A Democracy Drive Thread
The 900-page Heritage blueprint Trump claimed to know nothing about — now roughly half-enacted, and run by the people who wrote it.
During the 2024 campaign Trump insisted he knew nothing about Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” and the personnel pipeline built to staff a second term. Once in office, the people who wrote it filled his administration and much of its agenda became policy. This thread tracks that arc in chronological order, with sources: from the on-the-record disavowal to the independent trackers showing roughly half of the plan enacted within a year.
April 21, 2023
The Heritage Foundation and a coalition of conservative groups launched Project 2025 — a 900-plus-page “Mandate for Leadership” policy blueprint paired with a personnel database to staff the next Republican administration. Heritage president Kevin Roberts described the effort as a “second American Revolution.” Many of its 300-plus contributors were longtime Trump allies.
July 5, 2024
As the plan drew political fire, Trump disavowed it on Truth Social — “I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and … had nothing to do with it” — and his campaign insisted Agenda 47 was his only platform. The denial sat awkwardly with his 2022 praise of Heritage and his allies’ central role in writing it; weeks later Project 2025’s director, Paul Dans, stepped down amid the blowback. By October 2025, during the government shutdown, he had stopped distancing himself from it and openly embraced Project 2025 ahead of a meeting with one of its authors, budget director Russ Vought.
“I know nothing about Project 2025. … I have no idea who is in charge of it.”
January 15, 2025
In his own words
In a 2023 speech uncovered by ProPublica in October 2024, Vought said of career civil servants: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work… We want to put them in trauma.” Asked about it at his January 15, 2025 confirmation hearing, Vought said he “was referring to the bureaucracies that I believe have been weaponized.” The Senate confirmed him 53–47 on a party-line vote.
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected.”
January 20, 2025
On his first day back, Trump reinstated “Schedule F” (renamed “Schedule Policy/Career”), reclassifying career civil servants into an at-will category that can be fired at will — a central Project 2025 goal, for which Heritage had built a personnel database to fill up to tens of thousands of slots. A finalized rule put roughly 50,000 positions in scope; the administration also pushed “deferred resignations” that paid some 154,000 workers to leave, driving the federal workforce to its lowest level since the 1960s.
A first-day executive order (14168) decreed the federal government would recognize only two sexes, “male and female,” fixed “at conception.” It was followed by orders banning transgender people from military service and trans women from women’s sports, and restricting gender-affirming care for those under 19. Each tracked Project 2025, which had called for purging “gender ideology” from government.
January 21, 2025
Day-one orders terminated all federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs and rescinded Executive Order 11246, the 1965 rule requiring affirmative action by federal contractors; OPM shuttered every DEIA office within days. The administration then pressed the policy outward — conditioning Harvard’s funding on dropping DEI, opening investigations into companies and law firms, and blocking promotions of Black and female military officers — exactly the anti-DEI campaign Project 2025 prescribed.
January 27, 2025
Trump again pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement and set about dismantling federal climate work — moves Project 2025 spelled out in detail. The plan called for NOAA to be “broken up and downsized” and its climate research “disbanded”; the administration moved to eliminate NOAA’s research office, shut down climate.gov, ended the billion-dollar disaster database, and defunded the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
January 30, 2025
On the ground
A memo listed the “special observances” the Pentagon’s intelligence arm would no longer recognize.
February 1, 2025
Despite the disavowal, Project 2025 alumni filled key posts. Russ Vought — a principal author who wrote its chapter on remaking the executive branch and led its transition arm (drafting some 350 executive orders and regulations) — returned to run the Office of Management and Budget. Border czar Tom Homan, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and other contributors from the project’s 300-plus roster also took administration jobs.
February 3, 2025
The administration gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development — terminating thousands of programs, firing nearly all staff, and clawing back billions in foreign aid, with OMB chief Russ Vought saying he wanted such spending “as close to zero as possible.” Project 2025 and Vought had long targeted the foreign-aid apparatus; when Congress declined to formally abolish USAID, the administration moved to fund its closure by diverting $2 billion meant for global health programs.
