Project 2025

Project 2025 is the master plan by the Heritage Foundation to be enacted should a Republican win the upcoming 2024 presidential election.Conservative groups draw up plan to dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision AP NewsConservatives aim to restructure U.S. government and replace it with Trump’s vision PBS News Hour It aims to "march into office and bring a new army of aligned, trained, and essentially weaponised conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state”.US hard-right policy group condemned for ‘dehumanising’ anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric The Guardian What they actually mean is to turn the United States into a Christian nationalist "utopia"Project 2025: A Heightened Threat of Christian Nationalism and Authoritarianism Global Project Against Hate and Extremism led by none other than the four-times indicted former...and future president, Donald Trump.Lulu Garcia-Navarro (January 21, 2024). "Inside the Heritage Foundation’s Plans for ‘Institutionalizing Trumpism’". The New York Times.Analysis Exposes Trumpian Project 2025 as 'Far-Right Playbook for American Authoritarianism' Common Dreams Pursuing a controversial "unitary executive theory", the plan would expand direct presidential control over federal agencies, including the Department of Justice.
The plan includes the culmination of 50+ years of unadulterated unfiltered hatred and scorn for pretty much every LGBTQIA+, non-white, non-Trumpist, and non-Christian individual under the sun, leading to what can be described as Trumpism in its purest form.Conservatives aim to restructure U.S. government and replace it with Trump’s vision by Lisa Mascaro, August 29, 2023, PBS Historian Bruce Gourley has argued that the project is rooted in Confederate apologism and the dominionism of R. J. Rushdoony.Legislating inequality: The Christian Confederate roots of Project 2025 by Bruce Gourley (June 28, 2024) Church & State Magazine, Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Building on the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, it aims to restrict contraceptives or abortion pills access and institute "abortion surveillance" (whatever that means).Vivian Salama (July 5, 2024). "Trump Distances Himself From Conservative ‘Project 2025’ Agenda". The Wall Street Journal.Gram Slattery (July 12, 2024). "Project 2025: What is it? Who is behind it? How is it connected to Trump?". Reuters. Also of interest are the proposals for deregulating select parts of the government. This brings onboard the oil billionaires, who want to strip environmental protections, climate change mitigation efforts, and climate science research.Mike Soraghan (July 8, 2024). "Meet the Christian oil mogul spending big to elect Trump". E&E News (Politico).Dharna Noor (July 27, 2023). "‘Project 2025’: plan to dismantle US climate policy for next Republican president". The Guardian.Katherine Doyle (March 21, 2024). "Leonard Leo, Koch networks pour millions into groups prepping for potential second Trump administration". NBC News."Conservatives gear up for EPA revamp in 2025". E&E News (Politico).Arianna Skibell (April 15, 2024). "A deep dive into energy plans for Trump 2.0". Politico. Project 2025 also targets public education; proposing to abolish the federal Department of Education, to cut subsidized school meals for impoverished children, and to eliminate the Rob Schofield (May 14, 2024). "The Trump team’s radical plan to gut American public education". NC Newsline.Jeff Raikes (July 1, 2024). "Project 2025 Is A Blueprint For Business Disaster" Forbes. and to phase out Title I funding to low-income schools.Project 2025: rightwing manifesto’s key proposals and how they could affect you: Blueprint outlines extreme, conservative policies for a potential second Trump term and beyond by Rachel Leingang (1 Aug 2024 06.00 EDT) The Guardian.
The plan is led by Paul Dans, who was chief-of-staff at the Office of Personnel Management during the Trump administration.About Project 2025 Project 2025 | Presidential Transition Project A slew of conservative think tanks and other organizations collaborated on the agenda, including everything from Alliance Defending Freedom and the Competitive Enterprise Institute to Turning Point USA and the Family Research Council.What is Project 2025 and what does it have to do with a second Trump term? Conservatives have created a guide for how Trump and allies could dismantle the US government if he wins the election by Rachel Leingang (26 May 2024 08.00 EDT) The Guardian. As of July 2024, Project 2025 was backed by a budget of $22 million.Mike Wendling (July 7, 2024). "Project 2025: A wish list for a Trump presidency, explained". BBC News.
The plan consists of four pillars which consist of policy, a personnel database, training for would-bes, and a 180-day playbook, all of which will be described in detail.
