ESG in 2025 for Legal and Compliance Professionals: A Closer Look at Project 2025

With Trump 2.0 beginning next week, it is time to take another, closer look at Project 2025. The 2025 Presidential Transition Project – or Project 2025 – is self-described as the conservative movement’s unified effort to be ready for the next Presidential administration to govern as soon as it takes office. The Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise contains well over 200 substantive mentions of ESG-related terms and concepts, even though ESG only takes up a small part of the Mandate. This post provides an overview of 70+ policy recommendations from the Mandate relating to ESG topics.

As widely reported, then-candidate Trump distanced himself from Project 2025, which was led by prominent conservative think-tank The Heritage Foundation. However, because the Mandate reflects many widely-held conservative views, and because some expected members of the Administration had prominent roles in its preparation, it is a certainty that in at least some respects Trump 2.0 policy will be aligned with the Mandate. 

According to The Heritage Foundation, soon after President Trump took office in 2016, his administration began to implement major parts of the 2016 Mandate and, after his first year in office, the administration had implemented 64% of its policy recommendations. There is probably more alignment around ESG-related topics than many other portions of the Mandate. The Mandate should therefore be a planning data point for all legal and compliance professionals with ESG responsibility, irrespective of their personal political leanings.

About the Mandate     

The Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise is one of four pillars of Project 2025. The Mandate’s roots go back to 1980, when the inaugural Mandate for Leadership was provided to then President-elect Reagan. It is intended as a consensus conservative view of how major federal agencies should be governed. Published in April 2023 – well-before the Republican Presidential nominee was chosen – the current Mandate consists of 30 chapters by different conservative authors, which were informed by the views of approximately 275 contributors and an advisory board of more than 50 participating organizations, all of which are listed in the Mandate. 

Clocking in at 887 pages, the Mandate is organized into five sections: (1) “Taking the Reins of Government,” (2) “The Common Defense,” (3) “The General Welfare,” (4) “The Economy” and (5) “Independent Regulatory Agencies.”  Each section is further broken out into chapters addressing particular government agencies and/or functions. Each chapter’s recommendations are framed by an overview and critique of current government policy and approaches. 

The Mandate includes hundreds of policy recommendations for White House offices, Cabinet departments, Congress and federal agencies, commissions and boards. Common themes relevant to ESG across many chapters are (1) reducing regulation, (2) rolling back current government initiatives, including by limiting agency mandates and reducing agency staffing, and (3) encouraging free market approaches. 

This is consistent with the mainstream conservative view that the size, scope and involvement of the federal government should be reduced, although new ESG-related regulation also is recommended in some cases. However, the policy views and reform proposals in the Mandate are not intended to be an all-inclusive catalogue of conservative ideas for the incoming administration. There also is not unanimity among the contributors or the organizations with which they are affiliated regarding the recommendations.

Also keep in mind that many of the ESG-related policy recommendations in the Mandate require Congressional buy-in. Recommendations may not be high enough on the priority list to get Congressional attention and, even if they are, they may have difficulty passing due to the razor-thin Republican majority in the House and/or the Senate filibuster. Where the White House or the agencies can act on their own, the left and other stakeholders may seek to block action through the courts.  

Below, we do a non-partisan tick through of the Mandate’s ESG-related policy recommendations expected to be of the most interest to private sector legal and compliance professionals. while trying to stay true to the flavor of the recommendations for context. Links to selected source materials and other background information also are included below. 

Also see our other pieces to date in this Big ESG Themes series:

ESG in 2025 for Legal and Compliance Professionals: 25 Predictions for ‘25

ESG in 2025 for Legal and Compliance Professionals: U.S. Federal Anti-ESG Legislation to Watch For