February 9, 2025
Project 2025 called for abolishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau outright. Trump installed Russ Vought as its acting director; within days Vought issued a stop-work order, cut off the agency’s funding, canceled some $100 million in contracts, and began firing staff. Courts repeatedly intervened, ruling in December that Vought could not effectively shutter a congressionally created agency on his own.
February 15, 2025
On the ground
A GSA memo removed FAR clause 52.222-21, “Prohibition of Segregated Facilities.” Segregation remains illegal under the Civil Rights Act, but contracts no longer prohibit it explicitly.
February 25, 2025
In his own words
He added, “DEI was a hoax that has been very bad for our country. DEI is gone!!!”
“APPLE SHOULD GET RID OF DEI RULES, NOT JUST MAKE ADJUSTMENTS TO THEM. DEI WAS A HOAX THAT HAS BEEN VERY BAD FOR OUR COUNTRY. DEI IS GONE!!!”
February 27, 2025
On the ground
The site invited parents and students to report “divisive” teaching and DEI practices.
March 11, 2025
On the ground
The reductions left about 2,183 of the department’s roughly 4,100 employees. Asked on Fox News whether this was the first step to a total shutdown, McMahon said: “Yes, actually it is, because that was the president’s mandate as directed to me clearly is to shut down the Department of Education.” She acknowledged that only Congress can abolish the agency. A June 2026 inspector-general report found the layoffs hindered work Congress requires the department to do.
“Yes, actually it is, because that was the president’s mandate as directed to me clearly is to shut down the Department of Education.”
March 14, 2025
On the ground
The order “Additional Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions” removed the higher wage for workers on new government contracts.
March 17, 2025
On the ground
Broken links were labeled “DEI.” After public outcry, the Pentagon said it would restore some pages.
March 20, 2025
Trump signed an order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps” to close the department, after announcing layoffs of roughly 1,300 of its 4,000 staff. In July the Supreme Court cleared the mass layoffs to proceed. Eliminating the Education Department — and phasing out programs like Title I — was a longstanding Heritage goal written into Project 2025.
March 27, 2025
On the ground
Titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” the order says the Smithsonian has come under “a divisive, race-centered ideology” and calls for blocking funding for exhibits that “divide Americans by race.”
March 28, 2025
On the ground
In a letter to Disney CEO Bob Iger, Carr said the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau would examine whether Disney and ABC were “promoting invidious forms of DEI discrimination,” citing ABC’s 2020 inclusion standards for on-screen characters and writing staff. Carr had already opened probes into NBC’s parent Comcast and into NPR and PBS. He later threatened ABC’s broadcast licenses.
April 3, 2025
On the ground
On March 17, 2025, Acting EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, appointed by Trump, sent letters to 20 large law firms demanding information on their diversity hiring and fellowship programs. On April 3, Paxton led a 12-state coalition sending letters to the same firms, alleging diversity fellowships and hiring goals may violate anti-discrimination and deceptive-trade-practice laws, with responses due April 15. The pressure came as Trump was issuing executive orders punishing individual law firms over their clients and lawyers.
April 14, 2025
On the ground
Humanitarian aid would fall 54% and global health 55%. OMB said no final decisions were made.
April 15, 2025
Project 2025 urged Congress to “defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.” Trump issued an order to end federal funding for NPR and PBS and asked Congress to rescind the money; lawmakers then clawed back about $9 billion, including the $1.1 billion for the CPB. Though a judge blocked the executive order on First Amendment grounds, the rescission stood — and the CPB began winding down, its board voting to dissolve it on January 5, 2026.
April 22, 2025
On the ground
Rubio abolished the under secretary post overseeing human rights and democracy and folded the congressionally required human rights bureau under foreign assistance. Human rights groups and Sen. Dick Durbin warned it would gut monitoring of war crimes and democracy.
On the ground
The closed meeting heard from witnesses including a Navy SEAL disciplined over a COVID vaccine refusal and Christian universities fined under Biden.