According to Paul Dans, the director of Project 2025 and co-editor of the Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise book, the project was inspired by the 1981 1093-page tome A Mandate for Leadership: Policy Management in a Conservative Administration that inspired the so-called Reagan Revolution.Inside the Next Republican Revolution: Whether Trump wins or not, the GOP plans a renewed assault on his nemesis, the “deep state.” Can conservatives train enough loyalists to actually get the job done? by Michael Hirsh (09/19/2023) Politico.Mandate for Leadership: Policy Management in a Conservative Administration by Charles L. Heatherly (1981) The Heritage Foundation. ISBN 0891950281.
The 2023 book describes 4 pillars of Project 2025:
*Pillar I: the book itself
*Pillar II: a personnel database for candidates to review and choose from
*Pillar III: "the Presidential Administration Academy, an online educational system taught by experts from our coalition."
*Pillar IV: the Playbook, for drafting transition plans should their candidate become president
Trump himself says he has no idea about any of this, but also has an (ambiguous of an) opinion about it somehow, so that's just bullshit.
In July 2024, the president of Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, referred to this project by saying "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be."Biden assails Project 2025, a plan to transform government, and Trump’s claim to be unaware of it by Adriana Gomez Licon (6:05 PM PDT, July 6, 2024) Associated Press. Nearly concurrently, the far-right-dominated Supreme Court (with 3 Trump appointees) "invented a new rule" that gave wide-ranging immunity from prosecution to unscrupulous presidents, specifically with Trump in mind.Legal expert: SCOTUS "invented a new rule" that could even give Trump immunity for "unofficial acts": Under Supreme Court ruling, prosecutors can't use evidence of "official" conduct to try "unofficial" acts by Marina Villeneuve (July 8, 2024 3:34PM EDT) Salon. Given that Trump has said that he will be a dictator 'only' on "day one" of his second presidency,Trump’s vow to only be a dictator on ‘day one’ follows growing worry over his authoritarian rhetoric by Jill Colvin & Bill Barrow (4:58 PM PDT, December 7, 2023) Associated Press. it leaves little doubt that the a second coup attempt is being planned, bloodless or not, by the far-right in the US.
The right-wing's brazen and transparent approach to Project 2025, namely Roberts' statement along with the fact that the Heritage Foundation publicly posted the damn 900+-page mandate in the first place, is widely seen as a display of gross, self-destructive overconfidence under the assumed belief that they're winning (or have already won) the "culture war", and that anyone sounding the alarm would be dismissed by the mainstream as a conspiracist kook.This narrative did ultimately end up being pushed by Trump's supporters, who believed him at his word (or who simply went along with his lie) when he claimed that he had no affiliation with Project 2025 -- albeit not as successfully as they may have hoped. As such, public interest in and awareness of Project 2025 skyrocketed after Roberts' threat,"What is Project 2025, and why are people Googling it more than Taylor Swift right now?" by Alfred Lubrano (July 11, 2024 11:12AM EDT) The Philadelphia Inquirer. and it became a discussion topic for multiple celebrities and talking heads such as Taraji P. Henson, John Oliver, and Stephen Colbert. Following President Joe Biden ending his 2024 re-election campaign, his VP and heir apparent Kamala Harris vowed to "decimate" Project 2025 if she were to get elected as President that November."Kamala Harris' opening argument: Vote for me and I'll decimate Project 2025" by Aditi Bharade (July 22, 2024 12:15 AM EDT) Business Insider. In response to this, Roberts published a propaganda an opinion piece in USA Today about how Project 2025 would actually be good for the country, months after the PR fiasco.Bear in mind that the piece was also published after multiple sources corroborated a neighbor's story about Roberts killing their dog with a shovel, just to show what kind of person we're dealing with here."Opinion: Harris is wrong about Project 2025. Our plan is good for America." by Kevin Roberts (Sept. 29, 2024 5:05 AM EDT) USA Today.
