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In case you wondered what all the political noise is about!

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Project 2025 provides a roadmap for “the next conservative President” to downsize the federal government and fundamentally change how it works, including the tax system, immigration enforcement, social welfare programs, and energy policy, particularly those designed to address climate change.

It also wades deeply into the culture war that has been dividing the country. Project 2025 calls for abolishing the teaching of “‘critical race theory’ and ‘gender ideology’” in public schools, and “deleting” terms such as “diversity, equity and inclusion,” “gender equity,” and “reproductive health” from “every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant … and piece of legislation that exists.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has sought to tie Donald Trump to the 887-page book, which was written in part by the former president’s aides. Harris and Democrats refer to the plan as “Trump’s Project 2025 agenda,” and cite it as evidence (not always accurately) of what Trump will do as president, particularly on hot-button issues such as Social Security, Medicare, and abortion.

For his part, Trump has claimed he knows nothing about the plan, and his campaign said that Project 2025 “should not be associated with the campaign.”

Here, we take a look at the plan: what’s in it, who wrote it and what the candidates have said about it.

Who funded and wrote Project 2025?

The project is being led and funded by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy think tank founded in 1973. In addition to Heritage, there are more than 100 conservative organizations on Project 2025’s advisory board. Among those “coalition partners” are the Center for Immigration Studies, Moms for Liberty, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Tea Party Patriots, Turning Point USA, and America First Legal Foundation, which is headed by Stephen Miller, a former Trump senior adviser.

The project’s policy agenda was published online as a book titled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.” The book has 30 chapters, each credited to one or more of its 35 primary authors and editors — although the final product includes input from “hundreds of contributors,” the project’s organizers said in a press release.

It’s the ninth edition in the “Mandate for Leadership” series, the first of which was published in 1981, during the Reagan administration. According to its authors, earlier editions have had success in influencing government policies.

“The Reagan administration implemented nearly half of the ideas included in the first edition by the end of his first year in office, while the Trump administration embraced nearly 64% of the 2016 edition’s policy solutions after one year,” the Heritage Foundation said in a press release announcing Project 2025.

Some of the notable authors of this most recent version include Dr. Ben Carson, Christopher Miller, and Russ Vought, who are all former Cabinet secretaries under Trump. Carson, who wrote the book’s chapter on housing, was the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development; Miller, who wrote the chapter on defense, was an acting secretary of the Department of Defense; and Vought, who directed the Office of Management and Budget, wrote the chapter about the executive office of the U.S. president.

Ken Cuccinelli, who was a deputy secretary for Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, and Peter Navarro, Trump’s White House adviser on trade, also penned book chapters.

“In fact, at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025,” a CNN review found.

The book is one of “four pillars” that will be available to the next conservative president. The other pillars are:

• A personnel database, which will allow Project 2025 coalition members to “review and voice their recommendations” for appointments.

• A “Presidential Administration Academy” to teach new hires “how the government functions and how to function in government.”

• A second document — “the Playbook” — which will include “transition plans” to allow the next president to implement plans quickly.

What does Project 2025 propose?

Project 2025 attempts to put “in one place a consensus view of how major federal agencies must be governed.”

We cannot summarize all of its proposals, but here are some examples:

Abortion: Project 2025 describes the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, as “just the beginning.”

“Conservatives in the states and in Washington, including in the next conservative Administration, should push as hard as possible to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction in America,” the book states. “In particular, the next conservative President should work with Congress to enact the most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support while deploying existing federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously complying with statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion.”

The book calls on the Department of Health and Human Services to protect “the health and well-being of all Americans,” beginning at conception, and to end mandatory health insurance coverage of Ella, an emergency contraceptive that Project 2025 describes as a “potential abortifacient.” It also advocates using an 1873 anti-vice law to block abortion pills from being sent via the mail. (More about that later.)

The book also calls for ending federal funding for “Planned Parenthood and all other abortion providers and redirect[ing] funding to health centers that provide real health care to women.” As we have written before, Planned Parenthood provides more than abortion services. In its 2022-2023 annual report, Planned Parenthood said it provided 4.6 million tests and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, 2.25 million contraception services, 464,021 cancer screenings and prevention services (mostly breast exams and Pap tests), and 1.1 million pregnancy tests and prenatal services.

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In the Trump administration’s ongoing race to make the U.S. poorer, sicker, and dumber, one more stomp on the accelerator comes from cuts aimed against its federal advisory committees. Whether on infectious diseases or space exploration, these panels of experts are the unpaid brains behind the brawn of the U.S. government.

