Project 2025 Outlines Possible Future for Science Agencies

Policy proposals authored by President-elect Donald Trump’s allies at Republican think tanks offer insight into what science policy may look like in his second term.

The Project 2025 report, led by the Heritage Foundation, is widely seen as a blueprint for the incoming administration. Though Trump has attempted to distance himself from the report, many of its authors were members of his first administration or work at conservative organizations with ties to people in Trump’s inner circle.

This article explores the numerous science policy proposals presented in the report, whose chapters each have a different lead author and focus on different agencies.

Prioritizing fundamental research over deployment

Project 2025 looks to focus the Department of Energy on fundamental research that the private sector would not otherwise conduct, arguing that many current DOE programs “act as subsidies to the private sector for government-favored resources.” It proposes eliminating many of the agency’s offices focused on energy technology development as well as programs focused on climate change.

The DOE chapter is authored by Bernard McNamee, who worked in the department during the first Trump administration and later was picked by Trump to serve on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from 2018 to 2020. McNamee proposes that DOE prioritize and consolidate its programs based on factors such as relevance to national security, energy security, and scientific discovery. He also calls for a “whole-of-government assessment and consolidation of science,” arguing that recent moves to expand the National Science Foundation’s focus on technology commercialization were “ill-advised.”

At DOE, he suggests eliminating the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy as well as offices dedicated to renewable energy, carbon management, technology demonstrations, and loans. If these organizations continue to exist, he proposes reallocating their funding from commercialization and deployment to fundamental research, particularly for countering cyber and physical threats to energy security.

McNamee praises DOE’s national labs for supporting national defense and transformative science but argues they have become “too focused on climate change and renewable technologies.” He states the three labs managed by DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration should focus more on their core mission of nuclear deterrence and pare back their portfolio of non-national security research. He also proposes DOE provide the private sector with easier access to the capabilities of the national labs, citing the voucher program used by the department’s nuclear energy arm as a positive example.

Scaling back climate science programs

Project 2025 repeatedly targets climate science beyond its discussion of DOE. A chapter on White House agencies states that “the Biden administration’s climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding.” The chapter author Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget during the last year of the Trump administration, proposes the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy work to roll back climate initiatives along with policies promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion across science agencies.

He also proposes to “reshape” the U.S. Global Change and Research Program, which coordinates climate change research across agencies and produces the quadrennial National Climate Assessment. Noting that the NCA results can have legal implications for agency rulemaking, he states, “The next president should critically analyze and, if required, refuse to accept any USGCRP assessment prepared under the Biden administration.” He further calls for OSTP and OMB to “jointly assess the independence of the contractors used to conduct much of this outsourced government research that serves as the basis for policymaking.”

Project 2025 also proposes breaking up the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, describing it as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” The chapter author is Thomas Gilman, who served under Trump as the chief financial officer of the Commerce Department, NOAA’s parent agency.

“NOAA should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories,” Gilman states. He proposes disbanding a “preponderance” of climate change research funded by NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which he calls “the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism.” By contrast, he does express support for NOAA’s role in collecting longitudinal climate data, so long as it is presented neutrally.

Concerning other parts of NOAA, he further suggests it “fully commercialize” the forecasting functions of the National Weather Service, instead focusing the agency on collecting data and providing it to privately owned forecasters. He also suggests transferring NOAA’s coastal survey programs to the U.S. Geological Survey.

As for the Environmental Protection Agency, Project 2025 proposes to prevent the agency from using “unrealistic” projections of climate change impacts, citing the RCP 8.5 emissions scenario as an example. It also says EPA should commit to not conducting any science activity without clear congressional authorization, and that Congress should “reform or repeal” the 1990 law that created USGCRP, saying it has been “misused for political purposes.”. The EPA chapter is authored by Mandy Gunasekara, who was the agency’s chief of staff at the end of the previous Trump administration.

Tightening research security

Various contributors to Project 2025 propose to restrict academic and technology exchanges with countries they label as adversaries, principally China.

