• Former President Donald Trump is trying to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025.
• Project 2025 is a map for ultra-conservative activists to enshrine their agenda should Trump win.
• While Trump's ties to the project are deeper than he admits, the playbook can go ahead without him.

Former President Donald Trump is attempting to distance himself from Project 2025, a political road map created by The Heritage Foundation that lays out steps Republican activists can take during the next presidency to enshrine extreme conservative policies into law and, critics argue, erode the US government's checks and balances.

But while Trump's ties to the project are deeper than he admits, some experts on political extremism and pro-democracy activists say one real cause for concern is how the ideology behind the playbook can — and is — moving ahead with or without him.

The architects of the plan will continue to try to push forward its policy goals through the courts and Congress no matter who is elected — and even without Trump's complete endorsement, issues central to the playbook are already incorporated into his platform.

What does Project 2025 say?

Among the four pillars of Project 2025 is an over 900-page playbook for conservative activists to follow in the first 180 days of the next Republican administration to "bring quick relief to Americans suffering from the Left's devastating policies."

The plan includes a wish list of right-wing ideological outcomes, including banning pornography and imprisoning its creators, mass deportations, a ban on abortion medications, firings in the federal branch and cutting some federal agencies outright to "deconstruct the administrative state," and generally pursuing policies to promote "marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood, and nuclear families."

It would also enable an inclined president to take total control of the Justice Department to weaponize it against their enemies, slash climate protections, and eliminate the Department of Education, which oversees the public school system, among other initiatives "to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will."

Through its website, the project is gathering applications for jobs across each federal agency to pass along to the next Republican administration — from the Department of Agriculture to the Federal Reserve — that can be used as leverage to advance its agenda in the event of a second Trump presidency.

Many roles would be immediately ready to be filled with loyal followers, while other jobs would be cut entirely. Historian and authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who is critical of both Trump and Project 2025, argued in a recent Substack article that such cuts would result in "more influence for the 'inner sanctum' of sycophants and extremists who, as in regimes everywhere, are the real source of power."

How Project 2025 'runs on autopilot'

According to some critics, among the unique concerns about Project 2025 is the fact that, while the overall objectives would be easiest to achieve under a conservative administration like Trump's, some of the policy goals laid out in the plan don't require the direct involvement of the presidency at all.

Angelo Carusone, president of the nonprofit journalism watchdog Media Matters for America, told Business Insider that, though Project 2025 is focused on action at the federal level, it also lays out specific goals that can be advanced by local and state governments, or ruled upon by sympathetic judges.

The Supreme Court, for example, in a series of rulings this term, eroded the power of the executive branch by rolling back the power of administrative positions in the executive branch while strengthening the presidency itself. The rulings — made by a polarized, conservative-majority court — align with Project 2025 policy goals to deconstruct the administrative state and strengthen the "presidential will."

Ben-Ghiat noted in a recent Substack that "it's as though these jurists made their decisions with Project 2025 in one hand and an autocrat's playbook in the other."

"And so that's how it sort of runs on autopilot and just moves," Carusone told BI.

Some members of Congress have already embraced policies that makeup portions of Project 2025's agenda.

Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky has repeatedly introduced measures to abolish the Education Department. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia in 2022 introduced a measure to make it a felony for physicians to provide gender-affirming care to children and prevent federal healthcare facilities from providing such care.

Ohio Sen. JD Vance — now Trump's pick for the vice presidential ticket — told Newsweek the project has "some good ideas." He has previously supported abortion bans without exception for rape and incest, and in June voted against a bill that would have cemented access to in vitro fertilization (IVF).

With even partial control of the legislative and judicial branches, Carusone noted, even if Trump doesn't win in November, the goals behind Project 2025 can still be pushed forward.

"So you don't need Trump's thumb on the scale, or even his direction, because it's going to move on its own," Carusone said.

Trump's close ties to Project 2025

The former president's proposed policies for his hypothetical second term, Agenda 47, include numerous areas of overlap with Project 2025. Among them are the defunding of the Education Department, instructing federal agencies to end programs that promote sex and gender transition at any age, and the niche promise to reissue Executive Order 13957, which made federal employees easier to fire.

The independent outlet Popular Information first reported that 31 of the 38 people who wrote and edited Project 2025 had been either appointed or nominated to positions in Trump's first administration or his transition team.

A CNN review found over 140 Trump administration members had contributed to Project 2025. The Washington Post described The Heritage Foundation as a "revolving door for Trump officials."

