Project 2025 (also known as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project) is a political initiative published in April 2022 by the American pro-oligarchical think tank the Heritage Foundation. The project promotes right-wing policies to reshape the federal government of the United States and consolidate executive power.
Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise
[02-20-2024] Project 2025 Reaches 100 Coalition Partners, Continues to Grow in Preparation for Next President
[11-22-2024] Trump team turns to Project 2025 after disavowing the effort during the campaign
Project 2025 Could Impact the Economy and Your Finances
The Mandate for Leadership, Then and Now (archived)
As in 1980, the argument is that the “modern conservative president” must “limit, control, and direct” the executive branch. This Mandate also calls for the elimination of the Department of Education and envisions a “conservative EPA,” noting the agency’s roots in the Nixon administration and suggesting that “cooperative federalism” will produce a “culture of compliance.” It proposes abolishing Head Start, alleging the program is “fraught with scandal and abuse,” and argues that the Department of Justice (including the FBI) has been captured by “an unaccountable bureaucratic managerial class and radical Left ideologues.” Tax policy must be revised to “improve incentives to work, save, and invest”—almost an exact quote from the 1980 Mandate.
But what had once been a clarion call to confidently advance a conservative project now seems shrill. The vision of reshaping the state and unleashing new energies has become an “existential need,” with a weakened president overwhelmed by a state grown out of control. One suggestion for reining in the state is cutting federal salaries and benefits, described in Mandate as adopting “market-based pay”; another is dismantling the Department of Homeland Security to create a “stand-alone” border and immigration agency with at least 100,000 employees. Mandate acknowledges the divides on the right over Ukraine and Russia, but it seeks to rally the troops around “a generational opportunity” to resolve these tensions and recognize “Communist China” as the “defining threat.” It gives up any pretense of shared values around trade policy, with one essay on “fair trade” focused on protecting US manufacturing given the “existential threat” of China, and another in defense of “free trade” that suggests rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
In place of the idea that rolling back the state and unleashing the free market will lead to a revival of national power, the new Mandate offers a vision of “restoring the family.” In a loose adaptation of Edmund Burke, it accuses the federal government of “subverting” people’s “natural loves and loyalties” with “unnatural” ones. The argument is that people exist within families and communities; unless these are protected, atomized individuals will be prostrate before the all-powerful state. Transgender politics, abortion rights, smartphones, and pornography all delink people from their “natural” loyalties, with the underlying goal, presumably, of making them vulnerable to state control. Where earlier iterations of conservatism focused on liberating the individual, the 2025 Mandate seems to see communities and families as bulwarks protecting defenseless individuals from the otherwise overweening power of the state.
Unsurprisingly, Mandate aligns itself in opposition to “corporate and political elites,” arguing that “nearly every top-tier U.S. university president or Wall Street hedge fund manager has more in common with a socialist, European head of state than with the parents at a high school football game in Waco, Texas.” But the distance from earlier versions of conservatism is nonetheless remarkable. We’re told that labor policy should be revised to focus on “the good of the family,” with on-site childcare and more paid time off. Congress is enjoined to “encourage communal rest” by amending the Fair Labor Standards Act to mandate overtime pay for people who must work on the Sabbath. Family authority is the model for the nation: “As the family necessarily puts the interests of its members first, so too the United States must put the interests of American workers first.” The document sets itself the aim of uniting the “conservative movement and the American people” in a campaign against “elite rule.”
In his foreword, Roberts is careful to position Mandate as the work of a broad movement, noting that it serves as an agenda “by and for conservatives” who want to be ready on day one to “save our country from the brink of disaster.” As part of Project 2025, Heritage has been building a database of personnel who might serve in a Trump administration—especially important because, as Mandate suggests, “political appointees who are answerable to the President” are key to carrying out its vision. But Trump’s campaign, as Sam Adler-Bell has reported, has been careful to distance itself from Project 2025’s efforts—as though they threaten to siphon political energy from the singular goal of electing Trump.