In a sign of just how far the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 was out of step with America, in September 2024, an NBC News / Hart Research Associates poll asked how people felt about Project 2025. While many (23%) had no opinion about Project 2025, of those who had one, just 4% viewed Project 2025 positively. In contrast, 57% had a negative opinion (most of this being very negative)."September 2024 NBC News survey", Hart Research Associates/Public Opinion Strategies, page 9Aaron Blake (September 23, 2024). "Project 2025 is a huge blunder from Trump's allies". The Washington Post. This means Project 2025's net approval rating (-53%) is worse than the net approval rating for spiders (-38%) and only moderately better than for wasps (-68%).(June 2024). "YouGov Survey: Insects and Bugs". YouGov.
==And now, a moment from our sponsors…==
The advisory board of the project consists of a list of far-right groups that Americans United for Separation of Church and State considers to be part of the Shadow Network of Christian Nationalism:Project 2025: A Christian Nationalist playbook outlines a broad scheme to overthrow American democracy and install a theocracy by Liz Hayes (May 29, 2024) Church and State, Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
One thing that becomes apparent with these organizations is the duplicity of some of their names, e.g.:
*The Center for Immigration Studies is an anti-immigration organization.
*The Honest Elections Project promotes the radically anti-democratic Independent State Legislature Theory,This conservative group helped push a disputed election theory by Hansi Lo Wang (August 12, 2022 5:01 AM ET) NPR. and engages in voter supression.Conservative ‘dark money’ network rebranded to push voting restrictions before 2020 election by Anna Massoglia & Sam Levine (May 27, 2020 9:14 am) Open Secrets.
*The James Madison Institute is a free market libertarian organization named after deist Founding Father James Madison who promoted secularism, but the organization for some reason is supporting this theocratic project instead.
*The Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America is named after who was a women's rights activist and who never expressed views about abortion.
===Connections to Donald Trump===
In April 2022, Trump spoke before the Heritage Foundation annual leadership conference, in which he said:Alex Griffing (July 11, 2024). "'Exactly What Our Movement Will Do': Unearthed Clip Shows Trump Endorsing Work on Project 2025 — He Now Claims He Knows Nothing About". Mediaite."Donald Trump Delivers Keynote Speech in Florida 4/21/22 Transcript. Rev. (Alternate link).Vaughn Hillyard and Alexandra Marquez (July 11, 2024). "Trump disavows Project 2025, but he has long-standing ties to some key architects". NBC News.
In 2024, Russell Vought confirmed that Trump was completely on board with Project 2025 in a covertly filmed discussion with journalists from the Centre for Climate Reporting. Vought is a chapter author of and president of Mandate for Leadership, one of the main architects of Project 2025, a former director of the Office of Management and Budget under the Trump administration, and the founder and president of Center for Renewing America, one of the advisory organizations for Project 2025. In the discussion, Vought said:Undercover in Project 2025 (Aug 15, 2024) Centre for Climate Reporting via YouTube.Hidden-camera video shows Project 2025 co-author discussing his secret work preparing for a second Trump term by Curt Devine et al. (August 15, 2024) CNN.On MSNBC’s The Reid Out, Angelo Carusone explains how the Supreme Court and GOP-led states have laid the groundwork to implement Project 2025 (08/15/24 8:54 PM EDT) Media Matters for America.
In April 2024, Roberts confirmed that Trump knew about Project 2025, stating, "I personally have talked to President Trump about Project 2025 because my role in the project has been to make sure that all of the candidates who have responded to our offer for a briefing on Project 2025 get one from me."Trump took a private flight with Project 2025 leader in 2022: Trump took the flight to speak at a Heritage Foundation conference, where he said, “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do." by Isaac Arnsdorf et al. (August 7, 2024 at 5:50 p.m. EDT) The Washington Post.
Twenty-seven former Trump White House officials authored or edited the project's main document, and at least 140 people from the former Trump administration were involved overall (including six cabinet secretaries), as well as nearly 240 people with any kind of ties to Trump.Steve Contorno (July 11, 2024). "Trump claims not to know who is behind Project 2025. A CNN review found at least 140 people who worked for him are involved". CNN. Trump has claimed multiple timesSierra Tufts (July 11, 2024). "'I know nothing about Project 2025'; Trump posts on his social media site". WANE-TV. to have no knowledge of it, "who is in charge of it" or "who is behind it".Adriana Gomez Licon (July 6, 2024). "Biden assails Project 2025, a plan to transform government, and Trump’s claim to be unaware of it". The Associated Press.Donald Trump claims to ‘know nothing’ about Project 2025 by Maya Yang (Jul 2024 19.22 EDT) The Guardian.Nathan Layne (July 5, 2024). "Trump seeks to disavow 'Project 2025' despite ties to conservative group". Reuters. Despite "knowing nothing" about it, he bizarrely added in the same post, as if he had familiarity, that "some" completely unspecified parts of it are "ridiculous and abysmal". He also wished them "luck" with the plan.Philip Bump (July 8, 2024). "The impossibility of separating Trump from Project 2025". The Washington Post.Noah Rothman (July 5, 2024). "What Exactly Are the ‘Ridiculous and Abysmal’ Parts?". National Review.
