Near the end of last year, the Heritage Foundation unveiled Project 2025, a sweeping, 900-page document that outlines their vision for a second Trump administration. Authored by key leaders of the former administration and Trump’s campaign team, this document lays the groundwork for Trump’s policy agenda, should he defeat Vice President Harris in the 2024 election.
Trump’s Project 2025 is wildly unpopular.
Donald Trump is attempting to distance himself from his own agenda in public, but his private comments reveal that this is very much the Trump plan for his second term. At a keynote dinner for the Heritage Foundation, Trump told the authors of Project 2025 “This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.” The authors of Project 2025 have no such hesitation in identifying exactly who this document is for: “one set of eyes reading these passages will be those of the 47th President of the United States” (page xiii).
Project 2025 is Trump’s agenda and Trump’s agenda is Project 2025.
While the ocean is not the central focus of Trump’s Project 2025, ocean issues, especially those related to climate change, are scattered throughout the agenda. The Heritage Foundation wants to excise any policy related to climate change from the federal government, resulting in dramatic reductions in military readiness, severally degraded infrastructure, incalculable economic damage, and a massive reduction in quality of life for American citizens.
Eliminating NOAA, which earned the former president’s ire by correcting his bizarre attempt to edit the path of a hurricane, is a core goal of the Trump Agenda.
The End of NOAA
Perhaps the most significant, existential threat to ocean science, conservation, and management within Trump’s Project 2025 Agenda is the plan to dismantle NOAA:
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.
Trump’s Project 2025, page 664
NOAA’s $6.6 billion budget covers the vast majority of funding for climate science and marine scientific research. NOAA provides weather services and hurricane projections. NOAA monitors sunspot activity. The NOAA Officers Corps is one of the eight uniformed services, along with the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Space Force, Coast Guard, and Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.
Trump’s Project 2025 views NOAA as predominantly a “driver of the climate change alarm industry” and “is harmful to future U.S. prosperity (page 675).” Trump’s agenda calls for eliminating all climate programming and privatizing the Weather Service.
Privatize the National Weather Service (page 675)
Farmers, mariners, fishermen, transportation workers, and everyone whose work requires accurate weather predictions depend on the National Weather Service (NWS) to make those predictions. Under the current system, the Weather Service provides its data to private companies, who use it to feed their predictive models. While it does provide free weather forecasts, the National Weather Service itself is not allowed to develop its own forecasting app that competes with commercial options.
Trump’s agenda claims that “Studies have found that the forecasts and warnings provided by the private companies are more reliable than those provided by the [National Weather Service].” Curiously, the only source provided for these claims is a press release from AccuWeather that does not address the accuracy of the National Weather Service, upon which their models depend.
Trump’s Project 2025 proposes privatizing the National Weather Service, a move that would dramatically increase the cost of weather prediction applications and lock essential weather warnings behind a paywall. AccuWeather has disavowed the agenda with the CEO, Steven R. Smith stating “AccuWeather does not agree with the view, and AccuWeather has not suggested, that the National Weather Service should fully commercialize its operations. The authors of Project 2025 used us as an example of forecasts and warnings provided by private sector companies without the knowledge or permission of AccuWeather.”
Trump’s Project 2025 would deprive Americans of the accurate weather data for which they have already paid.
Hamstring the National Hurricane Center (page 675)
Trump’s Project 2025 demands that the National Hurricane Center not use climate change models in their hurricane predictions: “Data collected by the department should be presented neutrally, without
adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate.” Climate models are essential for accurate hurricane predictions. The Hurricane Center had a near perfect projection of the path and scale of Hurricane Beryl, a projection that could only be possible by incorporating climate change data.
The Agenda also reduces, with a goal of eliminating, the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which provides high level scientific research into weather and climate which are essential to accurate long-term climate forecasting.
Trump’s Project 2025 would make hurricane predictions worse, exposing coastal communities to life threatening storms with little warning.
Eliminate the National Ocean Service (page 677)
Trump’s Project 20205 proposes to eliminate the National Ocean Service, transfer NOS survey functions to the Coast Guard and Geological Survey, and functionally dissolve the National Marine Sanctuaries System. Trump’s Agenda would rescind the 30×30 Executive Order to protect 30% of US lands and waters by 2030 and rescind the America the Beautiful Initiative, a locally led and voluntary nationwide effort to restore and conserve America’s lands, waters, and wildlife. Trump’s Agenda calls for rescinding 30×30 (page 531) and vacating the secretarial orders which removed onerous requirements placed upon the Department of the Interior by the previous Trump administration.
Trump’s Project 2025 goes even further, ordering not only a review of existing national monuments, including marine national monuments, but a repeal of the Antiquities Act (page 532), stripping the presidency of one of it’s most powerful tools for protecting lands and waters in the United States. Repealing the Antiquities Act would place all current, existing national monuments in jeopardy.
