The Trump administration is helping spread Project 2025 around the world in an attempt to replace human rights with Christian nationalism, according to a new report by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.
Project 2025 is the anti-democratic and ideological framework spearheaded by The Heritage Foundation that helped propel President Donald Trump to power and provided the blueprint for his ongoing dismantling of American democracy and government.
The Christian nationalist agenda has inspired the administration’s policies against higher education, LGBTQ rights, diversity, abortion access, immigration and constitutional freedoms.
(Shutterstock)
But the plan also calls for a radical altering of U.S. foreign policy and diplomatic priorities in order to lead and align with governments willing to abandon the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It also calls for canceling international partnerships in organizations like the World Health Organization and NATO.
A core component of the effort is the Geneva Consensus Declaration, a document created during Trump’s first term denouncing LGBTQ, human and abortion rights and defining the family as limited to heterosexual marriage.
“Since the United States rejoined the declaration in 2025, it has grown into a network of 40 countries, including autocratic governments with widely documented human rights abuses,” the report says. “Through this framework, the United States has aligned with governments that share an interest in rolling back women’s rights and LGBTQ protections while challenging established international human rights norms.”
Latin America
The report cites Latin America as an example of a region where Project 2025 has achieved significant success.
“The 2025 electoral victories of José Antonio Kast in Chile, Nasry Asfura in Honduras and Rodrigo Paz in Bolivia reinforced Trump’s capacity to expand his political agenda in the region. They joined a group of leaders already aligned with the MAGA movement, including Javier Milei in Argentina, Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, Daniel Noboa in Ecuador, and Santiago Peña in Paraguay.”
Trump’s grip on the region tightened when Delcy Rodriguez was proclaimed the acting president of Venezuela after the U.S. invasion of the country in January, the report adds.
“When Project 2025 was published in April 2023, it had already outlined a similar approach, recommending that: ‘To contain Venezuela’s communism and aid international partners, the next administration must take important steps to put Venezuela’s communist abusers on notice while making strides to help the Venezuelan people.’”
Africa
Project 2025 has also made significant inroads in Africa, according to the authors of the report.
As a result, U.S. relations with African nations have shifted from partnerships promoting democracy and human rights to purely transactional connections pushing MAGA ideology and granting American companies greater access to natural resources in under-developed nations.
Kenya’s response to a 2024 youth movement against tax hikes resulted in a government response eerily reminiscent of Trump’s brutal anti-immigration policies in the U.S.
“The state responded with a level of force unseen in Kenya’s recent democratic era.”
“The state responded with a level of force unseen in Kenya’s recent democratic era,” the report says. “This was characterized by the use of live ammunition against unarmed protesters, a wave of extrajudicial abductions targeting digital activists and the deployment of the military to urban centers.”
Previously, the American response would have been to condemn the government’s actions and review Kenya’s eligibility for aid and infrastructure grants, the report notes. “With Trump and Project 2025, U.S. government pressure to rein in these actions has disappeared. The U.S. has dismantled USAID, a key demand of Project 2025, which was an important agency for ensuring human rights and democratic compliance, and centralized all foreign assistance within Trump’s executive branch.”
Europe
Europe is on the Project 2025 target list, as well, with designs on reshaping the continent into the image of Trump and Christian nationalism, according to the report.
“The European Union is viewed as particularly offensive, its values and policies the antithesis of Project 2025. For Project 2025, and now the Trump administration, the EU is a bastion of ‘woke’ liberal values that supposedly suppresses free speech and rigs elections against far-right parties.”
So the project calls for expanding right-wing culture wars to Europe in order to weaken liberalism in the U.S. and abroad and to protect the far-right in America.
“Europe has become a bigger enemy to the U.S. than Russia or other authoritarian states.”
“Europe has become a bigger enemy to the U.S. than Russia or other authoritarian states, as it threatens the Project 2025 cultural agenda and serves as a countervailing ideological construct built on democracy and broad human rights protections, the opposite of the electoral authoritarianism and rights restrictions advocated for by the far-right globally,” the report explains.
Trump opened the offensive early in his new administration by criticizing traditional allies like Germany and Great Brittain for embracing LGBTQ and women’s rights. At the same time, he has expressed support for Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, in addition to right-wing and self-proclaimed “patriotic parties” in other European countries.
“What this means is that the U.S. will cultivate far-right movements, breaking with decades of stated policy not to interfere in internal European affairs,” the report states. “European far-right political parties are broadly anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ and against women’s rights, mirroring the Trump and Project 2025 agendas.”
Those who aid the agenda
Helping push the Project 2025 and MAGA values globally are an array of U.S.-based organizations heavily involved in pushing it domestically. According to the study, they include The Heritage Foundation, Alliance Defending Freedom, American Center for Law and Justice, Center for Family and Human Rights, Family Research Council, Family Watch International and Institute for Women’s Health.
These Christian nationalist groups already are at work forming networks and meeting with like-minded organizations overseas to promote authoritarian rule, Christian nationalism and opposition to LGBTQ and abortion rights.
“These actors contribute to advancing the policy agenda of the authoritarian playbook. In Guatemala, for instance, the Family Matters Association (Asociación La Familia Importa) successfully pressured the government in 2020 to prevent Planned Parenthood from opening an office in the country. This move mirrors the anti-reproductive rights framework outlined in Project 2025.”
Project 2025 is still unpopular
While the authoritarian agenda at the core of Project 2025 has taken root in the U.S and in some other nations, the agenda is hugely unpopular in the U.S., where repeated surveys have shown large majorities opposed to the Christian nationalist blueprint.
In many other countries, majorities do not support this agenda.
Discontentment with “far-right politics has led voters in some countries that experienced a far-right takeover to oust parties whose agenda mirrored Project 2025’s. This may even happen in Hungary this year, where the opposition is 12 points ahead in the polls as of early March and could potentially end Orban’s decades-long rule.”
The continuation of mass protests against immigration policies and Trump’s monarchic aspirations also is a good sign, as are the prevalence of court rulings that dog the administration at every turn, the study says.
Project 2025 has encountered pushback in Kenya, where courts have blocked elements of the Christian nationalist agenda. “Other African countries have simply refused to negotiate new aid deals that come with anti-rights strings. And youth movements have taken to the streets in response,” the report says.
Related articles:
Heritage Foundation sets 9 goals to reinforce Project 2025
With 42% of Project 2025 enacted, Heritage Foundation turns toward Europe
Project 2025, Elon Musk and the American coup d’état | Opinion by Basil Dannebohm