What To Know About Trump’s Policy Agenda

Topline

Former President Donald Trump has won the presidential election and will take office in January, and while his final policy choices remain to be seen, he could push plans from a years-old platform that includes stricter rules for schools, more hardline immigration policies, scrapping climate regulations and creating entirely new “freedom cities.”

Former President Donald Trump waves at an election night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention … [+] Center on Nov. 6 in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Key Facts

Trump’s “Agenda47” consists of proposals his campaign issued on its website during the primary election season, from December 2022 to December 2023, many of which may require congressional action but some of which could be enacted through executive orders—and are separate to the Project 2025 proposals developed by third-party organizations.

While Trump’s Agenda47 proposals and videos were long linked on his campaign website, his website’s homepage now only links to a shorter set of proposals and includes a separate link to the Republican National Committee’s broader platform—but the links to his more detailed Agenda47 proposals remain active, offering more insight about the ex-president’s priorities than what’s listed on his website now.

Education: Trump’s proposals for K-12 schools include having parents elect school principals, cutting federal funding to any school teaching “critical race theory,” ending teacher tenure, creating a new credentialing body to only certify teachers “who embrace patriotic values,” encouraging prayer in schools, making it easier to kick “out-of-control troublemakers” out of school, supporting school districts that allow teachers to carry concealed firearms and pushing “school choice” policies.

Universities: Trump has proposed getting rid of existing accreditors for colleges and universities and creating new ones who impose his party’s values on institutions, along with levying significant fines on colleges and universities that he believes “discriminate” against students—with a plan to use those fines to create a free online “American Academy” that “cover[s] the full spectrum of human knowledge and skills.”

Climate Change: The U.S. would again leave the Paris Climate Accord, and the ex-president has proposed getting rid of President Joe Biden’s policies restricting emissions and targeting 67% of new vehicles to be electric by 2032 and massively scaling up oil and gas production.

Justice Department: Trump has pledged to appoint 100 U.S. attorneys who would be aligned with his policies and investigate some left-leaning local district attorneys, also pledging to establish a DOJ task force on “protecting the right to self-defense” and fight purported anti-conservative bias at law schools and law firms.

Crime: Trump has vowed to invest in hiring and retaining police officers (and increase their protections from legal liability), push policies like “stop and frisk,” direct the DOJ “to dismantle every gang, street crew, and drug network in America,” deploy federal troops including the National Guard “to restore law and order” when local officers “refuse to act” and impose the death penalty for drug dealers, drug cartels and human traffickers.

Immigration: Trump plans to prohibit undocumented immigrants from receiving any benefits, end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, reinstitute a “travel ban” from certain countries, pause refugee admissions, mandate “extreme vetting of foreign nationals,” block federal grants to sanctuary cities, end the “catch-and-release” practice of releasing migrants while they await immigration hearings, close the southern border to asylum seekers and suspend visa programs including the visa lottery and family visas.

Economy: Trump proposes cutting taxes and slashing federal regulations, also proposing baseline tariffs on foreign goods in hopes of spurring American manufacturing, which will go up for countries who have “unfair trade practices.”

Healthcare: Trump has proposed requiring federal agencies to buy medicines and medical devices manufactured in the U.S. and barring federal agencies from other countries from purchasing “essential” drugs; he also has plans for an executive order saying the government will only pay pharmaceutical companies the “best price they offer to foreign nations.”

Foreign Policy and Defense: Trump wants European allies to pay back the U.S. for depleting its military stockpiles sending weapons to Ukraine; he has also taken a hardline stance on China, calling for new restrictions on Chinese-owned infrastructure in the U.S., and wants to build a missile defense shield.

Social Security: In a shift from some pre-Trump GOP politicians’ views, Trump has said there should be no cuts to Social Security or Medicare “under any circumstances.”

Homelessness: Trump plans to work with states to ban “public camping” by homeless people and instead give them the choice of receiving treatment or being arrested, and calls for creating large “tent cities” where homeless people would be relocated, which would have doctors and social workers on site, along with expanding mental institutions.

Transgender Rights: Trump takes a hard stance against transgender rights, calling for any healthcare provider providing gender-affirming care for youth to be terminated from Medicare and Medicaid, stripping federal funding from any school where an official or teacher suggests a child could be “trapped in the wrong body,” and encouraging Congress to pass legislation saying “the only genders recognized by the U.S. government are male and female—and they are assigned at birth.”