After The Heritage Foundation created its "Mandate for Leadership" ahead of Trump's first term, the conservative group proudly announced that Trump applied 64% of its policy recommendations in the first two years of his presidency, CBS News reported. The recommendations included leaving the Paris Climate Accords, ramping up military spending, and increasing offshore drilling.

In February, Politico reported that Russell Vought, a Project 2025 consultant and president of the conservative think tank The Center for Renewing America, included "Christian nationalism" as among the top priorities for a second Trump term.

Vought, the outlet reported, was the director of the Office of Management and Budget during Trump's first term and is a likely pick for his Chief of Staff if he's elected again.

What Trump said about Project 2025 — and its leaders about him

"I have no idea who is behind it," Trump wrote July 5 on Truth Social. "I disagree with some of the things they're saying and some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them."

Danielle Alvarez, a Trump spokesperson, told Business Insider that Agenda 47 and President Trump's RNC Platform are the only policies endorsed by President Trump for a second term, adding that "Team Biden and the DNC are LYING and fear-mongering because they have NOTHING else to offer the American people."

Though he denies knowing anything about the project, the playbook mentions Trump's name more than 300 times.

Kevin Roberts, the president of The Heritage Foundation, noted in a July 10 episode of "The Vince Coglianese Show" that there's a "tremendous" amount of overlap between Trump's Agenda 47 and Project 2025 — and the standard Republican platform more generally.

Roberts said there were "no hard feelings from any of us at Project 2025" about Trump's statement denouncing their agenda, saying "he's making a political tactical decision there" in response to a swath of bad press about the playbook's extreme policies.

"I think what you're going to see is the beginning of a golden era of conservative reform," Roberts added. "Not just because of President Trump, although he deserves most of the credit, but because the rest of the conservative movement has realized this is the moment if we have the leader and the plan that we're able to begin to undo all of the wreckage of the radical left of the last several decades."

• Scientists have the most convincing evidence yet of an underground cave on the moon. 
• The large cave could be a safe, warm place for astronauts to work and live on the moon.
• The researchers want to use radar technology to identify even more caves under the lunar surface.

In the ongoing effort to establish a permanent lunar base where humans can live and work on the moon, scientists have discovered a possible game changer: a large underground cave.

For decades, scientists have suspected the moon may harbor caves below its surface. Now, a new paper from a team of Italian researchers offers the most convincing evidence yet.

"Lunar caves have remained a mystery for over 50 years. So it was exciting to be able to finally prove the existence," authors Leonardo Carrer and Lorenzo Bruzzone of the University of Trento told The Associated Press.

The team speculates that, given how they think this cave formed, there could be hundreds more hidden under the lunar surface. Instead of building homes on the moon, we could inhabit the existing caverns beneath it.

How such a large cave formed on the moon

Judging from the data, the researchers estimate the cave is approximately 150 feet wide and up to 260 feet long, which is slightly smaller than an American football field with the end zones cut off.

The cave sits deep within a pit, called the Mare Tranquillitatis pit, which likely formed when a lava tube collapsed. The moon has no active volcanoes today, but billions of years ago, its surface was covered with lava that flowed down and through valleys, carving tubes across the lunar surface.

Over millennia, some of those tubes became unstable and collapsed, creating pits, like the one the research team studied from radar images taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. We don't have a clear picture of what the caves look like inside, but lava tubes, like those in Hawaii, can offer some idea.

NASA's LRO has identified over 200 of these pits on the moon, suggesting there could be hundreds of underground caves, too. These caves could offer future astronauts protection against the extreme conditions on the moon's surface, the researchers reported in the paper published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Astronomy.

The pros and cons of living in moon caves

"The thick cave ceiling of rock is ideal to protect people and infrastructure from the wildly varying day-night lunar surface temperature variations and to block high energy radiation which bathes the lunar surface," Katherine Joy, a professor in earth sciences at the University of Manchester who wasn't involved with the study, told The Guardian.

Because the moon has no atmosphere to help regulate climate, its surface sees drastic temperature swings. During the day, the sun's heat bakes the lunar surface to about 250 °F and at night it can dip below -200 °F.

But in underground caves, the temperature would be both consistent and, per past research, very comfortable.

In a 2022 study of the same region — Mare Tranquillitatis — a separate team of researchers used computer simulations to suggest that permanently shadowed regions within these lunar pits, and any adjacent caves, would remain at around 63 °F.

Reaching these pits and caves is another matter. The cave inside Mare Tranquillitatis is located over 400 feet from the surface near the bottom of a steep slope lined with loose debris.

