ATLANTA – Donald Trump’s second administration has put forth an avalanche of policy changes and political pronouncements that have jolted Washington and the world.
That agenda is taken largely from his “Agenda 47” campaign proposals, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and other hard-right influencers with juice in Trump’s White House. There is much more, however, that the president and those groups discussed on the campaign trail but have yet to attempt.
Recommended Videos
Here’s a look at some substantial proposals still pending.
Shuttering the Department of Education
The right has long targeted the Department of Education, which became a Cabinet agency in 1980 under President Jimmy Carter. Trump aides have prepared an executive order that would limit if not effectively shut down the department.
“I want Linda to put herself out of a job,” Trump said of Education Secretary-designee Linda McMahon, who awaits Senate confirmation.
The timing, though, remains uncertain as the White House grapples with how to unwind an agency that was established by law and involves billions in spending approved by Congress, including Title I money for low-income schools and college student loans.
Tightening restrictions on abortion pills and other actions
Trump sidestepped and obfuscated on abortion during the campaign. He bragged that his Supreme Court nominees helped overturn the Roe v. Wade precedent and shifted control of abortion restrictions to state governments — but said he would not sign a national ban. Then he changed course and said he would ban abortion later in pregnancy, though he did not specify when that would be.
Project 2025 proposes a range of ideas, most of which would come under the purview of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. if the Senate confirms him as Health and Human Services secretary:
— It seeks tighter restrictions on abortion pills, demand for which rose after Trump's election. The document says the administration should revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of medication abortion drugs. Short of that, if the drugs remain on the market, the document urges Trump to “reinstate earlier safety protocols for Mifeprex that were mostly eliminated in 2016 and apply these protocols to any generic version of mifepristone.” Specifically, Project 2025 calls for “a bare minimum” deadline of the 49th day of gestation for dispensing the drugs (it is now 70 days), requiring in-person dispensing, and requiring prescribers to report “all serious adverse events, not just deaths.” During his confirmation hearings last month, Kennedy said Trump has asked him to study mifepristone, a drug used to terminate pregnancies and help women complete miscarriages.
— If those paths are not sufficient to limit medication abortions, it proposes invoking an 1873 anti-obscenity law, the Comstock Act, as justification to block the mailing of any abortion-related materials. When asked during an April 12, 2024, interview with Time magazine for his views on the Comstock Act and the mailing of abortion pills, Trump promised to make a statement on the issue in the next 14 days, saying: “I feel very strongly about it. I actually think it’s a very important issue.” He never made that statement.
— Project 2025 also calls to codify into law the Hyde and Weldon amendments, budget measures used to limit the use of federal money for abortion-related services. Dave Weldon, a former Republican lawmaker who sponsored the Weldon amendment, has been nominated to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
— And it calls for federal guidance declaring that emergency abortion care – such as for complications that could lead to sepsis – is not required under the 1986 law, signed by Republican President Ronald Reagan, that generally requires hospital emergency departments to meet a certain standard of care for all patients. Trump has been expected to pull back Biden administration guidance requiring emergency rooms to provide abortions when necessary to stabilize a woman's health or life.
Nationalizing school choice and dismantling teacher tenure
On the one hand, the 2024 Republican platform promised to “return education to the states.” But the document, boosted by Trump’s statements, also promises “ universal school choice ” – meaning to use the power of the federal government to implement private school tuition subsidies – and “ending teacher tenure,” job protections usually defined at the state level. Additionally, Trump declared that parents of schoolchildren should be able to hire and fire principals, decisions typically made by local school superintendents and school boards.
Trump did not detail how he would accomplish such national uniformity in K-12 schools. But, in general, his education ideas would make federal money conditional, and the administration’s opening weeks suggest the White House believes it can use executive power to do that rather than go through Congress.
