Project 2025

We’re likely to hear a lot more about Project 2025 beginning next Monday, when the four-day Democratic national convention gets underway. The nearly 900-page document, assembled by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, is billed as the blueprint for a new Trump presidency. Or, as Heritage president Kevin Roberts calls it— a second American revolution, which he said, “will be bloodless if the left goes along.”
To call the document extreme is an understatement. But don’t take our word for it.
“They are extreme, they’re seriously extreme,” said Donald Trump during a recent rally in Michigan while talking about Project 2025 and those behind it.
Trump, whose words can never be taken at face value, was desperately trying to distance himself from a document that Democrats have justifiably highlighted to bolster their claims about the radical agenda those behind the Trump campaign are expecting to implement should he make it back to the White House.
Keep in mind, Trump doesn’t really have set views on policy. He’s about advancing his own interests and will generally take at least three sides on any issue simply to create deniability and confusion. He lets others do the heavy lifting when it comes to the specifics of policy, just as he previously allowed the conservative Federalist Society to handpick his Supreme Court nominees.
And those likely to be doing the heavy lifting in another Trump White House are the very same people behind Project 2025, because it was written by more than a dozen of the most hardcore policy makers who served within the previous Trump administration. It’s backed, as well, by top Trump allies like Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, and his own vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, who just wrote the forward to a new book written by Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, one of the principal architects of Project 2025. The release of that book, which had been scheduled for September, has been delayed, and it now won’t come out until the week after the election. Clearly, the Trump campaign doesn’t want voters learning what might well be in store for them in a new Trump administration.
What we do know is that Project 2025 calls for a sharp turn away from the principles of governance that have guided the United States for generations, calling instead for an unprecedented consolidation of power in the hands of the president by eliminating civil service protections and replacing independent experts at federal agencies with political hacks beholden to the president. It calls for turning the Justice Department into a kind of SWAT team for the president, to deploy at will against political enemies. If there’s one thing Trump has been consistent about, it’s his promise to use a politicized Justice Department to exact revenge. While Trump accuses the Justice Department of operating that way today, that’s just his usual evidence-free noise.
Project 2025, among many other things, calls for the elimination of the Affordable Care Act, which would deny health care access to tens of millions of Americans who have been able to obtain affordable insurance coverage for the first time through the ACA marketplace or through the expansion of Medicaid.
Project 2025 also calls for the elimination of much of the fairness in the current income tax structure, by reducing the number of tax brackets from the current seven to just two, a change that would significantly raise taxes for just about any household earning less than $100,000 a year, while giving those with the highest incomes staggering tax cuts.
Project 2025 calls for a prohibition on the use of mifepristone, the drug that currently provides for about two-thirds of the abortions in the country and calls for the enforcement of an 1873 law, known as the Comstock Act, that would make it a crime to mail any future drug that could be used to cause abortions. That would effectively limit abortions even in states where it’s legal.
It also calls for governance based on biblical principles, implementing a kind of Christian nationalist theocracy. Women, minorities, and LGBTQ members of society would once again become second-class citizens. That’s what Democrats mean when they say, “We’re not going back.”
There’s much, much more, of course, than what could possibly be listed here, but we hope to provide more details as the November election nears. Democrats are likely to continue to highlight the specifics, even as Trump seeks to run away from the radical manifesto.
Of course, here’s what Trump had to say about Project 2025 in 2022, while speaking at a Heritage Foundation conference: “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do,” he said. The only question is, was he lying then, or is he lying now?