As Trump denied any knowledge of Project 2025, his top super PAC ran ads promoting it as "Trump's Project 2025".Alex Woodward (July 5, 2024). "Trump wants to distance himself from far-right Project 2025 plan while his PAC pushes ads promoting it". The Independent. Since the publication of the report, Trump praised Kevin Roberts, the president of The Heritage Foundation twice by name.Trump Praised President of Project 2025 Parent Group by Name Twice This Year: Trump now claims: "I have no idea who is behind it." by J.D. Wolf (Jul 5, 2024) MeidasTouch Network. The Trump 2024 campaign reportedly held an "entirely off-the-record, private, invite-only" meeting with the Heritage Foundation's "Action" wing.Alex Isenstadt (April 26, 2024). "Trump camp plans sit-down with outside groups after FEC relaxes coordination rules". Politico. Among other ties, Trump's national press secretary as of July 2024 was Karoline Leavitt, who featured prominently in Project 2025 the year prior,Will Steakin and Soo Rin Kim (July 9, 2024). "Trump is trying to distance himself from Project 2025 -- but its architects helped shape his RNC party platform". ABC News. and was a spokesperson for the aforementioned MAGA Inc. super PAC the same year.Alex Isenstadt and Meridith McGraw (January 6, 2024). "Trump and his MAGA allies turn their fire on Haley". Politico.
Project 2025 set up shop at the 2024 Republican National Convention to promote its proposals, and there, Kevin Roberts revealed he's "good friends" with Trump's running mate J. D. Vance, and that the foundation had been privately pushing for Vance to be Trump's running mate.Nicholas Riccardi (July 15, 2024). "Outside RNC, conservative group defends its Project 2025 guidebook as Democrats ramp up critiques". The Associated Press. Vance wrote the violent foreword for Roberts's violent 2024 book, originally titled Dawn’s Early Light: Burning Down Washington to Save America, renamed to Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America after the publisher got cold feet.Read J.D. Vance’s Violent Foreword to Project 2025 Leader’s New Book: Trump’s running mate writes that “it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets.” by Alex Shephard (July 30, 2024) The New Republic. The book had been scheduled for release on September 24, 2024,Dawn's Early Light: Burning Down Washington to Save America by Kevin Roberts, HarperCollins Publishers (archived from 24 Jul 2024 20:58:31 UTC). apparently calculated to have influence on outcome of the November 5 presidential election, but some time after Vance being chosen as a vice presidential candidate and the shit hitting the fan over the contents of Project 2025, the publication date was changed to a few days after the election.Dawn's Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America by Kevin Roberts, Foreword by J. D. Vance HarperCollins Publishers (archived from 14 Aug 2024 17:48:53 UTC).
People associated with the project and its corollaries — The Heritage Foundation, the publisher, the donors, and Trump are concerned about the negative publicity about the project (fueled by media coverage and the Kamala Harris presidential campaign), and not concerned about the far-right undemocratic ideas of project. Paul Dans, the director of Project 2025 left the project after the uproar, leaving the project in Robert's hands.Project 2025 to end policy work after Democratic attacks angered Trump: The Trump campaign grew furious with the Heritage Foundation over media coverage tying the candidate to unpopular policy proposals. by Isaac Arnsdorf & Josh Dawsey (July 30, 2024) The Washington Post.
It is absurd to suggest the country's most influential conservative think tanks came together with former high-ranking Trump administration officials (who wrote much of the documentHere's a graphic: "Project 2025 Authors and their roles in the last administration", Reddit.) to develop nearly 1,000 pages of policy proposals without the expectation that they would be implemented, at the very least, in large proportion.
