil service,⁵ bring independent agencies under White House control,⁶ and address what they term the Biden administration’s “economic, military, cultural, and foreign policy turmoil”⁷ by fighting the political elite’s⁸ “totalitarian cult” of the “Great Awokening.”⁹    

A spokesperson for Trump has said he is not affiliated with the project and does not necessarily endorse its recommendations. However, much of the team behind Project 2025 is closely connected to the president or served in his previous administration, among them John McEntee, director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office under Trump and a senior advisor to Project 2025; Jonathan Berry, Chief Counsel to the Trump presidential transition team;¹⁰ Ken Cuccinelli, former Acting Deputy Secretary for Homeland Security under Trump;¹¹ and Peter Navarro, a currently jailed Trump advisor. Brendan Carr, a sitting Federal Communications Commissioner (FCC) who was appointed by Trump, is also the author of Project 2025’s section on the FCC. In his first term, Trump boasted about enacting many of the 2016 Mandate’s suggestions.¹² And the MAGA SuperPAC itself is funding messaging about Trump and Project 2025. These and other reasons are why the assertions in Project 2025 should be taken seriously.  

Compiling a policy agenda ahead of taking office is not unique to one party. Democrat-aligned organizations have done the same thing in past elections. Nor is the hiring of talented, loyal staff who align with the president’s vision—each administration only has four years, after all, and the 77 days between the election and inauguration leave little room to plan. Project 2025, however, is different, its critics say, because its recommendations are so comprehensive, radical, and risky, and therefore could endanger democratic institutions, dismantle civil liberties, and concentrate presidential power. Its implications on media and technology are similarly daunting, and worth further exploring. 

In 2019, then-President Trump called the press “the enemy of the people.” Project 2025 seems to share that view. According to the authors, the next conservative president must reform media wherever possible. Commercial news outlets do not fall under presidential control, but a dire fate might befall the domestic public broadcast service if Trump is elected. The authors of Project 2025 allege public broadcasting can no longer be classified as educational (in fact, they see it as “noneducational”¹³ and claim it is a biased liberal forum engaged in suppressing conservative views).¹⁴ To end what they consider unjustly privileged outlets,¹⁵ they say outlets that include the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)and the National Public Radio (NPR) should be defunded and stripped of their status as noncommercial, educational stations, and thereby required to pay hefty licensing fees.¹⁶ The authors also suggest the next administration should reconsider their relationship with news media more broadly, such as by reexamining the relationship between the White House and the Correspondents Association, and investigating whether journalists should even be granted space on White House grounds.¹⁷

Though they are correct in their assertion that the White House has no legal requirement to internally house and host media,¹⁸ the suggestion to restrict journalists’ access to executive decision-making and relevant public discussions should send alarming signals about the willingness of Project 2025’s authors to let government be held accountable. In fact, it was a rumor that then-President Wilson was considering halting the tradition of press conferences which led to the Correspondents’ Association creation in 1914, whose mission was to ensure fair and continuous reporting on the president’s politics and activities. Access to the president, their press secretary, and the White House is beneficial for both the administration and the press—one gets to communicate their policies to the public; for the other, news gathering and questioning of said policies is more readily facilitated. Both, in turn, make for a more informed public, which is vital to the democratic system. A “reexamination” of the relationship with the Correspondents’ Association—an organization that comprises journalists from a variety of outlets including Fox News, the New York Times, and the BBC—as suggested by “Mandate for Leadership” could encourage an administration to grant access only to journalists who are favorable to its agenda, not those who will question or push back.  

Project 2025’s attacks on public broadcasting similarly signal a hostile attitude toward news media. Considering the former president’s rhetoric about them, it is not surprising that his advisors and staffers share his negative views of the “mainstream news.”¹⁹  In April, Mr. Trump himself called for NPR funding to be rescinded via his social media platform Truth Social, alleging, without providing evidence, the network is “a liberal disinformation machine.” Still, Project 2025’s policy recommendations should be cause for concern: Congress enacted the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act because they believed an educated and informed citizenry was in the public, local, and national interest and that, freed from commercial constraints, public service would be able to support these goals through creative, high quality, and diverse programming. Its status as an organization separate from the government is instrumental in ensuring its independence, as is its consideration as a public, not commercial, entity.  

