Donald Trump has been working hard to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a blueprint for a second Trump administration that would radically reshape the federal government and American life.
Among other proposals, such as dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, the plan outlines how the government could keep detailed records on abortions and even obtain pregnant patients’ medical records without their consent.
As a whole, Project 2025 is highly controversial. Trump’s campaign leapt at the chance to disparage it once again on Tuesday, with the news that the project’s director, Paul Dans, was stepping down.
“President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way,” Trump spokespeople Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a statement.
“Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.”
But reporting indicates that the ties between Project 2025 and Trump’s campaign run deep. At least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration — including six former members of his cabinet — have been involved in the project, according to an investigation by CNN. At least 31 out of 38 people named as authors or editors on the 900-page plan are tied to Trump, USA Today reported.
There is evidence that, if elected, Trump and his vice presidential pick, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), would permit or even encourage the type of Orwellian surveillance described in Project 2025.
For one, Trump has already expressed clear disinterest in preventing conservative states from enacting draconian policies on abortion and pregnancy.
He has emphasized how the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade was about “returning” the issue of abortion “to the states,” for each to decide their own policy. Trump claimed during a Wednesday interview that the vast majority of Americans on both sides of the aisle say they wanted it that way, even though the decision to overturn Roe has been wildly unpopular.
Asked specifically by Time magazine in April whether states should monitor pregnancies for evidence of abortion, Trump responded, “I think they might do that.” Asked again the following month about states monitoring pregnancies, Trump told a Pennsylvania radio station that “everything having to do with that question is now in the hands of the states.”
Vance has been much more direct. He has made no secret of the fact that he wants people to have more children. Vance also voiced support for a national abortion ban in 2022, conjuring an absurd scenario where liberal megadonor and conservative bogeyman George Soros “load[s] up” jets with Black pregnant women from Ohio to fly them to California so they can end their pregnancies. He suggested that if people are leaving states that ban abortion, the federal government should intervene to make people “respect” the bans.
Last summer, Vance was among more than two dozen conservative senators to sign a letter opposing a rule implemented by President Joe Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services that prevents police and prosecutors from getting ahold of reproductive health care records. The rule, which went into effect last month, is intended to stop such medical information from being used against patients who seek legal health care — such as abortion, in states or under circumstances where abortion is legal — or against the doctors who provide it.
The letter signed by Vance claims the Biden rule “unlawfully thwarts the enforcement of compassionate laws” against abortion and “directs health care providers to defy lawful court orders and search warrants.”
“Abortion is not health care — it is a brutal act that destroys the life of an unborn child and hurts women,” the letter reads.
A Trump-Vance presidency could see the Biden administration’s rule erased, allowing police and prosecutors in states led by Republicans to more easily go after people who decide to end their pregnancies.
The rule also only goes so far — it doesn’t protect data from mobile phones, where many people track their menstrual cycles using apps. (The rule modifies the Health Insurance Portability And Accountability Act of 1996, known as HIPAA, which does not cover digital data.)
“Donald Trump and his allies want to monitor people’s pregnancies in order to track and prosecute people for their pregnancy outcomes,” Jenny Lawson, executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes, told HuffPost.
Project 2025 indeed calls for such government tracking — under penalty of loss of federal health funding for states that don’t comply.
“Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism, HHS should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method,” it reads.
“It should also ensure that statistics are separated by category: spontaneous miscarriage; treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child (such as chemotherapy); stillbirths; and induced abortion. In addition, CDC should require monitoring and reporting for complications due to abortion and every instance of children being born alive after an abortion,” the plan stated.
The recommendations on abortion were written by a Trump-era HHS official, Roger Severino, according to Rolling Stone.
Another section states that “the [Center for Disease Control]’s abortion surveillance and maternal mortality reporting systems are woefully inadequate.” The plan calls for “comparisons between live births and abortion” to be “tracked across various demographic indicators to assess whether certain populations are targeted by abortion providers.”
“This isn’t about policy, it’s about control,” Emilia Rowland, national press secretary for the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement.
“Because of Trump, prosecutors looking to enforce draconian anti-abortion laws in the states are now free to go after reproductive health data in mobile apps. But Trump and Vance’s Project 2025 agenda would go even further — calling for every abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth, and incidental pregnancy loss from medical treatments like chemo to be reported to the federal government under a Trump administration, tearing away health data privacy protections under HIPAA, and allowing states to surveil patients and doctors, monitor pregnancies, restrict women’s freedom to travel for abortion care, and ultimately use health data against patients and providers in court,” Rowland said.
HuffPost reached out to the Trump campaign for comment but did not receive a reply.
Some right-wing lawmakers have worked to make sure surveillance is an option even in purple states like Virginia, where Republicans blocked a bill that would have protected data from period-tracking apps from law enforcement.
Lawson said Trump and Vance “are hellbent on banning abortion nationwide — even in states who have acted to protect abortion access.”
“It’s unconscionable, and Planned Parenthood Votes will remind voters this election what is at stake.”