With its signature disdain for anything smacking of smarts or competence, the Trump administration now aims to destroy or neutralize them. In a February 19 executive order, Donald Trump directed his staff to compile a list of “Federal Advisory Committees that should be terminated on grounds that they are unnecessary.” The order directly terminated the HHS Advisory Committee on Long COVID (a syndrome afflicting 23 million people in the U.S. right now) and the Health Equity Advisory Committee, which sought to help underserved people access care like blood pressure medication or postpartum treatment, through Medicare and Medicaid. Since then NOAA has closed several of its advisory panels, NSF closed a dozen, NASA has consolidated its wildly disparate astrophysics, biological and physical sciences, Earth science, heliophysics and planetary sciences panels into one body, and the U.S. Geological Survey closed its new scientific integrity body, alongside five others at the Department of Interior that included a climate adaptation panel. “This means that you, the public, will be more at-risk of being harmed because the scientific integrity and misconduct issues that were prevalent before will continue to persist,” wrote integrity panel member Jacob Carter. He called the committee’s cancellation, “an indicator that this administration has no intention to uphold scientific evidence in its decisions.”He’s right; contrary to the executive order, these committees matter. Cutting away advisory panels hurts everyone and leaves the U.S. government uninformed when making critical decisions that affect millions of lives, alongside a public left in the dark about what advice agencies do receive. These advisors, a “fifth arm of the government,” have long served as a thorn in the side of polluters and lobbyists, putting them under siege for decades, and doubtless in the gunsights of the giddily for-sale Trump administration. A 2021 Ecology Law Quarterly review found past end runs around advisory committees were linked to lead pollution, fracking contamination of drinking water, and worse air quality.

Federal advisory committees operate under a 1972 law, which governs the roughly 1,000 expert committees advising federal agencies on evidence-based practices on issues like boating safety or railroad retirement benefits at a yearly cost of $400 million. The panels are a bargain, providing by law “fairly balanced” expert advice that includes disclosing financial conflicts of interest and providing information openly to the public. The best-known examples from the pandemic were those FDA and CDC panels that voted on the safety and rollout of COVID-19 vaccines to much attention.

History repeats when it comes to attacks on advisory panels. In 2019, Trump ordered a one-third cut in the number of them. The order took aim at science panels at NASA, the NSF, and the Energy Department, in particular. The first Trump administration’s sheer incompetence kept many of those kinds of closures at bay. His then EPA chief resorted to stuffing a clean air panel with industry stooges instead, and an antiabortion advocates panel lacking any scientific credibility was whipped up to eliminate fetal tissue research at NIH.

Now, however, the crush of executive orders and disregard for Congress seen in the first 100 days of the new regime make things look even more dire. The dangerous, unqualified HHS chief Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has forced out top FDA vaccine official Peter Marks, who oversaw the vaccine panel that held steadily to public health principles during the pandemic, refusing to bend to Trump’s demand for an “October Surprise” vaccine to save himself in the 2020 election. All Department of Homeland Security advisory committees members were fired in January, halting a probe into a massive Chinese breach of U.S. telecommunications infrastructure.

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The US Department of Education is resuming collection efforts on defaulted student loans starting on Monday. If you’re more than nine months behind on your student loan payments, that means your wages could be garnished as soon as this summer.

It may sound scary, but wage garnishment to pay off a debt isn’t new. Currently, some Americans have their wages garnished to pay back taxes, child support, and other debt, including student loans. It just might feel “new” since there were protections in place to allow borrowers in default time to catch up since the COVID-19 pandemic. But starting in May, payments will begin to come due.

“This is actually the norm,” said Elaine Rubin, a student loan expert and corporate communications director for Edvisors. “If a loan is in default, then actions will be taken to then collect on the default loan.”

Student loans are considered in default after you’ve missed 270 days of payments (excluding payment pauses). It’s estimated that 5 million borrowers are in default and will have their loans sent to collections next week. If you’re one of them, here’s what you need to know.

When will the government start garnishing wages for student debt?

There’s less than a week left to pull your loans out of default, with the administration indicating it plans to restart collection efforts on May 5. However, that doesn’t mean you’ll see a hit to your paycheck starting next week. The Department of Education has to notify you 30 days ahead of your wage garnishment.

Expect your defaulted student loan account to move from your current servicer to a private collections agency around the beginning of May and wage garnishment to begin about one month later, Rubin explained.

Will SAVE borrowers have their wages garnished? 

There’s a lot of confusion on Reddit and social media about how wage garnishment will affect SAVE borrowers. If you’re enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education plan, your loans have been placed in an administrative forbearance since last summer. With SAVE on hold, millions of borrowers have not been required to make payments, which has led to some wondering if that means their loans are in default.

“It is confusing, because they haven’t been making a payment and believe that it could be at risk of defaulting,” said Rubin. “If you’re not required to make a payment because you’re in an approved forbearance, a deferment, or you actually have a $0 IDR payment, technically, you’re making a payment in that situation.”

The best way to check if your loans are in default is to visit StudentAid.gov or your loan servicer’s website to check your loan standing.

How will I know if my wages are being garnished?

You can check to see your current loan standing on the StudentAid.gov website or by logging into your loan servicer’s website. If your loans are in default and the Department of Education begins the collections process on your debt, you’ll receive a letter in the mail from the department 30 days in advance. This letter will contain your options, including the ability to voluntarily reenter repayment or object to having your wages offset.