Energy, Climate and the Environment

Energy and infrastructure policy 

• Promote American energy security by ensuring access to abundant, reliable and affordable energy. (Page 364)
• Affirm an “all of the above” energy policy through which the best attributes of every resource can be harnessed for the benefit of the American people. (Page 364)
• Unleash private-sector energy innovation by ending government interference in energy decisions. (Page 365)
• Expand resource diversity and reliability. Resource diversity is needed to support grid reliability. Pressure to use 100% renewables or non-carbon emitting resources threatens the electric grid’s reliability. A grid that has access to dispatchable resources such as coal, nuclear and natural gas for generating power is inherently more reliable and resilient. (Page 401)
• Ensure that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission facilitates private-sector nuclear energy innovation and deployment. (Page 365)
• The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should not use environmental issues such as climate change as a reason to stop LNG projects. (Page 408)
• Use the Treasury Department’s tools and authority to promote investment in domestic energy, including oil and gas. (Page 709) 
• Eliminate carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) programs. CCUS programs should be left to the private sector to develop. (Page 376)
• End the Department of Energy Grid Deployment Office’s role in grid planning for the benefit of renewable developers. (Page 381)
• Limit the impact of subsidized renewables on price formation. The increase in subsidized, intermittent resources is undermining the ability of regional transmission organizations’ (RTOs’) pricing models to support reliable dispatchable generation to serve the grid at all times. (Pages 401 and 405) Congress should repeal subsidies for generation resources. (Page 402)
• Direct RTOs to ensure that the economic benefits of renewables (such as tax credits and no fuel costs) are passed on to customers. (Page 404)
• The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should either change course on existing transmission rulemakings in progress or issue a new rulemaking to prevent socializing costs for customers who do not benefit from projects or justifying cost shifts as advancing “societal benefits” such as climate change (quotes in the original). (Page 406)

Regulation and other agency action

• Support repeal of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act and support rescinding all funds not already spent by these programs. (Page 365)
• Revisit and repeal or reform outdated environmental statutes. A high priority should be the repeal or reform of the Global Change Research Act of 1990. (Page 439)
• Ensure that other states can adopt California’s standards only for traditional/criteria pollutants, not greenhouse gases. (Page 426)
• Ban the use of cumulative impact analysis in environmental impact statements under the National Environmental Policy Act. (Page 60)
• Revise Environmental Protection Agency guidance documents that control regulations such as the social cost of carbon. (Pages 422-423)
• Eliminate the use of unauthorized regulatory inputs like the social cost of carbon, black box and proprietary models and unrealistic climate scenarios, including those based on Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5. (Page 436) (RCP 8.5 refers to the concentration of carbon that delivers global warming at an average of 8.5 watts per square meter across the planet. The RCP 8.5 pathway delivers a temperature increase of approximately 4.3˚  C by 2100 from pre-industrial levels.)
• Establish a significant emissions rate (SER) for greenhouse gases. (Page 425)
• Remove the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) for any source category that is not currently being regulated. (Page 425)
• Establish a system, with an appropriate deadline, to update the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 Endangerment Finding. (The EPA found that (1) current and projected concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations and (2) the combined emissions of greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines contribute to greenhouse gas air pollution which endangers both public health and welfare.) (Page 425)
• Review the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice and Title VI authority. (Page 441)
• Eliminate energy efficiency standards for appliances by working with Congress to modify or repeal the law mandating these standards. (Pages 378-379)

Public resources and Native American lands

• Reinstate the first Trump-era Energy Dominance Agenda, rescind Department of the Interior Secretarial Order 3398 (“Revocation of Secretary’s Orders Inconsistent with Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis”) and review all regulations, orders, guidance documents, policies and similar agency actions made in compliance with that order. (Pages 521-522)
• Reinstate the following first Trump Administration Department of the Interior secretarial orders (Pages 521-522):
  • SO 3348: Concerning the Federal Coal Moratorium
  • SO 3349: American Energy Independence
  • SO 3350: America-First Offshore Energy Strategy
  • SO 3351: Strengthening the Department of the Interior’s Energy Portfolio
  • SO 3352: National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska
  • SO 3354: Supporting and Improving the Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Program and Federal Solid Mineral Leasing Program
  • SO 3355: Streamlining National Environmental Policy Reviews and Implementation of Executive Order 13807, “Establishing Discipline and Accountability in the Environmental Review and Permitting Process for Infrastructure Projects”
  • SO 3358: Executive Committee for Expedited Permitting
  • SO 3360: Rescinding Authorities Inconsistent with Secretary’s Order 3349, “American Energy Independence”
  • SO 3385: Enforcement Priorities
  • SO 3389: Coordinating and Clarifying National Historic Preservation Act Section 106 Reviews
• Restore the right of tribal governments to enforce environmental regulation on their lands. (Page 537)