Though the question of what is in the public interest is one that has long been discussed in regulatory, legal, and philosophical terms, it should not be political, or so we think. Disagreement with independent, free reporting should not be the cause for the punishment of media organizations. Defunding public broadcasting would be disastrous for many rural communities, which depend on radio and television stations funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and in which there is relatively high, albeit declining, bipartisan trust. Public broadcasting also allows newer, long-marginalized journalistic voices to be heard, provides educational entertainment for children, and includes programming which blurs the line between concepts of ‘hard news’ and what was long relegated to less important ‘soft news.’ And research shows a clear benefit of public media overall: When well-funded and independent, they are associated with healthy democracies. A diet of public news media leads to better-informed publics on hard news matters than a reliance on commercial news, and countries with a mix of public and private systems have a higher voter turnout than private-only media environments. For the 2024 fiscal year, $525 million were allocated for public broadcasting. This amounts to roughly $1.60 per U.S. citizen—a small price to pay for a commitment to an informed public at a time when, on average, the U.S. loses 2.5 newsrooms per week.  

Nonetheless, editors at NPR should not ignore declining audience numbers and debates around bias that have received renewed attention after an editor penned an essay deriding what he diagnosed as an encroachment of progressive advocacy into journalism. But lack of trust in mass media is a problem beyond public media, especially among conservatives, and accusations of bias are levelled also at private media companies. Audiences generally agree that to establish trust, news outlets should be transparent and conduct themselves in line with high ethical standards to produce fair and unbiased reporting. Public media should also prioritize coverage of issues that are relevant to their audience and that they, in their function as a public broadcaster, are uniquely positioned and mandated to report on, such as reporting on rural regions which are often underserved by commercial interests. Politicians can help solve the problem by refraining from accusations of propaganda and bias over unfavorable coverage, which is a driver for mis- and disinformation. Governments can also support efforts to strengthen the information ecosystem and media literacy.  

On Big Tech, Project 2025 is confrontational. From its authors’ viewpoint, tech companies have harmed the U.S. in three ways: national security, health, and freedom of speech.  

On national security, short-video platform TikTok takes center stage in the all-out assault. The authors, much like the Biden administration, assert that the app must be banned.²⁰ A similar fate would befall the messaging app WeChat.²¹ Both apps, the authors say, present a serious national security threat due to the opportunities for data collection and influence it offers the Chinese government.²² American social media, they say, should be prohibited from censoring Chinese users at the behest of the Chinese government and fined²³ if they are found to support Chinese surveillance, censorship, or the “Great Firewall”.²⁴ Fears surrounding the threat of Chinese influence extend beyond Project 2025’s social media policy: The U.S. should end dependency on Chinese chips and technology manufacturing²⁵ by reviving American industry,²⁶ ban the equipment used to spy on Americans by Chinese manufacturers,²⁷ and replace parts that are already in place.²⁸ The authors also consider restricting Chinese individuals or companies from investing in “cutting edge” technology firms²⁹ and funding research at American universities³⁰ to prevent national security threats, theft of intellectual property, and aid China in “unwittingly or wittingly” supporting Chinese tech ambitions.³¹  

Concerns about privacy, data collection, and sales of data are valid. In fact, it would do either administration well to enact comprehensive data privacy protections across digital platforms as opposed to focusing only on Chinese companies’ practices, as well as to address foreign interference by any entity on any social media platform. A TikTok ban alone would be insufficient in addressing any of these concerns. But privacy overall receives little attention beyond complaints that privacy legislation enforced by the European Union is tantamount to an allied “betrayal,”³² assertions that the Privacy Act should be carefully enforced to protect U.S. citizens and permanent residents only,³³ and calls to withdraw “politicized” HIPAA guidance on abortion privacy as HIPAA should protect the fetus.³⁴  

