ByMike Wendling,BBC News
A proposed Republican Party platform is expected to be approved at the party’s national convention next week, but a much more detailed think-tank proposal has drawn attention for some of its suggestions.
Project 2025 was created by the Heritage Foundation think tank and runs for nearly 900 pages.
Spearheaded by former Trump administration officials, it calls for the sacking of thousands of civil servants, expanding the power of the president, dismantling the Department of Education, sweeping tax cuts, a ban on p*rnography, halting sales of the abortion pill, and a whole lot more.
Donald Trump has attempted to distance himself from the document, while Democrats have sought to highlight the proposals, which they say are hints at what might happen during a second Trump term.
It is common for Washington think-tanks of all political stripes to propose policy wishlists for potential governments-in-waiting.
The conservative Heritage Foundation has been producing policy blueprints for future Republican administrations since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980.
The current Project 2025 report was unveiled in April 2023. Many of the proposals would likely face immediate legal challenges if implemented.
There has been a spike of attention around the document recently. Liberal opposition has ramped up now that Trump extended his polling lead in the wake of President Joe Biden's poor debate performance.
The recent US Supreme Court decision that strengthened presidential immunity has further worried Democrats about what the former president might achieve if he returned to the White House.
With Mr Biden's age increasingly a key election topic, the party has aimed to refocus their supporters' attention in an effort to mobilise voters against Project 2025 - which Mr Biden recently said would "destroy America".
In response, Trump has disavowed the document.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump posted on his social media website, Truth Social. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”
But the project is chock full of former Trump advisers, including director Paul Dans, who was chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management while Trump was president.
Russell Vought, another former Trump administration official, wrote a key chapter in the document and also serves as the Republican National Committee’s 2024 platform policy director.
More than 100 conservative organisations contributed to the document, Heritage says, including many that would be hugely influential in Washington if Republicans take back the White House.
In early July, Heritage president Kevin Roberts further stoked the ire around Project 25 by raising the prospect of political violence during a podcast interview.
“We are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” Mr Roberts told the War Room podcast, founded by Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
In response, the Biden campaign accused Trump and his allies of "dreaming of a violent revolution to destroy the very idea of America".
The Project 2025 document claims four main policy aims: restore the family as the centrepiece of American life; dismantle the administrative state; defend the nation’s sovereignty and borders; and secure God-given individual rights to live freely.
Here’s an outline of several of its key proposals.
Project 2025 proposes that the entire federal bureaucracy, including independent agencies such as the Department of Justice, be placed under direct presidential control - a controversial idea known as “unitary executive theory”.
In practice, that would streamline decision-making, allowing the president to directly implement policies in a number of areas.
The proposals also call for eliminating job protections for thousands of government employees, who could then be replaced by political appointees.
The document labels the FBI a “bloated, arrogant, increasingly lawless organization”. It calls for drastic overhauls of this and several other federal agencies, as well as the complete elimination of the Department of Education.
Increased funding for a wall on the US-Mexico border - one of Trump’s signature proposals in 2016 - is proposed in the document.
Project 2025 also proposes dismantling the Department of Homeland Security and combining it with other immigration enforcement units in other agencies, creating a much larger and more powerful border policing operation.
Other proposals include eliminating visa categories for crime and human trafficking victims, increasing fees on immigrants and allowing fast-tracked applications for migrants who pay a premium.
The document proposes slashing federal money for research and investment in renewable energy sources, and calls for the next president to "stop the war on oil and natural gas”.
Carbon-reduction goals would be replaced by efforts to increase energy production and energy security.
The paper sets out two competing visions on tariffs, and is divided on whether the next president should try to boost free trade or raise barriers to imports.
But the economic advisers suggest that a second Trump administration should slash corporate and income taxes, abolish the Federal Reserve and even consider a return to gold-backed currency.
Project 2025 does not call for a nationwide abortion ban.
However, it proposes withdrawing the abortion pill mifepristone from the market, and using existing but little-enforced laws to stop the drug being sent through the post.
The document suggests that the department of Health and Human Services should "maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family."
Under the proposals, p*rnography would be banned, and tech and telecoms companies that facilitate access to such content would be shut down.
The document calls for school choice and parental control over schools, and takes aim at what it calls “woke propaganda”.
It proposes to eliminate a long list of terms from all laws and federal regulations, including “sexual orientation", “gender equality”, "abortion" and “reproductive rights”.
Project 2025 aims to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs in schools and government departments as part of what it describes as a wider crackdown on "woke" ideology.
Project 2025 is backed by a $22m (£17m) budget and includes strategies for implementing policies immediately after the presidential inauguration in January 2025.
Heritage is also creating a database of conservative loyalists to fill government positions.
Democrats led by Jared Huffman, a congressman from California, have launched a Stop Project 2025 Task Force.