Trump was already president before, and just one year after he became president, the Heritage Foundation reported that by then, the administration had already adopted 2/3rds of Heritage's over 300 policy proposals in an earlier document from the exact same series as Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership.Derek Kravitz, Al Shaw and Isaac Arnsdorf (March 7, 2018). "What We Found in Trump’s Drained Swamp: Hundreds of Ex-Lobbyists and D.C. Insiders". ProPublica. The Heritage Foundation was very influential in the selection of Trump's 2016-2017 transition team,Katie Glueck (November 22, 2016). "Trump's shadow transition team ". Politico. cabinet appointments,Jonathan Mahler (June 20, 2018). "How One Conservative Think Tank Is Stocking Trump’s Government". The New York Times. and nominations to the Supreme Court.Lawrence Baum and Neal Devins (January 31, 2017). "Federalist Court". Slate.(September 9, 2020). "Trump Campaign Press Release - President Trump's Historic Judicial Appointments", archived by The American Presidency Project (UC Santa Barbara). The campaign's press release references a New York Times report that the administration took advice from Heritage and the Federalist Society on judicial appointments. The Trump 2020 campaign was previously quick to tout the foundation's influence over judicial appointments in particular.
It is conceivable Trump would again take advice on appointments from the Heritage Foundation and other groups linked to Project 2025; his former senior advisor Stephen Miller sits on an advisory council for Project 2025, and according to Reuters is "widely expected to be tapped for a top job in a second Trump administration". The same applies for some of Project 2025's authors.Laura Barrón-López and Shrai Popat (July 9, 2024). "A look at the Project 2025 plan to reshape government and Trump’s links to its authors". PBS NewsHour.
While Trump's 2024 Vice Presidential running mate J. D. Vance is not known to have had a role in Project 2025, he did write the foreword to Roberts' 2024 book, Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America.Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America by Kevin Roberts, foreword by J. D. Vance (2024) Broadside Books. ISBN 0063353504.
Rather than continuing to feign ignorance of Project 2025, as he initially did, Trump was the headliner in August 2024 at a Moms for Liberty annual summit that had the Heritage Foundation as one of its 10 key sponsors. The focus of the summit was notably one of Project 2025's key 'mandates', dismantling the Department of Education.Trump speaks at Heritage-sponsored event after disavowing Project 2025: Trump spoke at the Moms for Liberty summit, an event hosted by the parental rights group that counts the Heritage Foundation among its key sponsors. by Abbie Cheeseman (August 30, 2024 at 5:53 p.m.) The Washington Post. Rather than discuss education, he continued insulting his opponent in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Kamala Harris, during his speech.
====Trump lied====
Shortly after Trump won the 2024 election, to what should be no one's surprise, Trump lied and quickly demonstrated that he had lied and began nominating people from Project 2025 to work in his forthcoming administration: Russ Vought (author of Chapter 2: Executive Office of The President of the United States) for head of the Budget Office, Tom Homan for "border czar", John Ratcliffe for CIA director, Brendan Carr (author of Chapter 28: Federal Communications Commission) for FCC commission, and Pete Hoekstra for ambassador to Canada.Trump picks people who worked on Project 2025 despite distancing himself by Patrick Svitek (November 20, 2024) The Washington Post.
==Pillar I==
Pillar I is mainly the policies and agendas that Project 2025 has in store, all of which is contained in a book called Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise. The 920-page document begins with a foreword claiming that Cultural Marxism allegedly affecting our institutions has come to pass and that the federal government "is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before". I.e the usual weasel words and guilt by association used by wingnuts and Trump supporters. For an example of the latter, Roberts falsely conflated "drag queens and pornography" and transgenderism with pornography.
Roberts' Foreword goes on to claim that pornography "has no claim to First Amendment protection." This was despite the fact that even the Supreme Court had difficulty precisely defining pornography in the landmark 6-3 ruling in the 1964 ruling, with Justice Stewart's vague opinion. This case was followed by the less vague 5-4 ruling in the 1973 "utterly without redeeming social value" and therefore not protected by the First Amendment. Roberts shows by his conflation of pornography with transgenderism that he disagrees with both rulings, resulting in the idea that pornography is anything he doesn't like.
===Department of Defense===
Christopher Miller wrote this chapter. Miller wrote, "Gender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military service, and the use of public monies for transgender surgeries or to facilitate abortion for servicemembers should be ended."