How much can the government pull from my paycheck?

The federal government will pull a percentage of your take-home pay (the amount you receive after deductions) to put toward your student loan debt — up to 15%. It won’t take all of your paycheck. Your tax refund or Social Security benefits could also be garnished.

Can I prevent my wages from being garnished?

Yes, there are steps you can take to avoid wage garnishment, but they may not be feasible for everyone.

“As far as 100% preventing it, not everyone is going to be able to do that,” Rubin said. The two best options for most borrowers will be applying for a loan rehabilitation or direct loan consolidation. The third is to pay your loan in full, which Rubin acknowledged will not be possible for most borrowers. 

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CLIMATEWIRE | Time magazine selected Elon Musk as its “person of the year” in 2021 after the billionaire entrepreneur upended the car market, reinvigorated the space industry, and funded a $100 million competition for climate technologies that would remove carbon dioxide from the air and sea.

But Musk won’t attend Time’s event in New York City on Wednesday to fete the winners of that groundbreaking contest. The $50 million grand prize will go to Mati Carbon, a Houston-based startup founded three years ago that works with crushed rocks and subsistence farmers to soak up climate pollution.

It’s unclear why Musk, an environmental hero turned MAGA diehard, is skipping the capstone event for a climate contest bankrolled via his eponymous foundation. Neither he nor Time responded to requests for comment. The XPrize will be announced at the Time100 Summit, the magazine’s annual event featuring 100 influential people.

In addition to running electric-vehicle-maker Tesla and the aerospace firm SpaceX, Musk is leading President Donald Trump’s effort to downsize the federal government. The Department of Government Efficiency has slashed climate funding for research, projects and agencies.

“We live in very complicated times,” said Nikki Batchelor, who led the Musk-funded carbon removal competition at the XPrize Foundation. Prior to joining the nonprofit, she worked as an innovation adviser for the U.S. Agency for International Development — the first federal bureau effectively shuttered by Musk. (Musk has no ties to the three-decade-old foundation aside from being a donor.)

“He was one of the leading voices trying to push clean energy forward and think about innovative solutions to tackling climate change,” she said of Musk, the world’s richest person. “We’ve continued on with that.”

Batchelor spoke with POLITICO’s E&E News before XPrize publicly announced the final carbon removal contest winners, each of which removed at least 1,000 tons of CO2 in a year and provided a business plan for how they’ll reach 1 million tons annually. Since 2019, carbon removal companies have locked away about 650,000 tons in total, less than the annual emissions of two natural gas power plants.

The runners-up were NetZero, Vaulted Deep, and Undo Carbon, which netted prizes of $15 million, $8 million, and $5 million, respectively. Undo Carbon uses an enhanced rock weathering approach similar to Mati to remove CO2 from the air faster than the natural carbon cycle. NetZero and Vaulted Deep both lock away CO2 by preventing carbon-rich organic matter from biodegrading.

Commercializing carbon removal technologies is important because the world is unlikely to reduce the burning of oil, gas, and coal quickly enough to prevent the buildup of dangerous levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and oceans. As a result, climate scientists have concluded that it will be necessary in the coming decades to increase the Earth’s carbon removal capacity by billions of metric tons annually.

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“The Department will also authorize guaranty agencies that they may begin involuntary collections activities on loans under the Federal Family Education Loan Program,” per the press release. There is the disclaimer, though, that “all FSA collection activities are required under the Higher Education Act and conducted only after student and parent borrowers have been provided sufficient notice and opportunity to repay their loans under the law.”

Involuntary collections are “one of the harshest consequences borrowers can face when federal student loans fall into default,” says Ken Ruggiero, co-founder and CEO of Ascent Funding, an education loan provider. This occurs typically after 270 days, or close to nine months, of missed payments.

“It’s an aggressive, automated system that often catches borrowers off guard and deepens their financial hardship,” says Ruggiero. “In addition to the financial hardship, the student borrower is often embarrassed when their employer is notified and then implements wage garnishments.”

Here is what student borrowers should know about involuntary collections, and the advice experts offer:

What can be withheld under involuntary collections?

Through involuntary collections, the government can garnish wages, withhold tax refunds, and seize portions of Social Security checks and other benefit payments to go toward paying back the federal loan.

According to the Treasury Department, for those who have defaulted on their federal loans, the Treasury Offset Program can withhold to 100% of federal tax refunds, up to 15% of federal salaries, up to 15% of Social Security and Railroad Retirement benefits, up to 25% of federal retirement payments, 100% of payments to vendors, and 100% of travel payments for federal employees

Wage garnishment, which the Education Department’s announcement said will begin late in the summer, is when your loan holder can order your employer to withhold up to 15% of your disposable pay to collect your defaulted debt, without taking you to court.

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Students studying in a library.Maskot—Getty Images

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