For the authors of the current volume of “Mandate for Leadership,” social media platforms have fared little better on child protection online, and the next administration should address what they term “industrial-scale child abuse.”³⁵ The authors allege that platforms, which they liken to drug dealers,³⁶ have made Americans less happy³⁷ and children mentally ill.³⁸ That Project 2025’s technology policy focuses on children’s media use should come as no surprise. A computational analysis of speeches held by the Chairs of the FCC spanning over the past two decades revealed that Republican FCC Chairs are more likely to prioritize topics related to media and children than their Democrat counterparts. But concern over children’s use of technology is bipartisan: Vivek Murthy, Surgeon General under both Biden and Obama, has named the health effects of social media as one of his administration’s priorities and in June called for warning labels for social media platforms, citing concerns about youth mental health. While the effect of social media on adolescent mental health is contested, protecting children from online data exploitation, exposure to harmful content, or being targeted through explicit AI-generated images are important policy goals. Project 2025’s rhetoric, however, provides few clear policy suggestions to do so and instead echoes language surrounding libraries and book bans, another battlefield in the culture wars.  

Lastly, social media platforms receive criticism for their role in undermining democratic processes and free speech. Project 2025 alleges several firms colluded with the Biden administration on censorship and illegally curtailed free expression under the guise of combatting mis- and disinformation.³⁹ Though the Supreme Court recently rejected this argument, the writers claim social media platforms represent a threat to American values, free speech, and the family.⁴⁰  Project 2025 argues that Big Tech, in cooperation with the Department of Justice, has shut down “politically disfavored speech” under the guise of combatting mis- and disinformation;⁴¹  lent their capabilities to authoritarian regimes to spread propaganda,⁴² and present a risk to the livelihood of American business and individuals through their discriminatory moderation and content ranking practices.⁴³  

To rein in Big Tech, Project 2025 envisions an overhaul of the FCC to halt Big Tech’s abuse of its dominance in the market through interferences in democratic processes and suppression of diverse opinions.⁴⁴ It is useful to point out, here, that the FCC has limited jurisdictional authority and thus may not be very effective in curtailing Big Tech’s market power. Project 2025 suggests using antidiscrimination provisions to protect “undesirable” political views and radically reforming the application of Section 230.⁴⁵ While Project 2025’s authors acknowledge companies should not be required to host illegal or profane content, they say Big Tech—including social media and service providers—should also not be able to rely on the protection of Section 230 if they censor protected political speech.⁴⁶ This regulation, the authors say, should focus on dominant platforms and exclude specialized platforms, newspapers’ comment sections, or subcommunities of larger platforms which moderate themselves.⁴⁷ Project 2025 also suggests that users should be able to curate their own experience, such as through the selection of their preferred content filters or fact checking agents.⁴⁸ This invocation of antidiscrimination runs counter to their text on the obliteration of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, especially given the myopic viewpoints of the document.  

Much of the public shares fears about the impact of social media on democratic processes and the information ecosystem. But the suggestions outlined in Project 2025 would do little to alleviate these fears. Users are already free to rely on their own fact checkers and disregard fact checks they do not consider worthy—this has not helped “post-truth” America. Some platforms also offer users the choice to mute or filter out certain phrases. And to some extent, algorithms might already end up curating timelines of content that reinforces the users’ existing beliefs. Further institutionalizing what would, in effect, be partisan existences on digital platforms would only reinforce polarization and ultimately hamper democracy.  

