Project 2025 is online at project2025.org — click on Policy and read the agenda.
Thomas Zimmer tells us more about it.
Feb 22 article
He recommends that we read the 17-page foreword to the 920-page “Project 2025.” In this foreword, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, "captures and oozes the siege mentality, self-victimization, and grievance-driven lust for revenge." It reveals "how much the power centers of conservative politics have been taken over by anti-democratic extremism," and it does so in a voice from the Right itself. When the NYT interviewed Roberts in January, Roberts expressed approval for 1950s McCarthyist endeavor to root out Communists from the government, that Biden did not win the 2020 election, and that the real threats to American democracy were not the 2021 attack on the Capitol but President Biden and Black Lives Matter protesters. Before his position at Heritage, Roberts was "CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a rightwing think tank in Austin focusing on, amongst other things, fighting for the privatization of education and on making the “moral case for fossil fuels” by rejecting the scientific consensus on climate change. He also served as the president of Wyoming Catholic College." Roberts is thus a "true believer in the reactionary political project" from "the world of reactionary Catholicism."
Part of Roberts's complaint in that foreword is the "toxic normalization of transgenderism," which he links with "sexualization of children" and "critical race theory." He adds: "Contemporary elites have even repurposed the worst ingredients of 1970s ‘radical chic’ to build the totalitarian cult known today as ‘The Great Awokening.’" (Zimmer points out that "a reactionary majority is dominating the Supreme Court" and that, for some reason, this doesn't seem to be enough for the Heritage Foundation.) Of course, "Since the formation of modern conservatism as a political project in the middle decades of the twentieth century, rightwing leaders have often claimed it was five minutes to midnight. To some extent, this is all very much in line with established conservative rhetoric. But what Roberts presents here also captures a more recent radicalization..."
"The Heritage Foundation was established in 1973 as part of an attempt to build a machinery of organizations and think tanks that could help counter what conservatives perceived as the liberal hegemony. Heritage has, for decades, been the most influential, most powerful of these rightwing think tanks – certainly the one closest to the power centers of the Right and the Republican Party. It used to be associated – and associated itself – with Reaganism, and it has rightly been regarded as conservative establishment.
In recent years, however, Heritage has gone into a decidedly more Trumpian direction, defining their own role as “institutionalizing Trumpism” – and not in the sense of containing or taming it, but to make it more efficient."
Project 2025, furthermore, has an Advisory Board of "101 organizations and institutions. It’s a Who is Who of rightwing actors – Alliance Defending Freedom, America First Legal Foundation, Center for Renewing America, Claremont Institute, Hillsdale College, Liberty University, Young America’s Foundation, Moms for Liberty, and on and on and on."
Yet, Zimmer says, "Much of this [what the Heritage Foundation is saying] sounds like Marjorie Taylor Greene might have posted it on Ex-Twitter or said it to rile up the base at a rally." Such deluge of "manufactured rightwing moral panics...defines the center of conservative politics today."
Roberts writes that "socialism" also goes by the names of "Communism, Marxism, progressivism, Fascism," such that these all mean the same thing. "Analytically," Zimmer says, this is complete nonsense....It is not worth engaging a statement like this on substance." But as a historical fact, we should note that "what Roberts presents here is reminiscent of what the infamous 1776 Commission produced, the advisory committee established by then-president Donald Trump in the fall of 2020, with the explicit goal of guaranteeing 'patriotic education.'"
Feb 29 article
"Over the past few months, different factions on the Right have presented detailed plans for what they want to do the next time they get back to the White House. Among them, 'Project 2025,' launched in April 2022 under the leadership of the Heritage Foundation, stands out because it unites much of the conservative movement and the machine of think tanks as well as activist and lobbying groups behind the goal of installing a more effective, more ruthless rightwing regime.
Last week, in Part I of my deep dive into 'Project 2025,' I examined the worldview of the people behind these plans They see themselves as noble defenders of 'real America' against a totalitarian 'woke,' 'globalist' assault. 'Project 2025' is their declaration of war on multiracial pluralism. The “Promise to America” Heritage president Kevin Roberts has offered in his foreword to the 'Project 2025' report perfectly captures the siege mentality, self-victimization, and grievance-driven lust for revenge that are fueling the Right’s plans."
