Eyes Wide Opened

Lots of talk about Project 2025. Where did it come from? Who leads it? Why now?

This article is a beginning, a look into the platform, the people building it, and the verbiage they are using. It is not an impartial telling, because I am not, in fact, in favor of it. But I'm determined to share their words and ideas so you can make up your own mind. A deeper dive into the platform will follow, and be linked to this article once available.

The Book

The book 2025 Mandate for Leadership The Conservative Promise gives the platform and justification for Project 2025. But it is over 900 pages and that's a lot to read so my guess is that many folks aren't going to try.

Here is a link to the FREE pdf of the book.

Where Did Project 2025 Come From?

The copyrights belong to The Heritage Foundation, conservative think tank based in Washington, DC.

Also known as simply 'Heritage', it was founded in 1973 and came into its own with the election of Ronald Reagan. After receiving the original Mandate for Leadership, Reagan gave several of its authors places within his administration, and went on to implement almost 60% of the 2000 proposals it gave to advance conservative politics.

Their influence continued on through the George H.W. Bush administration, going on to include six of the ten budget reforms proposed in the then third printing of the Mandate for Leadership book. In the 1990's, during Clinton's presidency, Heritage got busy publishing, even bringing on the Wall Street Journal as a co-manager and co-author of their annual publication.

In the George Bush presidency Heritage supported the 'wars on terror' in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as Bush's treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. During Obama's presidency Heritage opposed Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act, although the principles for the Act were those that Heritage had shared with Mitt Romney for implementation in Massachusetts in 2006.

Heritage and the Trump Presidency

Leading up to the 2016 election Heritage gave several statements that Trump was not a good candidate for president, but that changed once Trump became the Republican nominee. As the campaign went on Heritage reached out to its network, seeking people interested in 'serving as presidential appointee in an administration that will promote conservative principles". That list swelled to a pool of roughly 3,000 from which at least 66 foundation employees and alumni were hired into the Trump administration.

In addition to that smaller group, hundreds from the Heritage database received jobs in government agencies. These included Betsey DeVos, Mick Mulvaney, Rick Perry, Scott Pruitt, and Jeff Sessions; all quite familiar names now. More importantly for Heritage, by 2018 the Trump administration had embraced almost 2/3 of the 334 proposed policies in the foundation's agenda.

Heritage from 2021 through 2024

In 2021 Heritage replaced the Foundation president with Kevin Roberts, who is listed on the latest version of the Mandate for Leadership. Roberts immediately began embracing national conservatism as its guiding ideology.

Some of the issues where Heritage have been most vocal during this time include:

• Critical race theory: they want instruction banned, if not everywhere then within Republican-controlled states.
• Black Lives Matter: they consider it a 'nationwide insurgency' lead by 'Marxists who... want to dismantle our way of life.'
• Climate change: Heritage (who is also partially funded by ExxonMobil) rejects the scientific consensus on climate change.
• LGBT+ Views: Heritage opposes any marriage that isn't 'between one man and one woman', wants to limit anti-discrimination policies, and ban transgender individuals from the military.
• Voting: Heritage has added to the unsubstantiated panic regarding voter fraud, created a sub-group called Heritage Action and estimates $24 million dollars will be spent through that group across 8 key states to support efforts to restrict voting. It also opposes uniform voting standards. In January 2024, Heritage president Kevin Roberts told a NYT reported that he did not believe President Biden won the presidential election.

Reversing its prior position of supporting military aid to Ukraine in order to rebuff the Russian invasion, in 2022 Heritage began pushing a 'Aid to Ukraine Puts America Last' message.

In August 2023 Heritage began assembling a wide variety of groups in Project 2025, and also published the eleventh edition of Mandate for Leadership and began preparing to get their chosen candidate, Donald Trump, elected as the 47th President of the United State of America.

Project 2025

Project 2025 is designed to reshape and mold the executive branch of the United States in the event of a Republican presidential winner in 2024.

As it did during the Reagan era and prior to Trump’s 2016 presidency, it is amassing a stable of thousands of names to be included in the new administration and within government agencies. Lest the reader think that I am catastrophizing things, a former Trump administration official, Russel Vought, describes it as 'The president Day One will be a wrecking ball for the administrative state'. Russell is also involved directly in Project 2025.

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This is the next article in the series:

Your comments are appreciated.