April 23, 2025
On the ground
The order, titled “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy,” directs agencies to deprioritize enforcement of disparate-impact liability — the principle that policies with a discriminatory effect can be illegal even without proven intent — and revokes presidential approval of regulations applying it under Title VI. Agencies then began dropping existing cases, including housing and employment discrimination suits.
April 29, 2025
On the ground
The cuts were first publicized by activist Christopher Rufo. In October 2025 a federal judge ruled the cancellations likely violated the law.
On the ground
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon called the order a “historical wrong.”
May 1, 2025
On the ground
Executive Order 14290, signed late on May 1, 2025, declared that “neither entity presents a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events” and ordered the CPB and federal agencies to cease funding NPR and PBS and to root out indirect funding. PBS CEO Paula Kerger called it “blatantly unlawful.” NPR and PBS sued. In March 2026 a federal judge ruled the order violated the First Amendment.
“Neither entity presents a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events to tax-paying citizens.”
May 6, 2025
The administration moved on reproductive rights along the lines Project 2025 laid out. HHS Secretary RFK Jr. ordered a “review” of the abortion pill mifepristone — which Project 2025 wanted the FDA to withdraw — while the 2025 reconciliation law stripped Planned Parenthood of Medicaid funding, another explicit Project 2025 demand. The plan also urged DOJ to enforce the 1873 Comstock Act against mailing abortion pills.
May 8, 2025
On the ground
Hayden, confirmed in 2016 to a 10-year term, was dismissed in a late-night email on May 8, 2025, after a conservative group accused her of being “woke.” Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Hayden had done “quite concerning things… in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children.” The Library of Congress is a research library serving Congress; it does not lend books to children.
“There were quite concerning things that she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children.”
On the ground
NOAA posted a notice that the database would be archived and no longer updated, citing “evolving priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes.” Insurers, emergency planners, researchers and journalists relied on it to measure the growing cost of extreme weather. Its former lead economist, Adam Smith, rebuilt it at Climate Central; its first update in October 2025 showed more than $100 billion in losses in the first six months of 2025, the most expensive half-year since tracking began.
May 9, 2025
On the ground
The CRA also bars the agency from issuing a substantially similar rule.
May 12, 2025
Project 2025 declared that “pornography should be outlawed” and that those who produce it “should be imprisoned.” In May, Sen. Mike Lee and Rep. Mary Miller introduced the Interstate Obscenity Definition Act, which would rewrite the federal definition of obscenity and strip the intent requirement, making it far easier to prosecute the distribution of sexual content nationwide.
On the ground
In March the Congressional Budget Office had confirmed Republicans could not hit their budget target without major Medicare or Medicaid cuts. Democrats said millions would lose coverage.
May 15, 2025
On the ground
The rule, proposed in December 2024, would have treated data brokers that sell sensitive personal information as consumer reporting agencies under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, giving people rights to accuracy, dispute and consent. The CFPB withdrew it on May 15, 2025, saying it was “not necessary at this time,” after industry groups objected. Consumer advocates warned it leaves people exposed to scams, stalking and identity theft.
May 29, 2025
On the ground
The suit, filed May 29, 2025 under the Rehabilitation Act, challenged the January decision to drop interpreters. In November, Judge Amir Ali ordered ASL interpretation restored at briefings by Trump and press secretary Karoline Leavitt, ruling the decision illegally excluded deaf Americans from updates on “markets, medicine, militaries.” The White House appealed, with Justice Department lawyers arguing that interpretation “would severely intrude on the President’s prerogative to control the image he presents to the public.”
May 30, 2025
On the ground
The Smithsonian is independent of the executive branch, and it was unclear Trump had authority to fire her. Sajet resigned two weeks later, on June 13, 2025.
June 10, 2025
On the ground
Congress had ordered the Confederate names removed in a bipartisan 2021 law. The Army got around it by finding service members with the same last names to honor; Fort Lee, for example, is now named for Pvt. Fitz Lee, a Spanish-American War Medal of Honor recipient. The change stripped names chosen in 2023 to honor leaders including Dwight Eisenhower, Black soldiers and women, among them Gen. Richard Cavazos, the Army’s first Hispanic four-star, and Mary Edwards Walker, a Civil War doctor and Medal of Honor recipient.
June 23, 2025
On the ground
Senate Bill 5375 added priests, ministers, rabbis and imams to the list of people who must report child abuse or neglect. Civil Rights chief Harmeet Dhillon said laws targeting “the Sacrament of Confession” have “no place in our society.”
June 25, 2025
On the ground
In 2019 USAID backed the Jane Goodall Institute’s $29.5 million, five-year Landscape Conservation in Western Tanzania program protecting chimpanzee habitat and supporting local communities. After the administration’s cuts, the program lost its funding, putting 20 tree nurseries near Gombe at risk. Ecosia pledged $100,000 over three years to plant 360,000 seedlings and keep the nurseries running — a fraction of the lost funding. More than 98% of USAID’s conservation, biodiversity and climate programs were defunded.
July 1, 2025
On the ground
NOAA budget documents released July 1, 2025 detailed the plan: eliminate the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, cutting its funding by about 75%, and cut NOAA’s overall budget by more than 27%, ending funding for climate laboratories, cooperative institutes, regional climate data and Sea Grant. The NASA proposal would halt nearly every future science mission. The administration also moved to end the lease for the Mauna Loa observatory office, home of the Keeling Curve record of atmospheric CO2 since 1958.
On the ground
In November 2024 the CFPB found that Navy Federal, whose members are largely military families, charged “surprise” overdraft fees from 2017 to 2022 on transactions that had sufficient funds when approved, and ordered $80 million in refunds and a $15 million penalty. Under acting director Russell Vought, the bureau terminated the order with little explanation. By then the bureau had dismissed 22 public enforcement actions and ended or modified at least 10 settlements in which companies had agreed to compensate victims.
July 4, 2025
On the ground
Section 30001 of the law lowered the CFPB’s funding cap from 12% to 6.5% of the Federal Reserve’s 2009 operating expenses. Senate Republicans had initially proposed cutting its funding to zero. Since February, acting director Russell Vought had ordered staff to stop work, cancelled contracts, tried to fire most employees and ended the headquarters lease, before courts intervened; a judge said the administration acted with “complete disregard” for Congress.
July 11, 2025
On the ground
The Biden-era rule, finalized in January 2025, would have barred medical debt from credit reports and kept lenders from using medical information in loan decisions. Industry groups sued. Under Trump, the CFPB stopped defending its own rule and asked the court to vacate it; Judge Sean Jordan of the Eastern District of Texas did so on July 11, 2025, ruling the bureau exceeded its authority. The administration later took aim at state laws offering the same protection.
July 14, 2025
On the ground
In McMahon v. New York, an unsigned order lifted a lower-court injunction that had found Trump and McMahon lacked power to shutter the department. Roughly 1,400 employees were told they would be let go August 1. Trump said McMahon would begin “the process” of dismantling the department. Sotomayor wrote: “When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it.”
“When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it.”
July 18, 2025
On the ground
The Senate approved the package 51–48 after 2 a.m. on July 17, and the House gave final passage 216–213 early on July 18. It cancelled the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s funding for 2026 and 2027 and cut development aid, global health, refugee and disaster programs. Republican Reps. Mike Turner and Brian Fitzpatrick joined all Democrats in opposition. The Senate removed $400 million in proposed cuts to the PEPFAR HIV program.
July 21, 2025
On the ground
The law extended Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and paid for part of them with deep cuts to Medicaid and food aid. In February 2026, CBO raised its estimate to $4.7 trillion through 2035 once interest and economic effects were counted.
July 23, 2025
On the ground
The order, “Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government,” requires AI models used by the government to follow “unbiased AI principles,” defined to exclude concepts the administration opposes, and lets agencies demand vendors disclose system prompts and documentation. Because the federal government is a major customer, AI companies faced pressure to tune their products to the administration’s politics.