The right wing believes they didn't competently take advantage of the Trump administration while it lasted, so they want to be prepared to take advantage of a second Trump term. They're planning "what amounts to a comprehensive authoritarian takeover of American government" and it is "very much in continuity with the reactionary crusade against public education that has always been a key element of modern conservative politics."
"In their own parlance, “Project 2025” consists of four “pillars”: A policy agenda, spelled out in the 920-page report they published last April, titled: “Mandate for Leadership: A conservative promise” (I); a personnel database, intended to build an army of loyalists (II); a “training effort” that currently consists of online courses they call the “Presidential Administration Academy” to get these loyalists and all political appointees ready to implement the rightwing agenda (III); and, finally, “Project 2025” vows to create “a playbook of actions to be taken in the first 180 days of the new Administration to bring quick relief to Americans suffering from the Left’s devastating policies” (IV) – this fourth “pillar” is, at this point, still distinctly vague and seems to exist only in the form of an announcement of future action."
Mar 21 article
This time, Zimmer says, reactionaries are working in sync. They want "to punish their enemies, 'take back' the country, and restore the 'natural order' of unquestioned white Christian patriarchal rule – a unity that is indicative of a broader realignment on the Right towards an aggressive embrace of state authoritarianism." This time, they have "a fully Trumpified GOP, a reactionary super-majority on the Supreme Court, and with the omnipresent threat of escalating political violence intimidating anyone who dares to dissent."
Project 2025 is a plan to authoritarianize the government by gutting some parts, weaponizing others, giving the president much more power over what remains, and installing Trump loyalists under him.
This is Trump's platform:
"In a speech at the annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) in Nashville in late February, for instance, Trump promised to create 'a new federal task force on fighting anti-Christian bias'; to take 'historic action to defeat the toxic poison of gender ideology and restore the timeless truth that God created two genders, male and female'; and to sign an executive order to 'cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto our children' (Robert P. Jones provide an excellent write-up and contextualization of the speech in his newsletter this week). All of that sounds like it could be coming straight out of 'Project 2025.'"
Zimmer adds:
"...there is, at a macro or maybe philosophical level, an inherent tension between two opposing principles in the vision 'Project 2025' outlines – there is the proclamation to dismantle the 'deep state,' but there is also the desire to use it, to mobilize and weaponize it in service of the reactionary agenda. The former reflects the preferences of the conservative legal movement and the libertarian, market-fundamentalist strand of the Right...This tension has actually always been a constitutive feature of modern conservatism. What emerged as the modern conservative political project in the middle decades of the twentieth century was in many ways defined by an alliance between two distinct factions."
Then, this happened
"On March 19, [Josh] Kovensky explained how that power was reaching into lawmaking when he reported on a September 2023 speech by Russ Vought, a key architect of the plans for Trump’s second term, including Project 2025. In the speech, which took place in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Vought explained the right wing’s extreme border policies by explicitly marrying Christian nationalism and an aversion to the pluralism that is a hallmark of American democracy. Vought argued that the U.S. should model immigration on the Bible’s Old Testament, welcoming migrants only 'so long as they accepted Israel’s God, laws, and understanding of history.'"
See the Talking Points Memo reporting on Russ Vought.
Earlier this month, Kovensky reported on the Society for American Civic Renewal.
Media Matters (May 2024):
"Project 2025 director Paul Dans told the Australian Financial Review that he thinks a second Trump administration 'will adopt' many of the initiative’s radical right-wing proposals. He also suggested that even if Donald Trump loses, Project 2025’s ideas would live on through the conservative establishment."
CNN (July 2024):
Olivia Troye, a former advisor to Mike Pence, points out that Stephen Miller, Ben Carson, and Ken Cuccinelli are all involved in Project 2025. She says (video): "Trump knows that what is written in this plan is so extreme that it is damaging to his possibility of getting elected." In Troye's opinion, it's not the "fiscal conservatism" or "individual liberties" she believes in. it's "complete overreach by the federal government on our individual liberties." As an example, regarding women who have to go out of state to get an abortion, Project 2025 uses the term "abortion tourism," and Troye objects to this language choice. "No amount of distancing by Donald Trump should be believed because the authors and the collaborators are all part of this operation that's been behind him from even the first term of his administration."