Targeting universities
In Agenda 47 and at rallies, candidate Trump described U.S. colleges and universities as havens for “Marxist maniacs and lunatics.” Trump proposed taking over the independent accreditation process for higher education institutions, calling that his “secret weapon” to transform the system. He took aim at higher education endowments, promising to collect “billions and billions of dollars” from schools via “taxing, fining and suing excessively large private university endowments” at schools that do not comply with his edicts – like his crackdowns on diversity initiatives.
Trump did not name schools in Agenda 47. But many well-regarded private universities hold endowments exceeding $10 billion, and the oldest Ivy League institutions – Harvard and Yale – measure theirs in the tens of billions. Of course, trying to commandeer private endowments would invite court fights, since they are legally protected funds from donors.
Agenda 47 calls for redirecting captured endowment money into an online “American Academy” offering college credentials to all Americans without a tuition charge.
“It will be strictly non-political, and there will be no wokeness or jihadism allowed — none of that’s going to be allowed,” Trump said on Nov. 1, 2023.
More tariffs and tax cuts
Trump has imposed tariffs on China, which responded with its own levies. But there is a pause on border levies on goods from Mexico and Canada. Beyond that initial foray into the president’s promised protectionism, Trump promised as a candidate to pursue “The Trump Reciprocal Trade Act” in Congress, to reverse U.S. trade deficits and goose domestic production. He also called for “baseline tariffs,” without making clear whether he meant through executive action or legislation.
Trump more recently hailed the late 19th and early 20th century era when the federal government relied heavily on tariff revenue, before the income tax era began with the 16th Amendment’s ratification in 1913. That era, however, also predates Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the Pentagon being responsible for the world’s most expensive military. (Trump has explicitly promised to protect all those big-ticket items other than Medicaid.)
The president’s talk of tariff revenue aside, he has pledged a return of policies in the Republicans’ sweeping 2017 overhaul. That package reached nearly every U.S. household but concentrated benefits among corporations and the wealthiest individual filers. Trump added 2024 campaign promises to exempt tips, Social Security benefits and overtime pay from income taxes.
Congress is still contemplating tax changes.
Rolling back federal labor laws
Despite Trump’s promise on overtime wages, conservatives have separate ideas that would reduce the instances U.S. workers get overtime pay in the first place.
Project 2025 calls for rescinding Biden administration rules that sought to expand qualifications for time-and-a-half overtime for about 4 million workers. The document also would curtail Biden-era rules that make it easier for gig economy workers — rideshare drivers, for example — to gain benefits as full-time employees rather than contract workers with fewer protections under labor law, including the standard 40-hour workweek threshold that triggers overtime pay.
More broadly, Project 2025 calls for weakening the Fair Labor Standards Act and National Labor Relations Act — seminal laws from Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency. The authors want Congress “to authorize collective bargaining to treat national employment laws and regulations as negotiable defaults” and allow waivers for states and local governments “to encourage experimentation and reform efforts.”
Proposing looser safety rules, Project 2025 would make it easier for teenagers to work dangerous jobs and harder for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to investigate conditions and impose penalties on private-sector businesses.
Trump’s pick for labor secretary, meanwhile, is an organized labor ally. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, R-Ore., co-sponsored the PRO Act, a union-backed proposal that would make it easier for workers to organize. Trump, however, has offered no signs that he would support the law, and Republican leaders in the GOP-controlled House and Senate oppose the measure.
Ending the wars in Ukraine and Israel
Hyperbole or not, Trump insisted repeatedly as a candidate that he would quickly settle the war in Ukraine brought about by Russia’s invasion and the Israel-Hamas war spawned by Hamas’ slaughter of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023.
The Biden administration, with Trump transition team involvement, negotiated a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. But there is no permanent peace accord in place, and Trump has complicated matters with his musings about a U.S. takeover of Gaza.
On Ukraine, Trump also said, “I will ask Europe to reimburse us for the cost of rebuilding the stockpiles sent to Ukraine.”
He recently suggested Ukraine should reimburse the U.S. with access to its rare earth minerals as part of an agreement to continue military support against the Russian invasion.
___