On the ground
At the July 23, 2025 launch, Trump said: “You can’t be expected to have a successful AI program when every single article, book or anything else that you’ve read or studied, you’re supposed to pay for. You just can’t do it because it’s not doable.” The plan prioritizes data centers and deregulation and tells agencies to contract only with AI developers whose models are “free from top-down ideological bias.” In 2026, his Justice Department backed OpenAI against The New York Times in its copyright case.
“You can’t be expected to have a successful AI program when every single article, book or anything else that you’ve read or studied, you’re supposed to pay for.”
July 24, 2025
On the ground
The July 24, 2025 order tells agencies to seek reversal of court precedents and end consent decrees that limit institutionalization, and moves federal policy away from “Housing First.” Trump later said civil confinement should be used to get unhoused people off the streets.
July 28, 2025
On the ground
Director Scott Kupor’s July 28, 2025 memo says supervisors can try to recruit employees to their religion as long as the efforts aren’t “harassing in nature,” and allows prayer groups and religious displays at work. It cites Trump’s February order against “anti-Christian weaponization of government.” The EEOC has said unwelcome proselytizing can amount to unlawful religious harassment.
July 31, 2025
On the ground
Announced in a January 28, 2025 mass email titled “Fork in the Road,” the program let employees resign while staying on paid leave with full benefits until September 30 or the end of 2025. The Washington Post reported more than 154,000 had taken it. In September 2026 GAO estimated the administration spent $9.5 billion on paid administrative leave in 2025, about $6.7 billion of it on deferred resignation. Some agencies later called the same workers back.
On the ground
The panel now says “only three presidents have seriously faced removal.” A person familiar with the plans said the change came from a content review the Smithsonian agreed to after the White House pushed out a museum director. The Smithsonian said the references would return in an update.
August 2, 2025
On the ground
The Washington Post reported that food bought with U.S. tax dollars to feed people in crisis had languished for months; 15,000 pounds of nutrition supplies in a Georgia warehouse expired before they could be shipped. Earlier, an inspector general warned that $489 million of food was at risk of spoiling in ports, in transit and in warehouses. Aid groups described supplies sitting miles from malnourished children.
August 4, 2025
On the ground
The statue went back up in October 2025. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton called it “an affront to the mostly Black and Brown residents of the District of Columbia.”
August 12, 2025
On the ground
An Aug. 12, 2025 letter to Secretary Lonnie Bunch said reviewers would examine exhibition text, social media and educational materials to “assess tone, historical framing, and alignment with American ideals,” and look at curatorial processes and future exhibition plans. The White House later released a list of exhibits and artworks it objected to.
On the ground
The reports had been finished under Biden; the Trump administration ordered them rewritten, delaying release past the usual spring date. Categories reported since the 1970s were dropped.
August 19, 2025
In his own words
In an Aug. 19, 2025 Truth Social post, a week after the White House ordered a content review of Smithsonian exhibits, Trump compared the effort to his crackdown on universities and complained the museums had “Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.” Lindsey Halligan, then a White House aide, said on Fox News there should be “more of an overemphasis on how far we’ve come since slavery.” The Organization of American Historians said no president has authority to impose such a review.
“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”
August 27, 2025
On the ground
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon cited a California EPA document titled “Practices to Advance Racial Equity in Workforce Planning,” asserting the agency may be using race or sex in hiring and promotion in violation of Title VII. The Air Resources Board — which sets California’s vehicle-emission standards and had been fighting the administration in court — was a central target.
August 28, 2025
On the ground
The Aug. 28, 2025 order ended collective bargaining with federal unions at agencies including NASA, the Patent and Trademark Office and the National Weather Service. It uses a national-security exemption in labor law; it does not make NASA part of the intelligence community. Three weeks later NASA told its unions they were no longer covered by their contracts. In December, the House voted to overturn Trump’s union orders.