Still, even if a reelected President Trump should ignore the suggestions provided in Mandate, the document is instructive. The transformations that began in 1980 with Reagan’s election reshaped American society, just as the original group of Heritage authors suggested they would. The vision of the market and of state rollbacks that they promoted eroded living standards and wages and propelled a stunning rise in economic inequality and social hierarchy. Private economic wealth is all that has filled in the gap, and the far-right mobilization of the present—with its conspiratorial fantasies of malign takeover and internal subversion—is the legacy of the atomized, hierarchical society produced by the Reagan revolution. For all the ways that Project 2025 may fantasize about a return to 1980, we find ourselves in a very different place today. As Feulner says, “Onward!”
JD Vance-Peter Thiel-Curtis Yarvin 2024: The Neoreactionary Dream Team*
Statement on Christian Nationalism & the Gospel**
I’m a Cradle Catholic. I Don’t Want Christian Nationalism in My Church.**
Trad-Caths are a generally white, upper middle-class, urban crowd with a fetish for the “classical” church. In particular, they love the Latin Mass, a ritual which brings no added closeness to Christ—who spoke Hebrew, Aramaic, and possibly Greek. But trad-Caths balk at the suggestion that Christ can be viewed as a historical figure.
Trad-Caths universally glamorize the church before the Second Vatican Council—also known as Vatican II—a conference in the 1960s in which the church belatedly endorsed some modern, liberal policies in the hopes of bringing itself out of the cruel and bloody Middle Ages.
One representative passage from the Documents of Vatican II expounds that “some nations with a majority of citizens who are counted as Christians have an abundance of this world’s goods, while others are deprived of the necessities of life and are tormented with hunger, disease and every kind of misery. This situation must not be allowed to continue.”
Those lines are official Catholic doctrine, but if recited today on Fox News they would be derided as rampant globalism. And they certainly fly in the face of the “America First” doctrine of the Trump-era nationalist right.
Inside the Plan to Funnel Taxpayer Dollars to Religious Schools (Center for Christian Virtue)***
My Unsettling Interview With Steve Bannon
The historical left is in full meltdown. They always focus on noise, never on signal. They don’t understand that the MAGA movement, as it gets momentum and builds, is moving much farther to the right than President Trump. They will look back fondly at Donald Trump. They’ll ask: Where’s Trump when we need him?
You said something I’ve got to ask you about, that Trump’s a moderate. In what areas is the MAGA movement farther right than Trump?
I think farther right on radical cuts of spending, No. 1. I think we’re much more hard-core on things like Ukraine. President Trump is a peacemaker. He wants to go in and negotiate and figure something out as a dealmaker. I think 75 percent of our movement would want an immediate, total shutdown — not one more penny in Ukraine, and massive investigations about where the money went. On the southern border and mass deportations, I don’t think President Trump’s close to where we are. They all got to go home.
Also, on artificial intelligence, we’re virulently anti-A.I. I think big regulations have to come.
President Trump is a kindhearted person. He’s a people person, right? On China, I think he admires Xi Jinping. But we’re super-hawks. We want to see an elimination of the Chinese Communist Party.
What do you think a second Trump administration would look like in the first few weeks? Months?
Project 2025 and others are working on it — to immediately focus on immigration, the forever wars and on the fiscal and the financial. And simultaneously the deconstruction of the administrative state, and going after the complete, total destruction of the deep state.
In the first 100 days — this is going to be different than ’16 — we will have 3,000 political appointees ready to go.
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Do you know the demographics of these activists? Education? Race? Income?
First off, I would say 60 percent female. Female and over 40 years old. A lot of that, a third of them brought in by the pandemic, and the Moms for America. A ton of moms, women who didn’t read a lot of books in college. They’re not politically active. They had no interest. It was only later in life, as they became the C.O.O. of the American family, they realized how tough it was to make ends meet.