Section 230, which governs whether internet platforms should be held responsible for the content they post, remains a topic of debate across the political aisle. Courts and Congress must balance the risks of mandating platform over-moderating, thereby removing content for fear of litigation, and under-moderating, which could allow illegal or harmful content to flourish. Focusing legislation on large, dominant platforms is a common policy approach: Placing the same requirements on smaller, alternative platforms could stifle budding competition. Still, the law, as it is set out in Project 2025, could protect a number of small social media platforms associated with the authors of the paper and the administration that they envision, such as Trump’s own Truth Social, the user base of which pales in comparison to Meta’s mega-platforms, and r/The_Donald, one of the most active self-moderated subcommunities on Reddit prior to being banned for disregarding platform policy.

The antidiscrimination protections that Project 2025 speaks of refer to the must-carry laws enacted by Texas and Florida that posit platforms discriminated against viewpoints by removing COVID-19 misinformation. Both cases were considered by the Supreme Court but remanded back to lower courts. Leaving aside the danger misinformation presents to public health if allowed to spread unencumbered, must-carry laws could force platforms to host all manner of harmful content. Must carry-laws place political speech under protections which are intended to protect identities and to ensure algorithms do not discriminate against racialized or marginalized communities. This could create a paradox in which discriminatory speech is protected on platforms under antidiscrimination laws. To see how this kind of lax approach to content moderation turns out for users, companies, and advertisers, one need only to turn to X: Since its acquisition by Elon Musk, the platform has taken a hands-off approach to content moderation. As a result, users and advertisers alike have turned their back on a platform on which hate speech, spam, and explicit content prevail.  

Additional policy priorities for the FCC, according to Project 2025, include increasing agency accountability while decreasing wasteful spending, and promoting national security and economic prosperity.⁴⁹ While the authors lament that regulation on media ownership is outdated and stifles competition,⁵⁰ they also say adversary ownership of above 10% in any American entity should be transparently disclosed to ensure national security.⁵¹ To support economic prosperity, the administration should reduce the digital divide and expand connectivity for every American by supporting the expansion of 5G⁵² and satellites such as StarLink.⁵³ And the authors want Big Tech to pay up: The Universal Service Fund, currently funded through telephone bills, should be supported by the companies which benefit from them.⁵⁴ 

Project 2025 suggests a similar overhaul for the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) approach to Big Tech, which has been the agency leading the charge on antitrust enforcement. For the authors of “Mandate for Leadership,” Big Tech represents a significant departure from previous industries, one which requires hitherto accepted economic theory and antitrust law to be rethought and applied anew.⁵⁵ They see in Big Tech’s power the “possibility of real injury to the structure of important American institutions such as democratic accountability and speech,” and suggest this gives reason to apply antitrust laws more rigorously than previously.⁵⁶ They see evidence for collusion between the Biden White House and Big Tech on the censorship of scientific fact, “uncomfortable political truths,” and criticism.⁵⁷ Though disagreement among the authors of the volume is acknowledged on this point, Project 2025 argues that business concentration should no longer be considered in strictly economic terms, but also in the socio-political sense.⁵⁸ Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices;⁵⁹ “cancel culture”;⁶⁰ and the use of market power to advance a “leftist” agenda,⁶¹ they argue, all point to one conclusion: Big Tech poses a threat to American happiness and democracy, and antitrust law should consider this.⁶² There is some overlap with public sentiments and Democrat positions, here: People from both parties believe that social media companies censor certain viewpoints, and the Democratic Party, like the Republicans, recognize that Big Tech’s gatekeeping role in information sharing and public opinion building is fraught, though they reject assertions of collusion or censorship against Republican viewpoints. Democrats also agree that Big Tech’s monopoly power must be curbed.  Project 2025’s plan, however, would privilege the ideological, social, and political concerns of Trump’s Republican Party and discriminate against other viewpoints.  

