Pearl River My first introduction to Project 2025 was an email thrown over the 21st century techno-transom. I didn’t recognize the sender at first, but he is a long-time singer in the American country tradition for the last 50 years, specializing in what he calls a “arklassippi” music in a mash-up for the three mid-south states. The email from Tom Houston Jones was simple and straightforward. The subject line said: “I’m beyond concerned. Project 2025.” The body of the email was as plain and had only a wikipedia link. When I first got the email right before July 4th, I sort of scratched my head, thinking I’ll look into this later.
Since then, everywhere I look, I’m seeing Project 2025 mentioned in one scary story after another. Jones was right to be concerned, this stuff from the Heritage Foundation is so far out, so far right, that even Trump and his campaign have been trying to distance him from their recommendations, and the Democrats are trying to hang the whole project around his neck. Trump is having trouble distancing himself from this because he has been a fanboy of the rightwing Heritage Foundation for years, both publicly and privately. Many of their proscriptions embedded in Project 2025 were written by former Trump administration personnel, and the overall project was run by a former Trump guy. If it sticks on your shoe, it’s hard to pretend that you didn’t step in it.
So, what’s up with this? We’ll avoid all of the partisan back and forth, and follow Jones’ lead and stick to Wikipedia for the highlights. Here’s what they have fact-checked:
Project 2025[a] is a collection of conservative and right-wing policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power should the Republican nominee win the 2024 presidential election.[4][5] It proposes reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers as political appointees in order to replace them with loyalists more willing to enable the next Republican president’s policies.[5][6] It seeks to infuse the government and society with Christian values.[7][8] Critics have characterized Project 2025 as an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan to transform the U.S. into an autocracy.[9][7] Many legal experts have said it would undermine the rule of law,[10] the separation of powers,[11] the separation of church and state,[12] and civil liberties,[5][10][13] including the civil rights of women, persons of color, and the LGBTQ community.[14] In July 2024, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts said, “we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”[15] In April 2023, Project 2025 director Paul Dans said that it is “systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army [of] aligned, trained, and essentially weaponized conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state.”[16][17] The Project proposes deploying the military for domestic law enforcement.[18][19]
This would be a wild combination of authoritarianism, Christian nationalism, racism, and knock on the door of ending the last vestiges of US democracy as we know it.
Am I exaggerating? Not by a long shot. Here’s more:
The plan proposes taking partisan control of the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Commerce, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), dismantling the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and sharply reducing environmental and climate change regulations to favor fossil fuel production.[10][20] The blueprint seeks to institute tax cuts,[21] though its writers disagree on the wisdom of protectionism.[22] Project 2025 recommends abolishing the Department of Education, whose programs would be either transferred to other agencies or terminated.[23][24] Funding for climate research would be cut while the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would be reformed according to conservative principles.[25][26] The Project seeks to cut funding for Medicare and Medicaid,[27][28] and urges the government to explicitly reject abortion as health care.[29][30] The Project states that life begins at conception[27] and seeks to eliminate coverage of emergency contraception under the Affordable Care Act[27] and enforce the Comstock Act to prosecute those who send and receive contraceptives and abortion pills nationwide.[30][31] The Project seeks to infuse the government with elements of Christianity.[7] It proposes criminalizing pornography,[32] removing legal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,[32][33] and terminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs[5][33] and affirmative action[34] by having the DOJ prosecute “anti-white racism.”[35] The Project recommends the arrest, detention, and deportation of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. by using the military to capture and place them in internment camps.[36][37] The Insurrection Act of 1807 would be used to allow the military to engage in domestic policing and capturing undocumented immigrants.[38][39] It promotes capital punishment and the speedy “finality” of those sentences.[40]
Of course, to take over the country and bring us back to the Stone Age, requires, as the Heritage Foundation presumes, a second Trump presidency. It would also take control of both houses of Congress by not just Republicans, but hype-conservative, Freedom Caucus-type wingers. We’ll all have something to say about this before it happens, but when we vote, it’s worth keeping Project 2025 in the back of our mind with its potential of bringing forth the apocalypse.