September 3, 2025
On the ground
The exhibit, a partnership between the White House’s Task Force 250 and PragerU for America’s 250th anniversary, includes portraits and more than 40 AI-generated videos of historical figures speaking. NPR reported the videos blur history with fiction. It opened the same summer Congress, at Trump’s urging, eliminated funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
September 15, 2025
On the ground
Staff were told to take down signs at sites including Fort Pulaski, Harpers Ferry and the President’s House in Philadelphia, according to The Washington Post. Harpers Ferry staff flagged more than 30 signs. Philadelphia later sued over the removal of slavery exhibits at Independence National Historical Park.
September 24, 2025
On the ground
The Sept. 24, 2025 OMB memo said programs whose funding lapsed “are no longer statutorily required to be carried out” and directed agencies to consider reduction-in-force notices for employees in programs without other funding that are “not consistent with the President’s priorities.” In past shutdowns, workers were furloughed and returned. Firings began in October.
September 30, 2025
On the ground
The Sept. 30, 2025 votes reversed Biden-era expansions of the E-Rate program, which let schools and libraries use the discounts to keep people online outside the building. Carr had called school-bus Wi-Fi “illegal” funding for “unsupervised screen time for young kids.” Sen. Ed Markey said the move would “rip Wi-Fi from the hands of students and educators.” The program had committed about $48 million to school-bus Wi-Fi the year before.
October 1, 2025
On the ground
Vought announced the hold on October 1, 2025, saying the money must not flow “based on unconstitutional DEI principles.” The Gateway Hudson Tunnel is the most important rail project on the Northeast Corridor. The freeze was widely seen as pressure on the two Democratic leaders during the shutdown fight. Funding was later released after lawsuits; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said Trump had tried to trade the tunnel money for naming rights.
On the ground
HUD’s website warned that “The Radical Left are going to shut down the government.” The Small Business Administration put a full-screen red banner blaming Senate Democrats. Government ethics lawyer Kathleen Clark said the messages violate the Hatch Act, which bars using official resources for partisan politics, and House Oversight Democrats asked the Office of Special Counsel to investigate. HUD Secretary Scott Turner called the complaints a “distraction,” and Speaker Mike Johnson said the banner shared “the objective truth.”
October 2, 2025
During the October government shutdown, OMB Director Russ Vought executed the deconstruction Project 2025 had mapped: freezing tens of billions in infrastructure and clean-energy funds aimed largely at blue states and moving to mass-fire federal workers and dismantle agencies. Trump cast it openly as turning power over to the project — even posting an AI video depicting Vought as the Grim Reaper.
On the ground
Civil servants told reporters they had set nonpartisan messages from a department template, then found the wording altered while they were on furlough to state that Democrats had blocked funding. Employees said it made them appear to violate the Hatch Act, which limits political activity by federal workers. In November 2025 a federal judge ruled the department violated their free-speech rights by putting partisan words in their mouths.
In his own words
The 67-second video, a parody of “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” shows Vought walking past portraits of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Earlier that day Trump wrote he was meeting Vought to decide which of the “many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM” to cut, and whether permanently. He had openly described Vought as “of PROJECT 2025 Fame.” The band’s manager said Blue Öyster Cult was never asked about the use of its song.
October 7, 2025
On the ground
The draft OMB memo argued that back pay depends on Congress specifically appropriating it. The Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019, a bipartisan law Trump signed after the record 35-day shutdown, says federal workers “shall be paid” when a shutdown ends, and the Office of Personnel Management’s own guidance said the same. About 600,000 workers were furloughed. Sen. Patty Murray called it “lawless”: “They’re plotting to try and rob furloughed federal workers of back pay.”
October 9, 2025
On the ground
Politico reported on Oct. 7, 2025 that senior Education and Treasury officials were discussing selling high-performing portions of the portfolio, which is owed by about 45 million Americans. In November, more than 40 lawmakers led by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ayanna Pressley wrote that a sale “would be a giveaway to wealthy insiders at the expense of working-class borrowers and taxpayers.” In March 2026, the administration moved federal student loans to the Treasury Department.