MSNBC (July 2024):
Velshi began, “Now, from the get-go, we all know that wasn’t true so we set out to debunk it and honestly I thought there might be a little more legwork involved in spelling out the web of connections between Donald Trump and Project 2025 but then I realized, all you have to do is look in the table of contents.”
The MSNBC anchor pointed out Trump’s links to the authors of many of the playbook’s chapters, many of whom were actually aides and officials in his first administration.
“I literally don’t have enough time to list every connection between Donald Trump and Project 2025,” said Velshi. “But I can absolutely confidently say that Donald Trump’s claim that he ‘knows nothing about Project 2025’ and has ‘no idea who is behind it’ is, how do we say it in Canada? Complete and utter B.S.”
Of course Trump knows who's behind Project 2025.
Project 2025 Co-Author Says Donald Trump ‘Very Supportive Of What We Do’: Russell Vought told an undercover reporter he’s drafting executive orders for Trump to deploy on his hopeful return to the White House. Arthur Delaney, HuffPost, Aug 15, 2024
July 9 article
"MAGA extremists and the conservative establishment that is behind Project 2025 are aligned on personnel, policy, and ideology," Zimmer says, but it's not a conspiracy. Simply, "they are fundamentally in agreement about what it is they want to do to the country and the reactionary vision of 'real America' they want to impose on the nation. Moreover, it is a shared desire to punish their “Un-American” enemies that binds them. Project 2025 is evidence of how far the Right has radicalized, how far beyond Trump the problem goes."
In February, Trump spoke to the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) in Nashville, and what he said "sounds like it could be coming straight out of Project 2025, which promises to restore former national glory by purging enemies and deviants from the nation. Look anywhere in the policy report, and what you’ll find is visceral disdain for any kind of pluralism and diversity channeled into a policy agenda aiming to extinguish it."
Zimmer noted:
"Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s closest advisors, quickly followed his leader in emphasizing that “I have never been involved with Project 2025, not one word.” Miller, of course, is the head of the America First Legal Foundation, which is listed as a member of the Project 2025 Advisory Board, meaning they have officially signed off on this operation. Miller has also, as many people were quick to point out, recorded one of the videos for Project 2025’s “Presidential Administration Academy,” a “training effort” that currently consists of online courses intended to get the people Project 2025 wants to bring into the executive ready to implement the rightwing agenda from day one."
Not only is Trump getting bad publicity over Project 2025 right now, but the publicity might be hurting his ego as it gives the impression "that elite operators like Kevin Roberts are the real leaders on the Right."
"Trump is not pulling the strings behind Project 2025, and this operation isn’t being conducted in secret at all. This isn’t the work of a handful of henchmen doing their dark lord’s bidding, but an effort that has united much of the American Right’s elite machinery. And there is absolutely no brainwashing or coercion involved: The people behind Project 2025 are true believers in their extremely reactionary vision for America. Project 2025 should not be conceptualized as a plot designed by an all-powerful evil overseeing everything in the background. Instead, Project 2025 crystallizes the self-mobilization of a rightwing elite that has radicalized to the point where their plans are entirely in line with Donald Trump’s vengeful desires and the fever dreams of the extremist fringe."
Project 2025 isn't a puppet by a single villain.
"It is the manifestation of a comprehensive mobilization of a radicalizing rightwing establishment, intelligentsia, think tank world, and moneyed interest. The people who are responsible for it have not been brainwashed, they aren’t merely scared of Trump or the base, and they certainly aren’t helpless marionettes or pawns in a game. They are willingly, enthusiastically planning to take over the American government and transform it into a machine that serves only two purposes: exacting revenge on what they call the “woke”, leftist, globalist enemy and imposing a minoritarian reactionary vision of white Christian patriarchal order on society.
By the way, Project 2025 lies about its intentions, and it lies about them badly: "'Mandate for Leadership' talks about 'eliminating politicization' – only to then present the whole laundry list of rightwing culture war grievances. DEI! CRT! Trans people! It is a policy agenda aligning entirely with the Christopher Rufo canon of reactionary white male moral panics."
