JOHN YANG: In the first month of his second term, President Trump has reshaped the government with a flurry of executive orders.

As William Brangham reports, many of them echo the language of a policy blueprint he once disavowed.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: During the heat of the presidential race, the 900-page Project 2025 became a rallying cry for Democrats and a focal point for their warnings about a second Trump term.

It was published by the Conservative Heritage Foundation, and it outlined plans to reshape the federal government, expand presidential power and enact right leaning social policies.

In polls, it proved widely unpopular with voters, and then candidate Trump distanced himself from it, calling parts of it ridiculous and abysmal.

DONALD TRUMP: I have nothing to do with Project 2025 that's out there.

I haven't read it.

I don't want to read it purposely.

I'm not going to read it.

WILIAM BRANGHAM: But a recent analysis by POLITICO found dozens of instances where President Trump's executive actions have closely aligned with Project 2025.

Megan Messerly is a White House reporter for POLITICO and co-authored the piece.

Megan, so good to have you on the program.

Let's start with a big picture overview here.

What, what policy aspects of the second Trump administration most dovetail with Project 2025?

According to your reporting.

MEGAN MESSERLY, POLITICO: we found significant overlap on social issues, on immigration, on government staffing, energy, foreign affairs, the economy.

But really the biggest category that we saw was this sort of social issues category, you know, as President Trump has really taken this aggressive posture on culture war issues in the early weeks of his presidency.

So I'm thinking about policies like ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs, using the Civil Rights Act to remove gender ideology and critical race theory from schools, and also ending government efforts to fight misinformation and disinformation.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And again, these were all things that Donald Trump promised that he would do what he could to eradicate when he got into office.

On those DEI examples, are there some examples you can cite that illustrate the connection between the two?

MEGAN MESSERLY: Right.

So I think a really clear One is Project 2025 calls for deleting the term sexual orientation, gender identity, diversity, equity, inclusion for really every federal rule, every agency regulation, contract, grant that exists.

And one of the president's early executive orders similarly called for terminating DEI mandates, policies, programs under whatever name they appear.

Another one that jumps out to me, Project 2025 really asserts that DEI has become this vehicle for what it calls unlawful discrimination in federal agencies.

And we saw a corresponding executive order saying that federal hiring should not be based on race under what it describes as sort of the guise is the word it uses the guise of equity.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Last week, as you know, a federal judge blocked this executive order that aims to restrict gender transition care for young people.

What did Project 2025 say specifically about that issue?

MEGAN MESSERLY: Yes, it really talks quite a bit about gender identity.

So one of the big things it talks about is, you know, rescinding health care protections for sexual orientation gender identity, which were issued by the Biden administration.

And it uses this language to, you know, quote, protect minors from gender mutilation.

We see that reflected very clearly in an executive order that really focuses on, you know, transgender health care, using that similar language of chemical and surgical mutilation.

Really paralleling Project 2025 there and also specifically referring to that Biden administration guidance on sexual orientation and gender identity and rolling it back.

And then another example that comes to mind is Project 2025 really calls for, you know, defining sex to mean biological sex recognized at birth.

And the president very early on issued an executive order, you know, stating it's U.S. policy to recognize, you know, two sexes, male and female.

And we've really seen that already have, you know, ripple effects across the federal government.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: One major tenet of Project 2025 was shrinking the overall federal government.

In specific, it talked a lot about USAID.

I believe it was saying, scale USAID back to pre-pandemic levels.

But it seems as if the Trump administration is going even further in this instance.

MEGAN MESSERLY: The administration really is, you know, the Project 2025, the way it phrased it, was, you know, the pre pandemic budget levels being sort of a minimum.

And the Trump administration has really gone far beyond that in its sweeping cuts to USAID.

It really has been working to dismantle the agency almost entirely, though a lot of that is obviously wrapped up in litigation right now.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: That project also called for really addressing government staffing and employment overall.

Can you tell us about the parallels?

Again, we've seen so much of this with Elon Musk's DOGE operations firing workers across the federal government.

What are the parallels there?

MEGAN MESSERLY: Right.

So, I mean, Project 2025 really lays out this sort of sweeping blueprint for remaking the federal government and the bureaucracy.

Of course, Trump's budget director, Russ Vought, being sort of the architect of that plan.

He authored a whole chapter of Project 2025.

But two really clear things that I think we've seen come directly out of that blueprint and translate into executive order policy.

One of them is Project 2025 called for this hiring freeze for federal career officials that was implemented from the president by executive order.

There's also this so called Schedule F proposal, which basically just makes it easier to fire career civil servants.

And we saw the president put that into place as well.

And this really just underscores the president's vision and Russ Vought's vision really for reshaping the federal bureaucracy and for getting rid of what Vought often refers to as the fourth branch of government, which he refers to as sort of the administrative state, but the career workforce, the bureaucracy, the regulatory apparatus that he and President Trump believe have way too much power independent from the president.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, Megan Messerly of POLITICO, thank you so much for sharing your reporting with us.

MEGAN MESSERLY: Thanks for having me.