October 10, 2025
On the ground
The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services lost nearly everyone except a handful of top officials in the October 10, 2025 reduction-in-force, part of about 4,200 layoffs across federal agencies announced by budget director Russ Vought. The office oversees about $15 billion in special-education funding and makes sure states comply with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. A judge paused the shutdown layoffs, and the deal ending the shutdown temporarily reversed them.
October 13, 2025
On the ground
The Pentagon confirmed on Oct. 24, 2025 that it had accepted the anonymous gift, after Trump announced that “a friend of mine” had offered it. The New York Times identified the donor as Mellon, who gave at least $197 million to Trump and Republicans in the 2024 cycle, including a $50 million contribution to a Trump super PAC. The gift covered only a fraction of the billions needed for military payroll. The Anti-Deficiency Act bars agencies from spending beyond what Congress appropriates or accepting voluntary services.
November 12, 2025
On the ground
The CFPB proposed on Nov. 12, 2025 that the 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act “does not authorize disparate-impact liability,” following Trump’s April executive order. It also proposed narrowing Special Purpose Credit Programs that let lenders offer targeted help to disadvantaged borrowers. The rule was finalized on April 21, 2026: lenders are no longer required to prevent policies with unintentionally discriminatory results, though explicit discrimination remains banned. Acting CFPB Director Russell Vought claimed the old rules had encouraged discrimination. Fair housing groups sued.
November 14, 2025
On the ground
The U.S. American Battle Monuments Commission is revealed to have quietly removed panels honoring Black WWII soldiers from the American cemetery in Margraten, the Netherlands. The Heritage Foundation had complained that they violated Trump’s anti-DEI orders. One panel told the story of George H. Pruitt, a Black soldier who drowned trying to save a comrade a month after the war ended.
On the ground
Trump’s Transportation Department formally scraps a Biden-era plan that would have required airlines to pay passengers $200 to $775 in cash for long delays they cause, calling it an “unnecessary regulatory burden.”
November 20, 2025
On the ground
The Washington Post reported in November 2025 that the updated harassment manual would no longer call swastikas, nooses and Confederate flags hate symbols, meaning supervisors could review how they were displayed instead of removing them. After an uproar, the Coast Guard said it would again prohibit them, but the “potentially divisive” wording quietly took effect anyway. Sens. Jacky Rosen and Tammy Duckworth put a hold on acting commandant Adm. Kevin Lunday’s confirmation, and only then did Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announce in December that the language would be removed. Rosen said DHS and Coast Guard leadership had been “evasive, misleading, and elusive.”
November 24, 2025
On the ground
An announcement was expected as soon as Nov. 24, 2025. The plan would have extended the enhanced ACA subsidies for two years while capping eligibility at 700% of the federal poverty line. Johnson told senior White House officials in a call that most House Republicans had little interest, and the rollout was pulled. Days earlier, Trump had told Congress not to “waste time” on the subsidies. With no deal, the enhanced subsidies expired at the end of 2025 and premiums jumped for millions of enrollees.
November 25, 2025
On the ground
In a draft memo to Congress reviewed by NPR, Hegseth called Scouting “genderless” and attacked it for promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. The plan would end military medical and logistical support for the National Jamboree, which Congress requires, bar Scout troops from meeting on bases at home and abroad, and end the advanced rank and pay given to Eagle Scouts who enlist. As many as 20% of service-academy cadets are Eagle Scouts. After backlash, including from Republicans, the Pentagon shifted in February 2026 toward negotiating terms to keep the partnership.
December 9, 2025
On the ground
Under the proposed Dec. 9, 2025 settlement, pending court approval, the department would stop enrolling borrowers in SAVE, deny all pending applications and move the roughly 7 million enrollees into other plans. SAVE offered payments as low as $0 for low-income borrowers and faster forgiveness. Republican attorneys general led by Missouri had sued over the plan. “Instead of choosing to defend a plan that would have been affordable for these borrowers, this Department of Education has capitulated,” said Persis Yu of Protect Borrowers, with 5.5 million borrowers already in default.