Agency mandate and structure

• Environmental Protection Agency
  • Its structure and mission should be greatly circumscribed to reflect the principles of cooperative federalism and limited government. (Page 420)
  • Return the environmental justice function to the Office of the Administrator, eliminating the stand-alone Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights. (Page 421)
• Department of Energy
  • Eliminate the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management and, if it cannot be eliminated, revert to its original designation as the Office of Fossil Energy and with its original mission to increase energy security and supply through fossil fuels. (Page 377)
  • Eliminate the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) or reduce its funding and its focus on decarbonization. (Page 379) The EERE should end its focus on climate change and green subsidies. (Page 378)
  • Eliminate the Grid Deployment Office, Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations and Clean Energy Corps. (Pages 380, 382 and 386, respectively) 
  • Focus the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response, Office of Electricity, Office of Nuclear Energy, Office of Fossil Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve on identifying and addressing threats to energy suppliers and infrastructure, rather than on decarbonization. (Page 368)
  • Incorporate the Grid Deployment Office into a reformed Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response focused on enhancing the grid’s reliability and resilience, rather than focusing on grid expansion for the benefit of renewable resources or supporting low/carbon generation. (Page 380)
• Treasury Department
  • Eliminate the Climate Hub Office. (Page 709)
• Eliminate the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) and by Executive Order end the use of SCC analysis. (Page 61)

International

• Withdraw the United States from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement. (Page 709)
• The United States should end its financial support and withdraw from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (Page 698)
• The Treasury Department should reverse support for international public- (and private-) based efforts promoting ESG and Principles for Responsible Investment, both of which have badly damaged U.S. energy security. (Page 709)
• Oppose “climate reparations” for developing countries (quotes in the original). (Page 389)
• The U.S. Agency for International Development should (1) rescind all climate policies from foreign aid programs, (2) shut down agency offices, programs and directives designed to advance the Paris Climate Agreement and (3) narrowly limit funding to traditional climate mitigation efforts. USAID should support the responsible management of oil and gas reserves as the quickest way to end poverty and the need for open-ended foreign aid. (Pages 257-258) USAID should cease collaborating with and funding progressive foundations, corporations, international institutions and NGOs that advocate on behalf of climate fanaticism. (Page 258)

ESG Generally

Corporate governance and public company disclosure

• Congress should:
  • Oppose efforts to redefine the purpose of business in the name of (1) social justice, (2) corporate social responsibility, (3) stakeholder theory, (4) ESG criteria, (5) socially responsible investing, (6) sustainability, (7) diversity, (8) business ethics or (9) common-good capitalism. (Page 832)

• Prohibit the Securities and Exchange Commission from requiring issuer disclosure of social, ideological, political or human capital information that is not material to investors’ financial, economic or pecuniary risks or returns. (Page 832)
• Repeal the Dodd–Frank mandated disclosures relating to conflict minerals, mine safety, resource extraction and CEO pay ratio. (Page 832)

Pension investing

• The Department of Labor should prohibit investing in ERISA plans on the basis of any factors that are unrelated to investor risk and return, permitting only the consideration of pecuniary factors. However, this approach should not preclude the consideration of legitimate non-ESG factors, such as corporate governance, supply chain investment in America or family-supporting jobs. (Pages 606-607)
• The Department of Labor should remove mutual fund windows from the federal Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) that encourage ESG and should clarify the fiduciary duties of the TSP. (Page 608)
• The federal government should remove their pension funds from fund managers that are perceived as having a non-pecuniary ESG agenda. (Page 608)
• The Department of Labor should consider bringing enforcement actions against fund managers that are perceived as having a non-pecuniary ESG agenda for violations of fiduciary duty while managing the TSP. (Page 608)
• Congress should enact legislation authorizing the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board to exercise its independent business judgment in exercising the proxy votes for its TSP holdings and provide clear proxy voting guidelines for the FRTIB to follow. (Page 608)

Competition 

• Congress should investigate ESG practices as a cover for anti-competitive activity and possible unfair trade practices. (Pages 873-874)
• The Federal Trade Commission should set up an ESG/DEI collusion task force to investigate firms—particularly in private equity—to see if they are using the practice as a means to meet targets, fix prices or reduce output. (Page 873)

Federal Reserve

• Elected officials must clamp down on the Fed’s incorporation of ESG factors into its mandate, including by amending its financial stability mandate. (Page 740)