Trump’s Agenda would also modify the Marine Mammal Protection Act, stripping whales, dolphins, seals, and other marine mammals of essential Federal protections and creating National Environmental Protection Act exemptions for a variety of commercial industries.
Trump’s Project 2025 would eliminate marine sanctuaries, deprive American’s of public lands and waters, and make it easier to kill North Atlantic Right Whales.
Politicize Science and Management (page 677)
Trump’s Project 2025 demands party loyalty, requiring low-level appointees to agree with the ideology of the Administration. By bypassing merit, experience, and effectiveness in favor of cronyism, Trump’s Agenda would deprive essential government services of competent leadership.
Other Ocean Issues
While NOAA is the prime target for a second Trump Administrations dismantling of ocean protection, it is not the only place where ocean policy intersects with the former president’s agenda.
Privatize Navigable Waters (page 429)
Trump’s Project 2029 plan for the Environmental Protection Agency proposes an aggressive redefinition of navigable waters, codifying Rapanos v. United States and ceding inland waterways to private ownership. Wetlands and other areas that are not permanently inundated or continuously flowing would no longer be classed as waters of the United States. A follow-up item would also redefine the water quality certification process to only apply to point-source pollution into these newly limited navigable waters, functionally allowing industries to dump into wetlands with no oversite.
Trump’s Project 2025 would allow private developers to pave over wetlands, pollute without restriction, and compromise America’s watersheds.
Militarize the Merchant Marines (page 637)
Trump’s Project 2025 proposes moving the Maritime Administration (MARAD), an agency that oversees the US Merchant Marine as part of the Department of Transportation, into the Department of Defense (or DHS, however, on page 133, Trump’s Agenda calls for disbanding the Department of Homeland Security). The US Merchant Marine are civilian mariners that operate civilian- and federally-owned merchant vessels. Merchant Mariners transport cargo and passengers and operate tugboats, towboats, ferries, dredges, and charter boats in the oceans and Great Lakes. In times of war, they can be called upon to transport personnel and supplies for the military.
When the Coast Guard was moved to Homeland Security in 2003, it was faced with significant budget and priority shortfalls and has become a political punching bag for Congress use to advance ideological border issue. While moving MARAD to DHS will undoubtedly turn the storied Merchant Marine Service into another wedge agency whose needs are ignored and whose budget is deprioritized, moving the Merchant Marine to the Department of Defense would deprive them of their perceived civilian status (merchant marine officers can be commissioned as military officers by DoD, but not all are), placing a military target on US merchant vessels.
Trump’s Project 2025 would devalue the US Merchant Marine and deprive civilian sailors of wartime protections.
Repeal the Jones Act (page 809)
Trump’s Project 2025 proposes repealing the Jones Act, a core maritime law which protects the economic interests of America’s Merchant Marines. The Jones Act requires that shipping between US ports be conducted by US-flagged ships.
While the domestic shipping requirements of the Jones Act are a frequent subject of extensive and legitimate criticism, especially following natural disasters when US territories struggle to find vessels which can deliver aid to, for example, Puerto Rico, the Jones Act also provides significant workplace protections to US mariners. The Jones Act extends the Federal Employer’s Liability Act to mariners, allowing injured sailors to sue their employer in federal or state court and extending the right to a jury trial to seamen. The Act also requires employers to provide benefits to injured mariners, including food, rent, utilities, insurance, and medical care.
Trump’s Project 2025 would deprive mariners of essential workplace protections.
Critical Minerals, Oil, and Natural Gas (pages 376 and 523)
Trump’s Project 2025 calls for enhanced in-country processing of critical minerals (something we’ve written about here) and develop new sources of critical minerals both on land and offshore. It also calls to maximize offshore oil and gas lease sales, eradicating progress made on climate change mitigation over the previous 4 years.
Greenland, for some reason (page 190)
Since his first term in office, Donald Trump has had a strange fixation on Greenland. Trump’s Agenda calls for opening a U.S. consulate in Nuuk “to better understand local political and economic dynamics” and “enhance economic ties between the U.S. and Greenland.” Greenland is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.
While it’s a bit perplexing how enhancing relations with Greenland fits into the isolationist aims of Project 2025, the inclusion of this item does highlight the extent to which Project 2025 is specifically and intentionally crafted to accommodate the unique quirks of a Trump Administration. No matter how hard the campaign tries to distance itself from its wildly unpopular policy agenda, items like the inclusion of a specific Greenland policy are a clear and unambiguous indicator that this is Trump’s Project 2025.
Featured Image: SharpieGate. Photograph by Tom Brenner.
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