Getting up and down that slope would require some technological ingenuity, whether it's jet packs that can fly us in and out, some type of lunar elevator that can shuttle people up and down, or something else.

To the moon cave and beyond

Radar technology could help scientists identify even more caves and tubes extending from open pits on the moon's surface. In the future, a spacecraft with a higher-resolution radar could even map the interior of all the pits LRO has identified, according to the Nature paper.

Such a "complete survey" would allow them to assess the best locations for further exploration and future moon bases, the researchers wrote.

There's also a chance that moon caves harbor water, which will be a crucial resource for any future moon bases.

Scientists have long known there's frozen water on the moon — just under its surface, in its permanently shadowed craters, and even in lonely H2O molecules sprinkled across the sunlit lunar dirt, less moist than the Sahara Desert.

Since underground caves are shielded from the merciless vacuum of space and the radiation of the sun, they could have water ice, Bruzzone told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Access to lunar water is key to NASA's plans to establish a permanent base on the moon and, eventually, use it to hopscotch astronauts to Mars. Water wouldn't just be for drinking; it could also be broken down into its elementary components — hydrogen for rocket fuel and oxygen for breathing.

Bruzzone and his co-authors also noted that caves and lava tubes of different ages may act like fossilized records of the moon's history. Eventually, exploring them up close could help scientists better understand volcanic activity.

• Joe Biden may propose term limits and an ethics code for the Supreme Court, The Washington Post reported.
• The plan would need congressional approval, and Biden is turning to his allies for help.
• The president has long rejected calls to expand the Supreme Court, despite pressure to do so.

President Joe Biden may be preparing to take on the conservative-majority Supreme Court head-on, according to a new report by The Washington Post.

Biden is planning to announce a proposal to establish term limits and an enforceable ethics code on the high court, the outlet reported, citing people briefed on the plan. Specific details of the proposal — or when it might be officially announced — were not immediately available.

The Supreme Court has an existing code of conduct, rolled out last November, which outlines when a sitting Justice should recuse themselves from a case and when outside activities may create the appearance of a conflict of interest. However, unlike the code that binds lower court justices, the Supreme Court's ethics code lacks any enforcement mechanism. It requires sitting Justices to regulate themselves, with critics regarding the measures as toothless against the court's lifetime appointees.

Most changes to the Supreme Court would require congressional approval to enact, so Biden is turning to his allies in the House and Senate for help, the Post reported.

"I'm going to need your help on the Supreme Court, because I'm about to come out — I don't want to prematurely announce it — but I'm about to come out with a major initiative on limiting the court," the Post reported Biden said, according to a transcript of a Saturday call with the Congressional Progressive Caucus. "I've been working with constitutional scholars for the last three months, and I need some help."

Representatives for the Biden administration and Supreme Court did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

The proposals would appear to be an attempt to restrain the Supreme Court's expanding power and balance the polarized conservative court without adding new Justices to the bench.

Biden has rejected calls to expand the Supreme Court for years, despite arguments to do so amid ongoing ethics concerns facing the Court.

Justice Clarence Thomas has been the subject of intense scrutiny following reports that he accepted lavish gifts and vacations from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow.

Justice Samuel Alito has also been sharply criticized after it was discovered that a Revolutionary-era "Appeal to Heaven" flag, regarded as a pro-Trump symbol, was flying for weeks over his New Jersey vacation home last summer.

Two Democratic Senators earlier this month called for a special counsel to investigate Thomas over allegations of tax fraud and failure to disclose gifts from Crow he had been given.

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has filed articles of impeachment against both Thomas and Alito on ethical grounds, citing their refusal to recuse themselves from cases they may be connected to, and Thomas' undisclosed gifts. The move followed the Supreme Court's decision granting former President Donald Trump wide-reaching immunity for acts taken during his administration.

• Analysts believe Pakistan may be arming its JF-17 fighters with nuclear-armed cruise missiles.
• Suspicions the JF-17 could be armed with nuclear missiles were speculative until a recent photo.
• India and Pakistan have fought four wars and clashed repeatedly at their border. 

The nuclear balance of terror between America and Russia, and now also America and China, attracts the most concern about an atomic apocalypse. But the simmering conflict between India and Pakistan — both of which are nuclear powers — is no less dangerous.

Now there are indications that Pakistan is arming its JF-17 fighters with nuclear-capable cruise missiles. The JF-17s are replacing older French-made Mirage jets that Pakistan has tasked for nuclear strike missions, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

"These developments, along with heightened tensions in the region, have raised concerns about accelerated arms racing as well as new risks for escalation in a potential conflict between India and Pakistan, especially since India is also increasing the size and improving the capabilities of its nuclear arsenal," wrote FAS analyst Eliana Johns.