And then they saw the lack of education, and it was really the pandemic when they walked by the computer and saw what the kids are doing. They’re now at the tip of the spear.
Do you worry that your broader movement will be fatally poisoned by antisemitic elements, the conspiracy crazies?
We’re the most pro-Israel and pro-Jewish group out there. What I say is that not just the future of Israel but the future of American Jews, not just safety but their ability to thrive and prosper as they have in this country, is conditional upon one thing, and that’s a hard weld with Christian nationalism.
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What does the Justice Department look like? What kinds of changes would Trump make?
I think they’ll hit it with a blowtorch.
Bannon’s “War Room” is the media home of Project 2025 and Trump’s retribution plans
Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard are coming for the spooks
ALEC Maps Out Right-Wing Legislative Agenda for 2025 in DC
U.S. Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-R) and Ron Estes (KS-R), Trump’s pick to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Vivek Ramaswamy, Univision CEO Daniel Alegre, insurrectionist Cleta Mitchell, and GOP pollster Scott Rasmussen are all scheduled to speak at the summit.
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The second model bill would officially adopt the IHRA definition. ALEC, along with representatives from the Israeli government and the Heritage Foundation, has been pushing state lawmakers to adopt the IHRA definition since as early as 2021.
Project 2025: Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (Cleta Mitchell, etc.)
Project 2025 Proposes Major Overhaul of MARAD and the Jones Act
What we can VERIFY about Project 2025’s plans for the Head Start program and free school lunches
VERIFY readers asked us if Project 2025 plans on cutting the Head Start program and free school lunch. It’d eliminate Head Start and reduce the free lunch program.
The Comstock Act: Implications for Abortion Care Nationwide
Donald Trump’s Next Diversity Target: People With Disabilities (DEI-A executive order, A = Accessibility for people with disabilities)
How Project 2025 Could Change Medicare
One program that is targeted in the proposal is Medicare. For seniors [SSDI, too], the federal health program could look very different under Project 2025 leadership. One of the policies proposed in the project calls for private-sector Medicare to become the only option for when seniors enroll in the federal health care insurance.
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As currently constructed, seniors have traditional government-run Medicare available to them and can enroll in privatized Medicare Advantage plans.
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In Project 2025, Republicans call for there to be less regulation on Medicare Advantage plans, which are used by just more than half of seniors who qualify for Medicare.
Trump’s radical reforms could put a spanner in US supply chains
Conservatives Are Gearing Up for a Major Military Expansion Under Trump 2.0
Speak Up Before VA Health Care Is Gutted (Veteran’s ACCESS Act = privatization)
What’s in Store for VA Disability Benefits with New Office of Management and Budget Chief?
Project 2025: How this wish list for a Trump presidency threatens LGBTQ+ rights
Project 2025 set out plans to restrict the application of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock vs. Clayton County, which extended workplace protections against sex discrimination to LGBTQ+ employees.
In addition, it plans to restrict access to healthcare for transgender people, something it refers to as a form of “child abuse”. Its authors also want to see trans healthcare no longer being covered by insurance schemes Medicare and Medicaid, and an end to anti-discrimination rules based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
In addition, there are plans to reverse policies allowing transgender people to serve in the military, a ban that was initially brought in under the Trump administration but reversed by president Joe Biden. If enacted, Project 2025 would expel transgender servicemen and women as well as those living with HIV.