Miller proposed having a minimal contribution to NATO, primarily as a nuclear deterrent. Similarly, he proposed that the US minimize its role in South Korea's defense while in contrast sustaining support of Israel.
===Department of Homeland Security===
Ken Cuccinelli wrote this chapter. Cuccinelli advocated for completing Trump's border wall. In the forward Roberts wrote, "Illegal immigration should be ended, not mitigated; the border sealed, not reprioritized." Cuccinelli has called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA or "Dreamers") program illegal. Cuccinelli has also called illegal the parole of large numbers of refugees from wars and conflict (Afghans, Ukrainians, Venezuelans). Such refugees would be subject to mass detention and deportation under Cuccinelli's plan.
===Department of Health and Human Services===
Roger Severino, Vice President of Domestic Policy at The Heritage Foundation, wrote this chapter on how that federal department should function.
====Abortion policy====
According to Vice President on domestic policy, Roger Severino, the plan wants the Department of Health and Services to ensure that "every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method." The project also seeks to remove HIPAA patient privacy protection for people receiving abortions, claiming that "patients in the womb" (fetuses and blastocysts) are also protected by HIPAA. The removal of HIPAA privacy protection would facilitate interstate prosecution of abortion recipients, providers and facilitators, something that Texas is already intending to do.Texas conservatives test how far they can extend abortion and gender-transition restrictions beyond state lines by Eleanor Klibanoff & William Melhado (Feb. 9, 2024) The Texas Tribune.
Considering that many Republicans, and The Heritage Foundation specifically, want a nationwide abortion ban,Anti-Abortion Extremists Want to Use the 150-Year-Old Comstock Act to Ban Abortion Nationwide: The dangerous legal theory endorsed by one of Trump's top anti-abortion strategists by Andrew Beck (May 30, 2024) ACLU. it's not exactly hard to see that this essentially translates to reporting anyone who gets an abortion to authorities.
While Project 2025 does not explicitly call for an abortion ban, the various invasive restrictions that Roberts calls for could be called ban adjacent (prosecuting anyone mailing abortion pills, criminalizing anyone providing abortion care by tracking miscarriages, stillbirths and abortions),What is Project 2025? It’s a blueprint for what a second Trump administration could look like, dreamed up by his allies and former aides. by Amber Phillips (July 12, 2024 at 1:19 p.m. EDT) The Washington Post. and rescinding the Food and Drug Administration approval of abortion pills such as Mifepristone.
====Sexuality, marriage, family and LGBTQIA+ rights====
Severino wants HHS to "follow the letter and spirit of religious freedom and conscience-protection laws. Simultaneously he argued against what he calls "subjective notions of 'gender identity'" and called for an end to collection of gender identity data by the government, which he falsely called unscientific. The effect of this would be the restoration of the Denial of Care Rule that Severino was blocked by courts from implementation when he was Director of the Office for Civil Rights at the United States Department of Health and Human Services (2017-2021). The rule would have allowed any medical provider to deny health care for anyone else based solely on the provider's personal religious beliefs. The rule was written so broadly that anyone could be denied health care, but was clearly aimed at LGBTQ people.
Severino wants the Trump-era contraceptive mandate to allow health care providers "religious and moral exemptions" to not provide contraceptives to patients.
Severino wants Congress to pass the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act that would exempt the federally-funded and primarily religious organizations that provide foster care services from being charged with discrimination. This would mean that a foster care agency could prevent a qualified family from fostering a child solely based on having a different religion than the fostering agency.
Severino has insisted that gender is binary ("men and women are biological realities"), thus he denies the reality of transgender people. He also wants to prioritize a "biblically based, social science–reinforced definition of marriage and family", thus allowing discrimination against gay marriages for fostering and adopting children ("Protect faith-based grant recipients from religious liberty violations and maintain a biblically based, social science–reinforced definition of marriage and family"). Severino also states that "Working fathers are essential to the well-being and development of their children…", thus his worldview is clearly that of Kinder, Küche, Kirche.
====Vaccines and masking====
Severino, while not himself overtly antivax, has written that the Centers for Disease Control should not be allowed to ever say what people should do:
====Euthanasia====
Severino wants to eliminate physician-assisted suicide for people near the end of life, something that is legal in 10 states.