Not surprisingly given Pakistan's secretiveness over its nuclear program, the evidence for nuclear-armed JF-17s is somewhat circumstantial. Pakistan's current nuclear strike aircraft are the 1960s-vintage Mirage V, armed with nuclear bombs, and the Mirage III, which has been tested with the Ra'ad cruise missile, which can be armed with nuclear or conventional warheads. And a JF-17 in flight was recently photographed carrying what appears to be a Ra'ad missile.

However, the Pakistani Air Force has at least 130 of the JF-17 Thunder, a joint project between Pakistan and China that created a fighter that is equivalent to the US F-16 (Pakistan also operates 75 F-16s). The aircraft, designated the FC-1 Xiaolong ("Fierce Dragon") in Chinese service, first flew in 2003.

Suspicions that the JF-17 would be armed with Ra'ad missiles were mostly speculative, until a photo surfaced recently. "During rehearsals for the 2023 Pakistan Day Parade (which was subsequently canceled), an image surfaced of a JF-17 Thunder Block II carrying what was reported to be a Ra'ad ALCM," according to FAS. "Notably, this was the first time such a configuration had been observed in public."

The Federation of American Scientists "was able to purchase the original image," and compared the Ra'ad mounted on the JF-17 with previous images. One question was which version of the Ra'ad had been fitted to the JF-17. The Ra'ad I (also known as the Hatf-8) is a subsonic air-launched cruise missile with an estimated range of more than 200 miles, and corresponds to other models such as the Europe's Storm Shadow, according to the CSIS Missile Threat defense site. The newer Ra'ad II reportedly has a range of almost 400 miles. Pakistan is also developing the Taimoor, an anti-ship version of the Ra'ad.

Using tools such as Photoshop Vanishing Point to analyze the images, FAS concluded that JF-17 had been armed with the older Ra'ad I. If true, this would put numerous targets within western and northern India within range of nuclear or conventional cruise missiles.

"There are several air bases in Pakistan located near the border," Johns told Business Insider. "The aircraft would be able to scramble and fly to dispersal bases within Pakistan's borders to get closer to potential targets inside India at a range of 350 to 600 kilometers if desired."

There is still considerable uncertainty about the exact capabilities of the Ra'ad. "Observing the differences between the Ra'ad-I and Ra'ad-II missiles raises a few questions," FAS noted. "How was Pakistan able to nearly double the range of the Ra'ad from an estimated 350 kilometers to 550 kilometers and then to 600 kilometers for the newest version without noticeably changing the size of the missile to carry more fuel? The answer could possibly be that the Ra'ad-II engine design is more efficient, the construction components are made from lighter-weight materials or the payload has been reduced."

Thus for now, Pakistan's air-launched cruise missile capability will remain a mystery. It is "unclear whether either of the Ra'ad systems has been deployed, but this may only be a question of when rather than if," FAS said. "Once deployed, it remains to be seen if Pakistan will also continue to retain a nuclear gravity bomb capability for its aircraft or transition to stand-off cruise missiles only."

And though the JF-17 is a joint Sino-Pakistani aircraft, Johns doubts that China will try to restrain Pakistan from modifying it into a nuclear strike aircraft. "China and Pakistan have enjoyed economic and technical partnership for a long time," Johns said. "It is suspected that Pakistan received a blueprint for its first nuclear device from China. The JF-17s were not built for a nuclear mission in the Chinese air force. Nonetheless, Pakistan seems to be preparing it for this capability since the Mirage III and V aircraft are aging."

Pakistan's main delivery system for its estimated 170 nuclear weapons will continue to be ballistic missiles, which include at least six models of road-mobile rockets. But extending the range of Pakistani aerial nuclear weapons will only exacerbate the potential for nuclear war. Both Pakistan and India are already developing multiple warhead, or MIRV, versions of their ballistic missiles, and Pakistan is working on short-range, dual-use ballistic missiles. India and Pakistan have fought four wars — and numerous border clashes — since the Indian subcontinent was partitioned in 1947. In 2019, Pakistan made veiled nuclear threats after Indian aircraft bombed Kashmiri militant bases in Pakistan.

"This context presents an even greater need for transparency and understanding about the quality and intentions behind states' nuclear programs to prevent mischaracterization and misunderstanding," Johns concluded.

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.