Big Tech: In line with conservatives’ claims that social media platforms are biased against them, Trump said he’ll pass an executive order barring any federal department from working with other entities to “censor” Americans and prohibit federal money being used to combat misinformation, also announcing steps like altering Section 230 to open up social media platforms to more legal liability.

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What Does Trump’s Website Say Now?

The “platform” section of Trump’s campaign website now lists a set of 20 vague priorities, which are the same as those in the Republican National Committee’s formal platform and often overlap with his previous Agenda47 proposals. The proposals now outlined on the website include “seal[ing]

the border;” “carry[ing] out the largest deportation operation in American history;” ending inflation, increased manufacturing and energy production; “large tax cuts for workers;” preserving Social Security and Medicare; enacting transgender sports bans; stripping federal funding for schools that teach what he describes as “critical race theory” or “radical gender ideology;” imposing stricter requirements for voting and keeping “the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.”

What Is Project 2025—and Is It Similar?

Trump’s Agenda47 is distinct from Project 2025, a potential policy blueprint for the next conservative administration—namely Trump’s—developed by the Heritage Foundation along with other third-party groups. While Agenda47 was released directly by the Trump campaign, the ex-president has said he doesn’t have any involvement with Project 2025 and has attempted to distance himself from it, even as the 900-page policy guidebook was created with help from more than 100 people who served in his administration. Trump has also praised the Heritage Foundation’s policy work in the past. The two policy proposals do have many commonalities—like calling to leave the Paris Climate Agreement, kicking out career bureaucrats, pushing “school choice” policies and railing against transgender rights—and it’s unclear how much of Project 2025 Trump could choose to implement if he’s elected.

What To Watch For

Many of the items in Agenda47 and Project 2025 would probably require acts of Congress—which could be doable, as Republicans have gained control of the Senate and it’s still unclear which party will retake the House—but both agendas have proposed expanding the president’s control over the executive branch. Trump’s Agenda47 proposes reviving Trump’s 2020 executive order (which Biden rescinded) that makes it significantly easier to replace career civil servants with political appointees. He also wants to “overhaul federal departments and agencies” to get rid of “corrupt actors,” crack down on government leakers and implement a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to fight what the GOP calls the “Deep State.”

Tangent

Since the last Agenda47 video was released in December 2023, Trump has announced other policy proposals separate from those released under the Agenda47 heading. On abortion, Trump has said he believes the issue should be left to the states—though many abortion rights advocates still believe he’d restrict abortion. He and the GOP have also vowed mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, which is not mentioned in Agenda47’s immigration plans. He’s additionally pushed to eliminate the federal income tax on tips for service workers, as well as eliminate taxes for Social Security and edouble taxation for Americans living abroad and make interest on car loans tax deductible. Trump has also called for mass arrests and prosecutions of people who oppose his claims on voter fraud, which he claims would include “Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters & Corrupt Election Officials.”

What We Don’t Know

What Trump will do once he takes office. Trump’s initial Agenda47 was released during the primary election and with the proposals on his website during the general election offering much less detail, it’s still unclear what policies Trump will actually impose now that he’s been elected. The ex-president has tacked slightly more to the center in the general election on issues like abortion, but it remains to be seen what policies he will adopt once he’s back in the White House.

Surprising Fact

In addition to proposals around more expected issues like immigration, education and defense, Trump’s Agenda47 also includes a proposal for “freedom cities,” as the ex-president has called for using federal land to create up to 10 new cities, which would be roughly the size of Washington, D.C. Plans for the cities would be chosen via a nationwide contest, and Politico reported in March 2023 Trump’s proposal includes investing in “vertical takeoff-and-landing vehicles” akin to human-sized drones and “baby bonuses” in hopes of staving off a declining birth rate.

Key Background

The Associated Press projected Trump as the winner of the presidential election early Wednesday morning, after he won key battleground states including Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The ex-president released his Agenda47 videos as he faced what was initially a crowded field of Republican primary candidates, though Trump ultimately proved to be the clear frontrunner, clinching the nomination in March. The policy proposals have come under increased scrutiny in recent months—particularly as Democrats used the controversial Project 2025 to oppose Trump’s candidacy while President Joe Biden faced criticism over his age—though Project 2025 and Agenda47 have both been published since last year.