Noel King

Project 2025 was 922 or so pages. How much of what's in there has the Trump administration accomplished?

David Graham

There's a good tracker out there online that puts the number right above 50 percent. And I think that's useful, but you have to take it with a grain of salt, because some of these things are just hard to equate on a numerical level. 

That tracker says Trump eliminated USAID, which is a goal. Project 2025 wanted to reform USAID in different ways, but not to abolish it. So, it doesn't always fit one-to-one. 

The other thing that I would say is, so much of what they want to do depends on having this really powerful president — sort of an unfettered, no checks-and-balances situation. And they've made so much progress on that in the first year. I think that will enable more progress towards their goals in the future.

Noel King

How did they get so much done, this administration?

David Graham

A way that I've heard people talk about it is you don't get a lot of chances for a president to try things, leave office for four years, and then get another shot at it. 

So many of the people involved were veterans of the first Trump administration or had been closely related to it, and they saw what went wrong and they had theories [as to why]. And they also learned a lot about how the government works. 

And so, that meant that they could come in on the first day and be just so ready, so organized, and so energized. I think that gave them the chance to sort of conduct this blitzkrieg that took the courts by surprise. It seems to have taken Congress by surprise. And I think it took a lot of the public by surprise.

Noel King

And I think I hear you telling me that there is still a lot in that big book of ideas and policies that they would like to get done.

David Graham

Oh yes. You could spend years pushing a lot of these things, and the ambitions are pretty big. I mean, they really want to reshape society, and that is a project you can make some work on in a year. But I think they're on a timeframe of years or decades.

Noel King

What did they fail to get done?

David Graham

There are several areas where they haven't done much. 

I think one is in this area of pro-family policy or socially conservative policy. We haven't seen a lot of encouraging higher birthrate stuff either. 

We haven't seen the kind of labor policy that would bolster a more pro-family vision, like things that JD Vance was talking about in the campaign. And we haven't seen a sort of major shift of social welfare programs away from the government and towards religious organizations. 

Noel King

What do you think we're going to see more of in the year ahead? What maybe have we not been paying enough attention to that they've been banging the drum on and we should?

David Graham

Something that I think is underappreciated even as it has gotten attention is the takeover of the independent regulatory agencies: the NLRB, the FEC, the FCC. 

We're expecting a Supreme Court decision soon that seems likely to give the president control over all these agencies with the possible exception of the Federal Reserve. I think that's going to change the way everybody interacts with the government. The FCC, in particular, has gotten some attention. We saw the chair of the FCC basically try to get Disney to fire Jimmy Kimmel.

Now, imagine that in so many other areas of life: the way you work through labor protections, the way you interact with the Social Security Administration, the way you interact with any number of walks of your life. I think we're going to see the president controlling that and making it an arm of policy.