NEW: The Man Behind Project 2025’s Most Radical Plans As Trump tried to disavow the politically toxic project, its director, Paul Dans, stepped down. But the plans and massive staffing database that he prepared — to replace thousands of members of the “deep state” with MAGA loyalists — remain.
— ProPublica (@propublica.bsky.social) Aug 1, 2024 at 12:51 PM
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"On Sunday [August 4, 2024], MSNBC’s Ali Velshi noted it was a “tricky one” because “they actually went down and wrote everything they were going to do and then Donald Trump goes out to these rallies and tells people, ‘I’m not involved in this, I don’t agree with a lot of this stuff, it’s got nothing to do with me,’ which is actually part of what authoritarians sometimes do.”
Snyder, an expert on authoritarianism, agreed.
Trump is “trusting that his people will believe him, no matter what he says,” he explained. “That is part of an authoritarian dynamic where you can lie to your own people and then you can say something completely different the next time and they nod their heads and say, ‘Oh yes, I knew it all along.’ That’s part of what it means to belong to that sort of thing.”
“The shift is basically a scam,” Snyder continued."
— Lee Moran, Tyranny Expert Explains Why Donald Trump's Project 2025 Shift Is 'Basically A Scam': It's "part of an authoritarian dynamic," said Timothy Snyder. HuffPost, Aug 5, 2024
There is "flight tracking data and a photo of Trump traveling with Kevin Roberts in April 2022."
Trump Took Private Jet Flight With Head Of Project 2025, New Photo Shows: The former president has tried to distance himself from the controversial far-right blueprint, claiming he has “no idea” who was in charge of it. Nick Visser, HuffPost, Aug 7, 2024
See also
Project 2025 - The Advisory Board List: Full list with hyperlinks and additional information on each organization. Juliet Jeske, #DecodingFoxNews, July 8, 2024
Cracking the Christian nationalist code: A glossary for the confused: The Christian right has a clearly anti-democratic agenda — but it's concealed with deliberately confusing terms, Paul Rosenberg, Salon, May 26, 2024
Project 2025 believes in three genders, Tucker Lieberman, Medium, July 5, 2024
Delayed publication of Heritage president's book reflects Project 2025 shell game: Media Matters has obtained a galley copy of Dawn's Early Light, which decries IVF, abortion, childlessness, and dog parks, Madeline Peltz, Media Matters, August 7, 2024
Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts compared abortion access to slave auctions, lynchings, and the Holocaust, Eric Hananoki, Media Matters, August 8, 2024
Sources
"“Project 2025” Promises Revenge, Oppression, and Autocratic Rule: The Right’s plans for a return to power are driven by a radicalizing siege mentality and a desperate desire to restore dominance". Thomas Zimmer. Democracy Americana (Substack). Feb 22, 2024
"What 'Project 2025' Would Do to America": The Right has developed concrete plans to make America into a much nastier place for anyone who dares to deviate from the white Christian patriarchal order. That’s what is on the ballot in November." Thomas Zimmer. Democracy Americana (Substack). February 29, 2024
"What Makes 'Project 2025' So Dangerous: Will the Right be able to implement these radical plans? Is Trump on board? What happened to traditional conservatism? Let’s tackle some of the key questions surrounding 'Project 2025'." Thomas Zimmer. Democracy Americana (Substack). March 21, 2024
"Project 2025 director: A Trump administration will likely adopt many of the group’s policy suggestions," Sophie Lawton, Media Matters, May 14, 2024
Allies Against Democracy: Trump and Project 2025: Trump is not the mastermind behind Project 2025. It’s worse: The rightwing establishment has radicalized to the point where their plans are entirely in line with his vengeful desires. Thomas Zimmer. July 9, 2024
Again, there’s a bizarre insistence that power has been stolen from us, the people, despite the Constitution being a power sharing agreement. Just straight up ignoring Congress, ignoring that the executive acts at the will of Congress, and ignoring that Congress represents popular will. #project2025
— Kaitlin Has Had Enough (@gothamgirlblue.com) Jul 31, 2024 at 9:30 PM
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