I figured I’d follow up, knowing that things weren’t the best, but hoping that no more than a quarter of the 887-page book had been completed.

I was wrong.

Project 2025 is the ninth edition of a series of books called Mandate for Leadership, first published in 1981 at the beginning of the Reagan administration. The most recent addition has been a massive conservative undertaking, featuring more than 100 right-wing organizations on its advisory board. Some of those organizations include the Center for Immigration Studies, Moms for Liberty, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Tea Party Patriots, Turning Point USA, and America First Legal Foundation, which is headed by Stephen Miller, a former Trump senior adviser. Speaking about former Trump associates, “at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025,” according to a CNN review.

In 2022, during the Heritage Foundation’s annual leadership conference, Trump supported the group, referring to them with affection.

“This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America,” he said. “And that’s coming.”

Then on the campaign trail, Trump sharply pivoted, disavowing the project.

“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it. The Radical Left Democrats are having a field day, however, trying to hook me into whatever policies are stated or said. It is pure disinformation on their part. By now, after all of these years, everyone knows where I stand on EVERYTHING!”

But now, seven months into his second administration, close to half of Project 2025’s proposals have been enacted. The tracker I’ve followed was founded by Reddit users u/Rusticgorilla and u/Mollynaquafina. It’s tracking 317 objectives stated by the project. After refreshing the page multiple times, all I could see were completed objectives.

It would be nearly impossible to summarize all the project's objectives. But it has plans for 34 federal agencies, including USAID, the White House, and the Department of Homeland Security.

In the case of USAID, the Trump administration went further than Project 2025 objectives, fully shuttering the agency instead of cutting funding.

The DHS is the agency for which Project 2025 has the most objectives. Seven objectives are in progress, 14 completed, marking 21 of the 35 objectives. These include drastically increasing ICE funding, eliminating the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and privatizing FEMA insurance plans, and authorizing state and local law enforcement to participate in immigration actions.

There are 63 in-progress objectives. Most of them center on privatising government entities, lowering taxes for the wealthy, slashing environmental protections, diminishing “woke ideology,” and imposing immigration limits and bans.

It’s surreal to read through. As a journalist, my goal is to remain objective, giving a platform for all sides to say their piece, but this feels purposely short-sighted and selfish. One goal that keeps popping up that feels absurd is to break off the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. An organization that tracks weather, storms, and data. Why would they want to shutter it? To have an opportunity to privatise it? So they can duck their heads even deeper in the sand about the growing climate crisis? I mean, they’re working to commercialize the National Weather Service.

I feel a lump filling my throat.

I could dig through this all day and still not reach the bottom. Every few entries, I’ll come across something like “weaken regulations on baby formula,” (not started) or “eliminate the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties” (completed) and deflate.

These are going to be a long four years.

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Obergefell v. Hodges was the landmark case that enshrined marriage equality between straight and gay couples, allowing same-sex unions across the country, under the 14th Amendment.

The ruling “affirms what millions across this country already know to be true in their hearts: our love is equal,” said lead plaintiff Jim Obergefell, who challenged Ohio's ban on same-sex marriage.

Obergefell filed suit because he wasn’t allowed to add his name to his late husband John Arthur's death certificate after Arthur died from ALS.

“They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law,” then-Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote 10 years ago, in the Obergefell v. Hodges majority opinion. “The Constitution grants them that right.”

At the time the decision was made, 12 states had outright banned gay marriage, with a patchwork of legality across the rest of the country.

Now, just over 10 years later, the ruling may sit in the hands of the Supreme Court again.

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Not long after Obergefell was decided, in August 2015, then Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis refused to certify the marriage licenses of gay couples, eventually serving six days in jail and ending up on the hook for $100,000 in damages and another $260,000 in attorney fees.

She is now petitioning the Supreme Court in the face of that, claiming that not only is she not liable for damages due to her religious beliefs and protections from the First Amendment, but also that the original Obergefell ruling in 2015 was wrong.

“The mistake must be corrected,” wrote Davis's attorney, Mathew Staver, in the petition. He calls Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion in Obergefell “legal fiction.”

Not only is this the first time that the Supreme Court has been directly asked to overturn the watershed case, but it comes during a wave of anti-marriage equality sentiment and a movement from many states to restrict or ban it altogether.

“Obergefell was wrong when it was decided and it is wrong today,” Davis’s lawyers at the right-wing legal firm Liberty Counsel argue in the petition, calling it a “mistake [which] must be corrected.”

Others have claimed that due to her role as a county clerk, she had a responsibility beyond her personal religious beliefs.

“When you do a job on behalf of the government — as an employee or a contractor — there is no license to discriminate or turn people away because they do not meet religious criteria,” James Esseks, director of the American Civil Liberties Union LGBT & HIV Project, said in a statement. “Our government could not function if everyone doing the government's business got to pick their own rules.”

According to the ACLU, there have been 604 anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced in 2025. This has been a part of a wider mission on the right to “divide and conquer,” first focusing on trans rights and then refocusing on marriage equality. Media Matters for America (MMFA) has a fantastic timeline of events, starting almost right after Obergefell and the 2016 North Carolina trans bathroom ban.

“In the interim, right-wing media focused their attacks on transgender people, materializing into a yearslong culture war and now a presidential administration with an unabashed anti-trans agenda,” Henry wrote for MMFA this week. “Confident that they have put transgender people on their back foot, right-wing media are mobilizing against gay marriage once again, a fight for which they have years of practice.”

Legislators in five states — Michigan, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota — introduced resolutions to petition the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell, and while each of those resolutions failed to pass Senate chambers, it does mark a shift in sentiment.

Though this is an issue at the government and policy level, at the individual level, opinions on marriage equality are largely settled. A 2022 Pew Research study reported that 61% of Americans support marriage equality, while only around 37% oppose it. Nearly every demographic, across racial and education lines, has a majority that supports gay marriage, with religious and political affiliation being the only indicators that show a meaningful shift in opinion. Public opinion has nearly flipped since 2004, when about double the Americans opposed gay marriage than supported it.

There are still concerns, especially given the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe v. Wade in 2022. During the oral arguments, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas expressed concerns about the case and a willingness to overturn it.

“Davis may have been one of the first victims of this court’s cavalier treatment of religion in its Obergefell decision, but she will not be the last,” wrote Thomas on behalf of the two justices. “Due to Obergefell, those with sincerely held religious beliefs concerning marriage will find it increasingly difficult to participate in society without running afoul of Obergefell and its effect on other anti-discrimination laws.”

At the time of writing, there are an estimated 823,000 married same-sex couples in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School. While overturning Obergefell wouldn't end their marriages, thanks to the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act, it’s still important to understand the far-reaching implications of a ruling like this.

Davis herself may not have much of a claim, consistently being turned away at smaller courts, but the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket” does leave room for ambiguity.