What is Project 2025, and why are people Googling it more than Taylor Swift right now?

For more than a year, practically no one had heard of Project 2025, a 900-page document put together in April 2023 by a conservative think tank as a blueprint for a new Donald Trump administration.

But within the last three weeks, an HBO commentator, a famous actress, and a right-wing policy wonk began talking about it in public, creating an opening for President Joe Biden to denounce it, and Trump himself to disavow the would-be playbook for his second presidency — created by some of his closest associates.

By Tuesday, more people were googling Project 2025 than Taylor Swift or the NFL, according to Parker Butler, who works for the Biden campaign and shared a screenshot showing search data trends on Twitter.

Here is how a dense and technical policy treatise suddenly burst into the collective consciousness.

The document, officially known as “Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise,” is a proposed overhaul of the federal government based on a set of conservative ideas, many of which were first proposed in 1981 under the Ronald Reagan administration.

It’s also been dubbed a “wish list” for a second Trump presidency.

“Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State,” Paul Dans, the project’s director, wrote on the project website.

The plan calls for firing thousands of civil servants who could then be replaced by political appointees with demonstrated loyalty to Trump; greatly expanding the power of the president so that much of the government is under executive control; dismantling the Department of Education and other federal agencies; and making large tax cuts.

Project 2025 would deeply cut federal money for research and investment in renewable energy. It looks to eliminate subsidies for electric vehicles, and orders an end to “the war on oil and natural gas.” It also promises a greater federal effort to crack down on undocumented immigrants.

Labeling the FBI as “bloated, arrogant, and increasingly lawless,” the project would overhaul the organization. It would also do away with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The project recommends that pornography be outlawed. Further, some observers say, it looks to infuse Judeo-Christian values throughout the government.

As Project 2025 would withdraw the abortion pill mifepristone from the market, it would also increase parental control over schools, taking aim at what it calls “woke propaganda” by, among other things, dismantling federal protections for LGBTQ individuals.

It proposes to eliminate a list of terms from federal regulations: “sexual orientation”; “diversity, equity, and inclusion”; “gender equality”; “abortion”; and “reproductive rights.”

Spearheaded by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, Project 2025 also has obtained input from around 100 groups, including Tea Party Patriots, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Turning Point USA, and Concerned Women for America.

In addition, the document was shaped by several former Trump appointees: Project 2025 director Paul Dans was Trump’s chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management, while associate director Spencer Chretien served as Trump’s special assistant and associate director of presidential personnel.

Also involved were Russ Vought, who led the Office of Management and Budget; former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller; and Roger Severino, who was director of the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Others, according to the Guardian, included John McEntee, who was Trump’s director of White House personnel, Stephen Miller, a senior adviser in his first administration; Ben Carson, Trump’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and Ken Cuccinelli, a former deputy secretary of homeland security.

A recent cascade of events brought the document to the attention of millions.

On June 16, John Oliver, host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, devoted a monologue to the Republican plan: “If Trump’s first term was defined by chaos, his second could be defined as ruthless efficiency,” he said.

Two weeks later, actor Taraji Henson criticized the project while hosting the BET Awards. “Pay attention,” she said. “It’s not a secret; look it up. They are attacking our most vulnerable citizens. The Project 2025 plan is not a game.”

Then, on July 2, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts discussed Project 2025 with a guest host on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, saying that Republicans are “taking this country back.”

“We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” Roberts said.

On July 5, Trump wrote on X:

“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

Biden then assailed the project on July 6, and Project 2025 has become a hot topic on social media, with everyone from Lizzo to Mark Hamill weighing in.

“Celebrities feel obliged to use their platforms to get people to pay attention,” Temple University sociologist Dustin Kidd said in an interview.

Project 2025 has now achieved such critical mass, Penn State University communications professor Matt McAllister said in an interview, that “it’s diminishing what seemed like endless talk about Biden’s poor debate performance.”

McAllister said that it’s fitting that show business people helped alert the country to Project 2025. “Donald Trump became most famous by being a TV celebrity, after all,” he said.

Dan Pfeiffer, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, told the Washington Post that Project 2025 is “a political gift from the heavens.”

Project 2025 is currently so much a part of the national conversation that it’s allegedly inspired a group of self-proclaimed “gay furry hackers” to breach the Heritage Foundation’s computer system, according to Newsweek. The group says it’s posted approximately two gigabytes of data online that it says was retrieved from the foundation’s servers.

Although it’s not clear whether Trump was personally involved in crafting the document, it represents many of his ideas about getting tough on immigration, eliminating the “deep state,” shuttering the Department of Education, and naming the FBI as his enemy.

Trump’s insistence that he knew nothing of the project has been excoriated by pundits and others who point to the large number of Trump associates involved.

“Trump is assuaging moderate voters who don’t like the idea of a ‘revolution,’ as Roberts said,” said David Kahl Jr., a professor of communication at Penn State-Behrend. “Trump is essentially saying, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not planning a revolution.’”

Trump was unprepared to be president in 2016 because “no one thought he’d win,” Deborah Weinstein, executive director of the nonpartisan Coalition on Human Needs, said in an interview.

“What makes Project 2025 significant,” she added, “is that it’s taken the Heritage Foundation a while to figure out how to create an agenda for a possible second Trump term.

“And now, they have.”