Ken Cuccinelli, who was acting director of the U.S. immigration services agency during the Trump administration, proposes to “eliminate or significantly reduce the number of visas issued to foreign students from enemy nations.” Similarly, Peter Navarro, a White House trade policy advisor under Trump, proposes to “significantly reduce or eliminate the issuance of visas to Chinese students or researchers to prevent espionage and information harvesting.”

Many ideas for expanding export controls are also floated in Project 2025. Gilman proposes to tighten the definition of what fundamental research is exempt from export controls to “address exploitation of the open U.S. university system by authoritarian governments through funding, students and researchers, and recruitment.” He also proposes to expand deemed export controls, which restrict transfers to foreign nationals working in the U.S.

Other research security ideas presented in the report include relaunching the Justice Department’s China Initiative, withholding federal funds from universities that take money from the Chinese government, and prohibiting “all Communist Chinese investment” in U.S. high-technology industries.

Other proposals across science agencies

• Indirect costs: Project 2025 recommends Congress cap the facilities and administrative reimbursement rate for university research to be comparable to rates offered by private organizations, which would require universities to cover much more of their current indirect research costs. The author of the proposal is the director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, Lindsey Burke, who states universities are using overhead costs to pay for DEI initiatives.

• Small business R&D: Project 2025 looks to direct more R&D funding toward small businesses through the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs. The report encourages the administration to push Congress to increase the percentage of spending by federal research agencies that is set aside for small business R&D.

• OSTP: Vought states that there is a need for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to take on a more significant leadership and coordination role in part due to the increased focus on national science policy directed by the CHIPS and Science Act. He also proposes the president make the OSTP director more prominent if agencies such as DOE and EPA are “manipulating” science “to support separate political and institutional agendas.”

• NIH: Project 2025 suggests that Congress consider converting the National Institutes of Health’s grants budget into block grants provided to state governments. Grants comprise a large majority of NIH’s budget: the agency reported spending $34.9 billion of its total $47.7 billion appropriation in fiscal year 2023 on grant awards. The report also proposes instating term limits for top leaders at NIH. “Funding for scientific research should not be controlled by a small group of highly paid and unaccountable insiders at the NIH, many of whom stay in power for decades,” writes chapter author Roger Severino, director of the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights under Trump’s first administration.

• NIST: The most significant change for the National Institute of Standards and Technology within Project 2025 is a proposal by Gilman to combine it with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the National Technical Information Service, creating a new Office of Patents, Trademarks, and Standards with all non-mission-critical research functions eliminated or moved to other federal agencies. He also proposes to privatize NIST’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership and Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, arguing that helping companies improve management and operations should be left to the private sector, and he suggests that NIST revive the ROI initiative begun under the first Trump administration to help speed the process of commercializing federally funded science.

• FCC: Trump has chosen the lead author of the Federal Communications Commission chapter, Brendan Carr, to lead the agency. In Project 2025, Carr proposes expediting the review and approval of applications to launch new low-Earth orbit satellites, suggesting that they can provide low-cost, high-speed internet access. Carr does not comment on the potential for such satellites to disrupt astronomical research through visual or radio frequency interference, though he generally calls for reforming the process by which the government coordinates reallocations of the electromagnetic spectrum.

• DOD: Project 2025 recommends the Department of Defense develop advanced missile defense technologies, including space-based systems, an idea Trump has already embraced. It also suggests the Space Force consider creating an academy dedicated to educating top aero-astro students, engineers, and scientists. This academy might initially be attached to a large existing research university like the California Institute of Technology or MIT, the report states, and eventually be built separately to be on par with the other military academies. The DOD chapter is authored by Christopher Miller, who was acting defense secretary at the end of the previous Trump administration.

• EPA: Project 2025 proposes subjecting EPA research activities to closer oversight by political appointees, who would be selected more for their management skills than their personal scientific output. Regarding grants, the plan would put a political appointee in charge of determining the distribution of EPA grants and institute a pause for current grants over a certain threshold. The report also suggests EPA “deputize the public” to scrutinize the agency’s scientific conduct, such as by making data and publications underlying regulations immediately accessible to the public and incentivizing the public to identify scientific flaws and research misconduct.