Project 2025 correctly identifies that digital platforms function differently from earlier industries based on which antitrust law was conceptualized. Today, leading companies’ reach extends far into the private life of individuals and many democratic processes. The power this affords them should be monitored carefully and curtailed when they are found to abuse their economic prowess. In fact, there is bipartisan agreement on the role they have played in democratically erosive processes such as disinformation. “Mandate for Leadership,” however, proposes a dramatic overreach of the FTC’s responsibilities without providing substantive evidence of the collusion and censorship they are alleging. Companies are well within their rights to consider values and social considerations in their governance. It seems some in camp Trump would agree. In a post encouraging his followers to buy shares of a SPAC which merged with the “values-aligned” alternative online marketplace PublicSq in 2023, Donald Trump, Jr. voiced support for the parallel economy, alternatives to mainstream corporations based around American values.

On the topic of artificial intelligence (AI), Project 2025 focuses on the adversarial relationship with China: The U.S., according to them, must subvert China’s goal to become the global leader on AI.⁶³ To do so, the government should invest in and protect American innovation⁶⁴ while barring American companies from helping China achieve technological dominance.⁶⁵ The authors also envision the use of AI to support a variety of processes, such as the detection and disruption of foreign interference on social media⁶⁶ and the detection of Medicare and trade abuses.⁶⁷  

Project 2025’s AI policy is neither clear nor comprehensive. OpenAI, the key player in the market currently under FTC investigation, finds no mention in the 920-page volume, neither do its competitors. Privacy and copyright concerns related to the vast amounts of training data required to build AI seem to be of little concern, and so are the risk of job loss related to AI, the potential harm of AI-generated misleading content such as deepfakes, or its impact on energy consumption and climate change. Biden’s Executive Order on AI mandates principles such as standards for AI safety, protection of user privacy and civil rights, and promoting healthy competition and innovation. Trump has said he will reverse this Executive Order, claiming it is an example of government overreach. The AI industry is developing at a rapid pace: Comprehensive policy must be in place to protect individuals and societies, curtail abuses of power, and guide research in beneficial, safe directions.  

Trump continues to deny involvement in Project 2025 despite harboring close connections to its authors, praising it in the past, and even acknowledging in a speech in 2022 that the Heritage Foundation would write a detailed plan for the movement’s next administration. And the plans laid out in Agenda47, Trump’s own official policy agenda, closely echo those of Project 2025. In short videos on his campaign website former president Trump, though in much less detail than the 900-page volume, outlines his vision for a second term, which, on technology policy issues, includes investigations of Big Tech and the FBI for what he describes as an anti-American regime of censorship; intentions to block federal efforts to curb domestic mis- and disinformation, and the firing and investigating of employees engaged in this task in the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, or any other agency. He also plans to revise Section 230; limit social media’s ability to both moderate content and ban individuals from their platforms; and bring both the FCC and the FTC under presidential authority.

On technology and media policy, Project 2025 and Agenda47 have common themes: Plans to expand presidential power and limit departmental agency, accusations that technology companies and the government colluded in what they deem censorship, and restricting Chinese ownership and investments. Like the language used by the Heritage Foundation, Agenda47 ties Trump’s technology and communication policy to conservative values and ideals, saying: “The fight for Free Speech [capitalization in original] is a matter of victory or death for America—and for the survival of Western Civilization [capitalization in original] itself.” And both plans fail to provide detailed visions for how to regulate AI. The policy agendas mirror each other closely, and both suggest a vision for technology and communication policy that is both repressive and lax.  

The policy agenda outlined in Project 2025 is seemingly motivated by a sense of discrimination against conservative ideology.⁶⁸ The federal government, it says, has been “weaponized against conservative values,”⁶⁹ putting “liberty and freedom under siege.”⁷⁰ In response, the authors aim to weaken those institutions which they consider part of the attack. Their domestic enemies in technology and communication policy range from the mainstream media generally and public broadcasting specifically to Big Tech and includes the agencies which support and regulate them. If enacted, these policies could harm democracy by restricting press access to the administration and defunding those that report on them, create a mainstream internet landscape which mirrors unmoderated breeding grounds for extremism such as 4chan, and miss the opportunity to enact comprehensive and safe data protections and guardrails for AI.