December 11, 2025
On the ground
Court filings reveal the Office of Head Start told preschool programs to strip nearly 200 words from their funding applications, including “disability,” “women,” “Black,” “tribal” and “mental health.” Federal law requires Head Start to serve children with disabilities and pregnant women, and the application asks programs to report on those services.
December 16, 2025
In his own words
Vought said on X that the National Science Foundation “will be breaking up” NCAR and that “any vital activities such as weather research will be moved.” NCAR’s overseers warned it would set back the nation’s ability to predict and respond to severe weather. CNN reported officials believed the move was meant to punish Colorado Gov. Jared Polis amid Trump’s feud with the state over imprisoned election-denier Tina Peters; a lawsuit later made the same allegation. Colorado’s senators blocked a spending bill in protest.
“one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country”
December 23, 2025
On the ground
About 5.5 million borrowers were in default. Garnishment notices were to start going to about 1,000 borrowers the week of January 7, increasing monthly. Collection through Treasury offsets had restarted in May 2025 after a pandemic-era pause. The administration later delayed garnishment to give borrowers time to move into new repayment plans available from July 1.
January 5, 2026
On the ground
The board voted on January 5, 2026 to shut down the organization that distributed federal money to NPR, PBS and more than 1,500 local radio and TV stations. CEO Patricia Harrison said dissolving was better than remaining “defunded and vulnerable to additional attacks.” Local stations, many in rural areas, were left to survive without federal support.
January 8, 2026
In his own words
Asked whether the protections that began with the 1964 Civil Rights Act led to discrimination against white men, Trump said: “White people were very badly treated, where they did extremely well and they were not invited to go into a university or a college.” He added: “It accomplished some very wonderful things, but it also hurt a lot of people — people that deserve to go to a college or deserve to get a job were unable to get a job. It was a reverse discrimination.” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said Trump “knows he is lying through his teeth,” that “deception is the point,” and that there is “zero evidence, none, that the civil rights movement harmed white people in any way.”
“White people were very badly treated.”
February 1, 2026
By early 2026 independent trackers found the administration had begun or completed roughly half of Project 2025’s domestic policy agenda — about 53%, or 283 of 532 catalogued actions, a year after inauguration, up from roughly 47% the previous fall. The plan Trump claimed to know nothing about had become the operating blueprint of his government.
February 27, 2026
On the ground
Hegseth announced the deal in a video on X, putting Scouting America “on notice” and saying the Pentagon would reassess support in six months. Scouting agreed to replace “politicized, divisive and discriminatory language,” scrap the Citizenship in Society badge, add a Military Service badge and limit participation to members’ biological sex, which PBS reported targets transgender youth. It kept its name and its girl members.
March 5, 2026
On the ground
Headcount fell from 2,313,216 to 2,035,344, the lowest level in at least a decade. Most departures came through buyouts, early retirement and deferred resignation rather than layoffs. The White House said continuing to cut the workforce remained “priority number one.”
March 27, 2026
On the ground
The New York Times and NPR reported that Hegseth pressed for months before removing the names himself. One, a Black armor officer and combat veteran, was apparently targeted over a paper he wrote 15 years earlier on why Black officers tend to choose support branches; a female logistics officer had served during the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal. NBC later reported Hegseth intervened in promotions for more than a dozen senior officers, and that 60% of 24 officers pulled from lists were Black or female. The Pentagon called the reporting “fake news.”
March 31, 2026
On the ground
Judge Randolph Moss of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found the May 2025 order “singles out two speakers and, on the basis of their speech, bars them from all federally funded programs.” He wrote that the First Amendment forbids using “the power of the purse ‘to punish or suppress disfavored expression.’” The ruling restored NPR’s eligibility for other federal programs, but could not undo the funding Congress had already cancelled.
“The First Amendment draws a line, which the government may not cross, at efforts to use government power – including the power of the purse – “to punish or suppress disfavored expression” by others.”