Heritage Foundation in Project 2025: The 2025 Presidential Transition Project


On Crime: Enforce death penalty and pursue more cases

Enforce the death penalty where appropriate and applicable. Capital punishment is a sensitive matter, as it should be, but the current crime wave makes deterrence vital at the federal, state, and local levels. However, providing this punishment without ever enforcing it provides justice neither for the victims' families nor for the defendant. The next conservative Administration should therefore do everything possible to obtain finality for the 44 prisoners currently on federal death row. It should also pursue the death penalty for applicable crimes--particularly heinous crimes involving violence and sexual abuse of children--until Congress says otherwise through legislation.
Source: Project 2025, by the Heritage Foundation, p.554 Apr 1, 2023

On Abortion: Ban mailing abortion pills

Announcing a Campaign to Enforce the Criminal Prohibitions in 18 U.S.Code sections1461 and 1462 Against Providers and Distributors of Abortion Pills That Use the Mail: Federal law prohibits mailing "every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion."

Following the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs, there is now no federal prohibition on the enforcement of this statute. The Department of Justice in the next conservative Administration should therefore announce its intent to enforce federal law against providers and distributors of such pills

Source: Project 2025, by the Heritage Foundation, p.562 Apr 1, 2023

On Civil Rights: Eliminate the term "DEI" from every federal law

The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity ("SOGI"), diversity, equity, and inclusion ("DEI"), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists. The noxious tenets of "critical race theory" and "gender ideology" should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country. These theories poison our children, who are being taught on the one hand to affirm that the color of their skin fundamentally determines their identity and even their moral status while on the other they are taught to deny the very creatureliness that inheres in being human.
Source: Project 2025, by the Heritage Foundation, p.  4-5 Apr 1, 2023

On Corporations: Corporate tax rate 18%; plus two income tax rates, 15% & 30%

The Treasury should work with Congress to simplify the tax code by enacting a simple two-rate individual tax system of 15 percent and 30 percent that eliminates most deductions, credits and exclusions. The 30 percent bracket should begin at or near the Social Security wage base to ensure the combined income and payroll tax structure acts as a nearly flat tax on wage income beyond the standard deduction. The corporate income tax rate should be reduced to 18 percent. The corporate income tax is the most damaging tax in the U.S. tax system, and its primary economic burden falls on workers because capital is more mobile than labor. Capital gains and qualified dividends should be taxed at 15 percent. Thus, the combined corporate income tax combined with the capital gains or qualified dividends tax rate would be roughly equal to the top individual income tax rate.18 The system should allow immediate expensing for capital expenditures and index capital gains taxes for inflation.
Source: Project 2025, by the Heritage Foundation, p.696 Apr 1, 2023

On Drugs: Address fentanyl crisis; reduce availability at border

The next President's top drug policy priority must be to address the current fentanyl crisis and reduce the number of overdoses and fatalities. This crisis resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 Americans in 2021.

The next Administration must reaffirm a commitment to preventing drug use before it starts, providing treatment that leads to long-term recovery, and reducing the availability of illicit drugs in the United States. The drug trafficking environment is exponentially more dynamic and dangerous today than it was just five years ago as powerful synthetic opioids (fentanyl and its analogues) are mixed into other drugs of abuse. Drug trafficking organizations are extremely nimble and able to adapt quickly to federal government actions and changes in user behavior. Disrupting the flow of drugs across our borders and into our communities is of paramount importance, both to save lives and to bolster our public health efforts.

Source: Project 2025, by the Heritage Foundation, p. 61 Apr 1, 2023

On Government Reform: Correcting mail-in ballots counts as voter fraud

 Voter fraud includes unlawful practices concerning voter registration and ballot correction. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 mandates provisional ballots only for eligible voters who were not on a state's voter registration list. It does not apply to those who registered for mail-in voting but whose ballots were rejected due to some form of spoliation. 

The law in Pennsylvania clearly states that no county may affirmatively provide provisional ballots: The mail-in voter must vote in person and sign a new affidavit. In the 2020 election, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court recognized that "the Election Code contains no requirement that voters whose ballots are deemed inadequately verified be apprised of this fact. Thus, unlike in-person voters, mail-in or absentee voters are not provided any opportunity to cure perceived defects in a timely manner." The Pennsylvania Secretary of State should have been (and still should be) investigated and prosecuted for potential violations of 18 US Code S241.

Source: Project 2025, by the Heritage Foundation, p.563-4 Apr 1, 2023

On Welfare & Poverty: Re-implement workfare; close food stamp loopholes

Ostensibly, SNAP helps "low-income" individuals buy food. Food stamps are designed to be supplemented by other forms of income--whether through paid employment or nonprofit support. SNAP serves 41.1 million individuals--an increase of 4.3 million people during the Biden years. In 2020, the food stamp program cost $79.1 billion. That number continued to rise--by 2022, outlays hit $119.5 billion. The next Administration should: