Heritage → Project 2025
See what Heritage proposed, what it published, and which later government actions match those ideas.
Read the evidence →The Story continues in the records
Follow the Connections
First, conservative groups learned how to organize and raise money. Then they built plans and trained people. Later, some of those people helped run the government. Here's the path—and where to check the proof.
A short guide to the history in our ten chapters.
Start in 1964. Follow what happened next.
1. They lost an election. They kept organizing.
Barry Goldwater lost badly in 1964. Conservative organizers kept donor lists, raised money, and built new groups. One was the Heritage Foundation, founded in 1973.
The same Heritage Foundation later led Project 2025.
2. They wrote plans before winning.
Heritage gave Ronald Reagan's incoming administration a manual of policy ideas in 1981. Other groups trained lawyers, candidates, and staff.
Project 2025 used that same idea—and added plans to recruit staff.
3. Some of their people entered government.
After years in conservative organizations, people such as Russ Vought took jobs in Trump's first administration. Vought had worked at Heritage Action before joining the federal budget office.
Vought later helped write Project 2025 and returned to that office in 2025.
4. After Trump lost, they prepared to return.
Former officials worked through outside groups. Heritage's Project 2025 prepared a policy book, a list of potential employees, training, and plans for early action.
Those public plans can now be compared with actual government orders.
5. The ideas met real government decisions.
Trump restored a federal employment policy first attempted in 2020 and also supported by Project 2025. Courts and investigators examined other staffing and data decisions.
The orders and court records show what happened. Some private decisions remain unknown.
Now see the records
Three examples you can check
Heritage → Jim DeMint → CPI
DeMint led Heritage, then founded CPI. CPI says it helped start other conservative groups.
Read the evidence →Russ Vought → Government decisions
Follow Vought's jobs and proposals, then compare them with actual government orders and staffing records.
Read the evidence →Important: Working together, sharing staff, or supporting the same policy does not prove everyone took orders from one person. Each report says what the records prove—and what we still don't know.
After the November 3, 2026 election
What happens next?
The Story ends with the election. The court cases, leadership changes, and preparations for the new Congress continue. Our Course Correction page follows those developments as records become available.
For the newest developments, read Course Correction →