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

• Delete the term DEI from every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation and piece of legislation that exists. (Pages 4-5)
• Eliminate DEI in labor policy. (Page 582)
• Work with Congress to amend Title VII to prohibit the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from collecting EEO-1 data and any other racial classifications in employment for both private and public workplaces. (Page 583) 
• Congress should prohibit securities regulators, including self-regulatory organizations, from promulgating rules or taking other actions that discriminate, either favorably or unfavorably, on the basis of the race, color, religion, sex or national origin of an individual or group. (Page 832)
• Direct the Department of Justice and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to prohibit racial classifications and quotas, including human-resources classifications and DEI trainings that promote critical race theory. (Pages 582-583)
• Congress should eliminate disparate impact as a valid theory of discrimination for race and other bases under Title VII and other laws and the President should sign an executive order explicitly forbidding the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs from using disparate impact in its analysis. (Pages 583-584)
• At the U.S. Agency for International Development, (1) eliminate the Chief Diversity Officer position along with the DEI advisers and Committees, (2) eliminate the DEI scorecard and dashboard, (3) remove DEI requirements from contract and grant tenders and awards and (4) eliminate funding for partners that promote discriminatory DEI practices and consider debarment in egregious cases. (Page 258)
• At the Treasury Department, (1) identify officials who participated in DEI initiatives and interview them to determine the scope and nature of the initiatives and to ensure they are ended, (2) make public communications relating to the work of the Treasury’s DEI initiatives, (3) treat participation in DEI initiatives, without objecting on constitutional or moral grounds, as per se grounds for termination of employment, (4) make public all training materials and initiatives designed to single out any race, ethnicity or sex for special treatment and (5) eliminate the Counselor for Racial Equity, Advisory Committee on Racial Equity and office for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility. (Page 708)

Foreign Labor and Human Rights 

These recommendations are consistent with a pro-ESG agenda. However, they are included since they generally are framed in the Mandate as leveling the playing field for U.S. workers, rather than to promote human rights abroad.

• For future Free Trade Agreements, the U.S. Trade Representative should replicate the labor provisions of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement to (1) eliminate all forms of forced or compulsory labor, (2) protect workers’ rights to organize and participate voluntarily in a union without employer interference or discrimination, (3) create a rapid-response mechanism to provide for an independent panel investigation of the denial of labor rights at covered facilities and (4) shift the burden of proof by presuming that an alleged violation affects trade and investment, unless otherwise demonstrated. (Pages 613-614)
• For future authorizations of Trade Promotion Authority, the President should urge Congress to (1) create mechanisms for supply-chain transparency, (2) institute a general prohibition on forced labor conditions and (3) investigate foreign labor violations that undermine American workers. (Page 614)
• Focus Department of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs investigations on foreign labor violations that do the most to damage American workers’ earning power, specifically regimes that engage in child and forced labor, fail to protect workers’ organizing rights and permit hazardous or otherwise exploitative working conditions. (Page 614)
• A concern for human rights and minority rights must be balanced with strategic and security considerations. (Page 185)

Food and Agriculture

• The Department of Agriculture should place food productivity and affordability above ancillary issues such as climate change. (Pages 290 and 293)
• Remove the United States from any association with United Nations and other efforts to push sustainable-development schemes connected to food production. (Page 293)
• USDA federal conservation programs should address genuine and specific environmental concerns with a focus on currently existing environmental problems, not those that are speculative in nature. The programs should have clearly identifiable goals that are directly measurable. Assistance to farmers to take specific actions should not be provided unless the assistance will directly and clearly help to address a specific environmental problem and assistance to encourage farmers to engage in certain practices should only be provided if they would not have adopted the practices in the first place. (Page 304)

Housing

• At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, repeal climate change initiatives and spending in the Department’s budget request. (Page 508)

Transportation

• Establish greenhouse gas emissions car standards under Department of Transportation leadership that properly consider cost, choice, safety and national security. (Page 426)
• Include life cycle emissions of electric vehicles and consider all of their environmental impacts. (Page 426)
• Restore the position that California’s waiver applies only to California-specific issues like ground-level ozone, not global climate issues. (Page 426)
• Reconsider the Environmental Protection Agency’s Cleaner Trucks Initiative to balance the goal of driving down emissions without creating significant costs or complex burdens on the industry. (Page 426)
• Return the federal fuel economy program to the limits established by Congress. The standards issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration must be reset at reasonable levels that are technologically feasible for internal combustion engine automobiles and consistent with an increase in domestic auto production and healthy growth in the sale of safer and more affordable new vehicles. (Page 628)
• Stop the use of the International Civil Aviation Organization to increase emissions standards for airplanes. (Page 426)

Note: Media sources may freely reference, excerpt or quote from this post with attribution.

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