===Department of Education===
The people behind Project 2025 consider the Department of Education "a convenient one-stop shop for the woke education cartel…" Lindsey M. Burke, author of the chapter on the Department of Education, wants it to be abolished, and want control of education "returned" to the states. Severino wants to eliminate the federally-funded Head Start preschool program based on the false claims that it is ineffective and "fraught with scandal".
This chapter includes a section on "parental rights", which focuses on the rights of parents to cover up child abuse effectively, force transgender and queer children to present as cisgender, and prevent their children from being taught whatever the Heritage Foundation thinks critical race theory is. This section also states that "Federal lawmakers should not allow public school employees to keep secrets about a child from that child’s parents." How this would be accomplished is unclear.
Ultimately, Severino advocates for reducing the Department of Education to "a statistics-gathering agency that disseminates information to the states." This would mean no federal funding of education, and no enforcement of sex- and gender-based anti-discriminatory policies such as is currently mandated under 
===Department of Labor===
Jonathan Berry wrote the chapter on the Department of Labor, filling it with frequent references to Christian nationalist rhetoric (e.g., "The Judeo-Christian tradition, stretching back to Genesis, has always recognized fruitful work as integral to human dignity, as service to God, neighbor, and family.") Berry wants Congress to clarify Title VII of the Civil Act of 1964 such that "religious organization exemptions to make it more explicit that those employers may make employment decisions based on religion regardless of nondiscrimination laws." This would essentially eviscerate the act, removing the right of any person to utilize services that are open to the public.
===Department of Energy===
Bernard McNamee wrote the section "Department of Energy and Related Commissions". Project 2025's plan on climate can essentially be considered as a massive "fuck you" to the Earth's biosphere and every single effort done by anyone to reduce climate change over the last 50 years, as the plan recommends increasing usage of more natural gas (such as methane), convince allied nations to use more fossil fuels, and shuttering the loans program office at the Department of Energy. They also intend to reverse the 2009 EPA finding on carbon dioxide affecting human health. McNamee was previously an advisor at several fossil fuel companies, so this shouldn't come off as exactly surprising. Pretty much making the climate worse for everyone to "own da libs."A Republican 2024 Climate Strategy: More Drilling, Less Clean Energy by Lisa Friedman (August 4, 2023) The New York Times.
===Department of Commerce===
Thomas F. Gilman wrote the chapter on the Department of Commerce. Gilman advocated for the elimination of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), while claiming that AccuWeather is more reliable than those of the National Weather Service (NWS is part of NOAA). Gilman cited AccuWeather itself for this claim but the citation leads to an Accuweather PR releaseLatest Study of 120 Million Forecasts Proves AccuWeather Forecasts Are Most Accurate (Jan 14, 2020, 13:42 ET) PR Newswire. The link to the full report from the PR release just redirect to the main AccuWeather website, and no archive of the full report seems to exist. Not coincidentally, Accuweather's CEO, Barry Myers, was appointed by Trump to lead the NWS in 2017 despite lacking any relevant academic qualifications.White House nominates AccuWeather CEO to head climate agency by David Shepardson (October 11, 20178:12 PM PDT) Reuters. Despite the claims of being most accurate, AccuWeather depends heavily on NWS data, and independent sources have reported on the inaccuracy of AccuWeather forecasts.Accuweather: You cannot be serious (new 45-day forecasts) by Jason Samenow (August 6, 2013 at 4:14 p.m. EDT) The Washington Post.Students put AccuWeather long-range forecasts to the test by Jon Nese (December 26, 2013 at 12:15 p.m. EST) The Washington Post.Zoë Schlanger (July 16, 2024). "The MAGA Plan to End Free Weather Reports". The Atlantic.
===Hypocrisy===
In parts of the document, a strictly textualist and originalist view of laws and treaties is advocated. However when it suits them they take fanciful view of what the disparate Founding Fathers actually meant, as when Roberts wrote in the forward regarding 
===Other===
* Through unitary executive theory, an expansion in the President's power over the executive office.
* A major purge in government employees involving Schedule F and replacing them with nothing but yes-men.
