MILWAUKEE – Prior to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on Saturday, the bulk of attention during this week’s Republican National Convention would have been focused on Project 2025 – the 922-page articulation of the conservative movement’s plans to fundamentally reform the U.S. government.

The right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank presented its blueprint last year after being advised by more than 100 fellow conservative groups over the past several years, with the aim of concentrating presidential power and installing long-desired conservative priorities.

Project 2025 has gained growing attention in recent weeks after Democrats highlighted the plan’s explicit empowerment of Christian nationalism.

While key Trump allies have promoted this as advancing so-called Judeo-Christian values, others have said it serves as a thinly veiled diversion from antisemitism endemic within the far right.

Trump has attempted to distance himself from Project 2025 as it has garnered increased scrutiny – though most of his closest advisers are deeply involved in it and the project is getting a big boost at the RNC.

This includes the Heritage Foundation playing a prominent role in the convention, including holding sideline events over the course of the week. In fact, one of the first things visitors see upon landing in Milwaukee is a giant Heritage Foundation display in the airport welcoming you.

Republican National Committee platform committee policy director Russ Vought was heavily involved in the project 2025, for instance, and some of Trump’s closest policy advisers and those who are likely to take high-ranking positions in his potential administration are involved in it.

• Jewish Republicans rally behind Trump as campus antisemitism set to star at GOP convention
• Security measures heightened ahead of GOP convention following Trump assassination attempt
• Why the Democratic and GOP platforms on Israel and Gaza are so vague

The project also lists thousands of figures who could be immediately named as political appointments upon Trump’s inauguration, with many of these officials already drafting executive orders and agency regulations that could be rapidly implemented.

As a result, there is very little daylight between Project 2025 and the RNC platform, slated to be ratified during the convention.

That platform states: “We are the defenders of the First Amendment Right to Religious Liberty. It protects the Right not only to Worship according to the dictates of Conscience, but also to act in accordance with those Beliefs, not just in places of Worship, but in everyday life.

“To protect Religious Liberty, Republicans support a new Federal Task Force on Fighting Anti-Christian Bias that will investigate all forms of illegal discrimination, harassment, and persecution against Christians in America,” it continues.

“Republicans will use existing Federal Law to keep foreign Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists out of America. Those who join our Country must love our Country. We will use extreme vetting to ensure that jihadists and jihadist sympathizers are not admitted,” the platform adds.

Unlike the GOP platform, Project 2025 goes deep into how a Trump administration would further erase separations between church and state on many issues that are crucial to American-Jewish voters.

These include policy initiatives like reversing LGBTQ rights, banning abortion, restricting contraception, planned mass deportations and entry bans, as well as shifting resources from public schools to private schools.

In addition, it would fire 50,000 civil servants by reclassifying their jobs as “political appointments,” replacing them with officials ideologically aligned with the plan.

Jewish organizations specifically focused on the aforementioned issues have already expressed public alarm over what would happen should these plans be put into motion.

Antisemitism as a cudgel

Perhaps most concerning for the American-Jewish community is Project 2025’s plan to defund the U.S. Department of Education. The Office of Civil Rights, which is responsible for investigating and adjudicating allegations of antisemitism, sits within this department and has opened at least 145 investigations into such complaints.

The word “antisemitism” isn’t used once throughout the 900-page document.

Earlier this year, the Office of Civil Rights issued new guidance through a “Dear Colleague” letter to every school district and college in the country, providing examples of antisemitic discrimination, as well as other forms of hate, that could lead to investigations for violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI).

The White House stressed this guidance was “meant to ensure that colleges and universities do a better job of protecting both Jewish students and all of their students” amid the ongoing national protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. U.S. officials have insisted that nothing in the regulations requires a college to restrict rights protected under the First Amendment.

Earlier this summer, a rare coalition of nearly two dozen Jewish organizations across the political and denominational spectrum urged Congress to “provide the highest possible funding” for the Office of Civil Rights, despite the deep disagreements regarding antisemitism on Capitol Hill and the Jewish world.

House Republicans, in turn, voted to cut $10 million from the office’s funding after accusing it of failing to prioritize antisemitism despite what they deem already sufficient funding. Several Trump-allied Republicans opposed to increased funding of the office have highlighted its role in culture war issues like Title IX and what they say is “forcing women to compete against males in sports.”

Jewish Democrats, meanwhile, have highlighted Republican hypocrisy in using campus antisemitism as a cudgel – including giving it top-tier prioritization at this week’s convention – while hamstringing efforts by the U.S. government to address it.

“I’ve said it countless times: If House Republicans were serious about fighting antisemitism on college campuses, they’d increase funding for the office responsible for protecting students from it. Their solution today? Cut funding for it,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler, dean of the unofficial caucus of Jewish lawmakers.

Rep. Dan Goldman similarly noted that Republicans “shamelessly use antisemitism as a partisan weapon but have no interest in solutions.”

Jewish Democrat Rep. Kathy Manning, meanwhile, said: “It’s appalling that after months of holding hearings and grilling witnesses on the frightening rise of antisemitism on campus, House Republicans voted to cut $10 million for the office tasked with holding schools accountable for antisemitic discrimination.

“Jewish students deserve to be protected,” she added. “If my Republican colleagues are serious about fighting antisemitism, they must live up to their words and work with Democrats to provide OCR the resources it needs to investigate antisemitism and protect Jewish students.”

Project 2025 would also effectively abolish the FBI and turn the Justice Department into an explicitly political arm. This would have dramatic effects on the tracking, preventing and prosecuting of explicitly antisemitic attacks.

Trump’s Israel policy

Project 2025 also elaborates on what a potential Trump administration’s Israel policy could be beyond the RNC platform’s simplified platitude of “standing with Israel.”

“The next Administration must re-engage with Middle Eastern and North African nations and not abandon the region. Without U.S. leadership, the region may tumble further into chaos or fall prey to American adversaries,” reads the project, detailing a four-point strategy to achieve this.

“First, the U.S. must prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear technology and delivery capabilities and more broadly block Iranian ambitions,” it says, calling for the reintroduction and expansion of Trump-era sanctions, backing Iranian protesters and providing security aid for regional partners.

It also calls to ensure “Israel has both the military means and the political support and flexibility to take what it deems to be appropriate measures to defend itself against the Iranian regime and its regional proxies Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”

It also calls for other Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, to enter the Abraham Accords and to defund the Palestinian Authority.

Project 2025 additionally calls for the United States to build a security pact including Israel, Egypt, the Gulf states and “potentially India” as “a second Quad arrangement” – a step the Biden administration took by forming a group with Israel, India and the United Arab Emirates.

Finally, it warns that the United States “cannot neglect a concern for human rights and minority rights, which must be balanced with strategic and security considerations. Special attention must be paid to challenges of religious freedom, especially the status of Middle Eastern Christians and other religious minorities, as well as the human trafficking endemic to the region.”

Prominent figures on the right considered close with the Heritage Foundation have expressed increasing wariness over U.S. support for Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians over the treatment of Christians in the Holy Land. This gained its most notable showcase when Tucker Carlson featured a Palestinian reverend from Bethlehem, Pastor Munther Isaac, on his YouTube show earlier this year.

Despite this seeming empathy, the plan does not mention Gaza nor a two-state solution, and the only mentions of Palestinians exist in the context of punitive action.