The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank based in Washington, D.C., works to formulate public policies based on conservative principles of limited government, individual freedom, “traditional” American values and a strong national defense.
In April 2022, the Heritage Foundation announced the formation of a 2025 Presidential Transition Project — a coordinated effort with more than 110 conservative groups — to develop a movement consensus of policy programs to guide what they hope will be an assertive, right-of-center administration that will capture the White House in November.
Project 2025’s plan is deliberate, methodical, far-reaching and chilling. It has four components: First, a comprehensive policy manual called “Mandate for Leadership” outlines a vision of conservative success at each federal agency during the next administration. Second, an online personnel database of conservative candidates who would be available to serve in the new administration and carry out the mandate.
Third, a Presidential Administration Academy to train political appointees in the mastery of agency operations — to manipulate the levers of government — to streamline implementation of mandate programs. And fourth, the “Playbook,” which takes the policy ideas from the “mandate” and transforms them into an implementation plan at each federal agency.
The centerpiece of Project 2025 is a 900-page plan that calls for wide-ranging hard-right policies that would touch nearly every aspect of American lives. It calls for abortion limits, seeks to slash climate change and proposes to cut off LGBTQ health-care funding. It proposes to promote policies that encourage “marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood and nuclear families,” and the infusion of Christian nationalism into every facet of government policy.
The plan also seeks to realign White House authority over the Justice Department; remake the federal workforce to be more political; impose changes to public schooling by cutting low-income and early education federal programs like Head Start and even the entire Education Department; and crack down on immigration through a new “border patrol and immigration agency” to complete a border wall, build camps to detain families at the border and direct the military to find and deport those in the country illegally, including “dreamers.”
The scope and specificity of the Project 2025 plan and its proposed methodical implementation plan have attracted a lot of attention. Democrats have warned that the plan is a blueprint for a second Trump administration, pointing to the fact that many of the people who developed Project 2025 are former Trump staffers and insiders.
But, at times, Trump appears to be trying to moderate some of his public positions to win the election. And some of Project 2025‘s plans go further to the right than Trump does. He has, therefore, criticized portions of Project 2025 as “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal” and insists that neither he nor his campaign had anything to do with it.
Criticism from the Trump campaign and mounting conservative concern that takeover plans may be getting ahead of campaign skis, forced the Heritage Foundation to announce the winding down of Project 2025 policy operations and the departure of the plan’s director.
That move may silence efforts to promote Project 2025, but it will not erase the record of what the plan proposes to accomplish.
Voters who want to understand what a second Trump administration could look like should take the time to examine Project 2025. It’s scary.
Fear, pure, unadulterated fear is the Democrat’s new policy agenda for the 2024 election. It’s now surpassed even Trump is the second coming of Hitler and there’s mobs of right-wing, white supremacists just waiting for the election of Donald Trump to eliminate all the pillars of democracy. Fear is a strong incentive to vote for the far-left candidates of Harris and Waltz but it’s also a red flag for hiding their real agenda. De fund the police ans ICE, 80% tax rates, spending beyond rationality, huge inflation along with massive crime and a completely open border with no controls on entering terrorists, rapists, child molesters and murderers. It’s also a great cover for Democrats allowing our city’s to be burned down by ANTIFA and BLM and mobs who attack Jewish students on campus and threaten to gas and murder all Jews wherever they reside.
Tell me what Biden and Harris have done to stop the new extemist attacks on Jews and when you can’t think about why.
Not sure why you’re conflating Project 2025 with Trump as Trump has repudiated much of it. Where’s your editorial conflating Harris with the policy proposals of a random leftist think tank?
Why isn’t the Jewish community loudly fighting project 2025 ?
Because, nobody knows what it is.