Videos/Podcasts:
Weekly Roundup: JD Vance, Peter Thiel, and Leonard Leo
Biden Out + JD Vance’s Postliberal Monarchist Catholicism
***LifeWise Academy: The Project 2025 Connected Religious Release Program in Public Schools
LifeWise Academy, J.D. Vance, Donald Trump, Heritage Foundation, Center for Education Reform, Meg Kilgannon, Family Research Council, Charles Koch, Koch Network, FreedomWorks, Noah Webster Education Foundation, Moms for Liberty, Freedom in Education, State Policy Network, Center for Christian Virtue, CatholicVote.org, American Legislative Exchange Council, Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, Atlas Network, Bradley Foundation, Tony Perkins, Leadership Institute, Glenn Youngkin, Betsy DeVos
Respect Public Schools – Speak Out Against LifeWise Academy
Related:
[2020] The Globalists Driving the Anti-China Crusade – Thiel, Soros, Wenghui, and… Steve Bannon (by Erik Striker, aka Joseph Jordan)**
Peter Thiel: The Alt-Billionaire Who Has Been Locked Out of China
Peter Thiel is by far the most influential in trying to mobilize dissidents and conscript them into the China crusade.
He is close to figures like the Zionist Yoram Hazony, Mencius Moldbug, Eric Weinstein (who manages Thiel’s investment firm, Thiel Capital), Bannon, China hawk and fake populist Josh Hawley (who received $500,000 from Thiel) and Donald Trump himself.
At the Israeli Hazony’s 2019 “National Conservatism” gathering, where a liberal form of phony nationalism was presented as an alternative to ethno-nationalism (in white countries, not Israel), Thiel gave a speech attacking Silicon Valley for its work with the Chinese government. Thiel is correct in this specific instance, but why is Google privately owned instead of state-owned like Huawei is? His only solution is to investigate the company for Chinese spies.
Thiel, who now fashions himself as an “American Nationalist” and is known to have had contact with a few “alt-right” figures currently trying to advance anti-China talking points, has shady ties with foreign governments that gratuitously spy on the United States. His patriotism comes into question when one looks at his investment in Carbyne, an Israeli spying firm believed to be controlled by the IDF’s Unit 8200. Thiel, along with Jeffrey Epstein and Erik Prince, were all involved in the shady project.
“Former” officials from Unit 8200 are strongly represented among CEOs of Silicon Valley companies. The Israeli’s insolent and aggressive spying on the United States was seen recently in a quickly memory holed story, where in 2019 devices were planted by Israeli intelligence to spy on the private phone conversations of Donald Trump and other prominent people in Washington. Shockingly, the US refused to respond or address the scandal.
Thiel’s specific animosity towards China is both ideological and a question of financial self-interest. While in the past he has carefully praised China, he has also made predictions that have not come true.
As the Soviet Union teetered on collapse, Milton Friedman asserted that China must fully liberalize or fall besides the Russians. While the Chinese did promote policies to encourage private initiative in some spheres, it ultimately doubled down on its planned economy when it came to the big picture. When Trump complains that it is “unfair” for the Chinese state to control the value of its currency, the Chinese ignore him, as they know that for now the US government is not strong enough to do what it takes to rein in the selfish American capitalists China plays.
The rise of artificial intelligence has created the potential to plug the holes of traditional centrally planned economies, something libertarians like Thiel are not fond of (note that his complaint about Google and China was over an AI program they were working on). It isn’t only workers who can be replaced by automation and AI, but private economic planners, aka capitalists.
Thiel’s predictions in Zero to One about China, like resource prices making them incapable of reaching Western standards of living, have not come true. The median monthly wage of Chinese workers in its major cities is currently on par with European countries like Croatia, and unlike the stagnating West, they seemed to have the wind in their sails until the pandemic hit.
Thiel has complained on multiple occasions about the many barriers the Chinese government puts in the way of foreign investors, which is common sense for any country interested in defending its sovereignty. This has made Thiel’s chess-inspired, counter-intuitive investment strategies difficult, and it is making him upset that the Chinese government is not allowing outside capitalist interests to fully partake in its growing prosperity.
It seems to have recently dawned on libertarians and neo-liberals, that after decades of denial, China remains a nationalist and socialist country and has only been using the prospect of accessing its massive market to cock-tease Western capital into providing the initial push it needed to rise. The worldviews of shot-callers like Soros and Thiel are going to be challenged if ascendent China surpasses declining America in quality of life.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 