A training video associated with Project 2025 — a controversial playbook for a future conservative presidency by the right-wing Heritage Foundation — calls for eliminating references to climate change across the federal government.
The video was published online this weekend by news outlets ProPublica and Documented, shared with the news outlets by a person who had access to them.
ProPublica and Documented reported the clip was part of Project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy, which seeks to prepare future political appointees to be part of a conservative administration.
In the climate-related video, Bethany Kozma, who was deputy chief of staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development during the Trump administration, said: “If the American people elect a conservative president, his administration will have to eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere.”
Kozma added that climate change has “infiltrated” every part of the federal government and connected it to “population control.”
A Heritage Foundation spokesperson referred The Hill to the climate section of its publicly available document detailing its playbook, which similarly denounces what it describes as climate “alarmism” and “fanaticism” in the government.
The think tank’s project has come under fierce scrutiny, with Democrats attempting to link the effort to former President Trump’s campaign, noting many former Trump administration officials have been affiliated with it.
The sweeping proposal calls for changes ranging from rescinding the federal approval for abortion medication to criminalizing pornography.
Trump, however, has distanced himself from Project 2025, saying “I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
The Heritage Foundation has publicly posted an agenda for its project online. The public portions call for the “break up” of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and for much of its climate change research to be “disbanded.”
Trump himself has incorrectly referred to climate change as a “hoax” and reports during his tenure indicated that climate change references had been removed or downplayed on various federal web pages.