==Pillar II==
The database is being assembled by under contract.Why is Oracle assembling a secret database of Trump loyalists? Oracle Corp., a software company started in the Bay Area, is reportedly helping the Heritage Foundation vet thousands of conservative candidates for a second Donald Trump term. by Raheem Hosseini (Aug 14, 2024 9:01 p.m.) The San Francisco Chronicle.
Candidates for the Presidential Administration Academy as its called are required to answer leading questions on:
*"censorship by Big Tech"
*"education industry"
*"permanent institutions of family and religion"
*"Life has a right to legal protection from conception to natural death."
==Pillar III==
Pillar III is described by Project 2025 as:
In August 2024, 23 training videos with 14 hours of content were leaked to Propublica, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization. Apart from the more mundane information about how government works, the videos give advice on thwarting non-political administrator ("bureaucrats") fighting the so-called "deep state", avoiding Freedom of Information Act disclosures, and assuring that their policies are not struck down by "left-wing judges". The speakers in the videos are careful not to mention political parties or candidates, referring instead to conservatives and the left-wing, mostly likely hoping not to lose The Heritage Foundation's lucrative non-profit status.Watch: 14 Hours of Never-Before-Published Videos From Project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy by Andy Kroll & Nick Surgey (Aug. 10, 4:55 a.m. EDT) ProPublica. But it's clear that they had Trump and Joe Biden in mind.
Low-lights from former Trump administration appointees in the videos include:
*Bethany Kozma, former deputy chief of staff of USAID, saying that climate references needed to be eliminated from the entirey of the Federal government, and calling gender fluidity "evil".
*Katie Sullivan, former acting assistant attorney general saying "The noxious tenets of critical race theory and gender ideology should be excised from curriculum in every single public school in this country."
*Michael Ding, a lawyer from Stephen Miller's America First Legal Foundation seems especially paranoid about law enforcement, something rather peculiar for allegedly pro-police MAGA diehards. In a training segment titled "Oversight & Investigations" with Mike Howell (Director of Oversight for the Heritage Foundation) and Tom Jones (founder of The American Accountability Foundation), Ding says:Project 2025 Private Training Video: Oversight and Investigations ProPublica via YouTube. t=14:41-15:17.
*Alexei Woltornist was an assistant secretary for public affairs at Department of Homeland Security who gives advice on public relations in his video, which seems plausible enough until one realizes that he's also an Eastern Catholic priest, and one becomes reminded of child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church and how all the PR in the world didn't clean that up. How's that working out for the public relations disaster that is Project 2025?
*:Woltornist also happens to be the co-founder of Athos, a PR company,Team Athos. that is named after the monastic Mount Athos in GreeceApproach Athos. which bans women entirely.
==Pillar IV==
Pillar IV are transition plans based on the assumption that Trump will win the election, by ballot or by coup as (Vance and Roberts have implied elsewhere). Pillar IV is "the Playbook — we are forming agency teams and drafting transition plans to move out upon the President’s utterance of 'so help me God.'"Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, edited by Paul Dans & Steven Groves (2023) The Heritage Foundation. ISBN 9780891951742.
==The purge==
A few days before the 2024 election day, one organization funded by Heritage Foundation listed several members of the Department of Homeland Security who were being targeted for purge on a website, the "DHS Bureaucrat Watch List".Conservative group’s ‘watch list’ targets federal employees for firing: Donald Trump has pledged, if reelected, to purge the government of ‘rogue bureaucrats and career politicians’ by Jonathan O'Connell, et al. (November 2, 2024 at 5:27 p.m. EDT) The Washington Post.DHS Bureaucrat Watch List The watch list criticized employees for such things as celebrating the legalization of same-sex marriage and touting the contributions of undocumented immigrants. the list has been compared to blacklisting during the McCarthy era.
The purge itself has been compared by historian Jason Stanley to the Nazi Germany Gleichschaltung, translated roughly as 'coordination' and was the process of Nazification.Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future by Jason Stanley (2024) One Signal Publishers / Atria. ISBN 9781668056912.
==See also==
*Smedley Butler, figurehead of and whistleblower on the considered the precursor to Project 2025
*Richard Hanania, one of the people listed as having made unspecified contributions to the project
*The Handmaid's Tale
==External links==
*Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise — the full text
*A guide to Project 2025, the extreme right-wing agenda for the next Republican administration — Media Matters for America
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==Notes==
==References==
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