Mandate for Leadership: Project 2025


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OnTheIssues.org BOOK REVIEW:

"Project 2025" details how to "drain the swamp" in Trump's second term. It's a heavy-duty policy manual, with 920 pages of specifications broken down into 30 chapters, specifying how to reform each federal agency. It's not intended as a political document -- that is accomplished on Trump's campaign website called "Agenda47" -- Agenda47 provides the vision, and Project 2025 provides the nitty-gritty details.

The Trump campaign officially has nothing to do with Project 2025, and campaign officials refer to Agenda47 when reporters ask their plans. But Agenda47 only asserts the general goals, while Project 2025 outlines how to get there. The intent is an action plan for early in Trump's term -- Project 2025 includes details of what to do during the presidential transition period in November/December 2024. The further intent beyond policy is that the authors -- there are well over 100 authors cited in this document -- become the Cabinet or sub-Cabinet appointees in the Trump administration, and implement the plans they wrote.

Project 2025's intent beyond policy is addressed in supplemental documents -- we only excerpt here the main 920-page policy agenda. Project 2025 focuses on four "pillars": the policy agenda, personnel, training, and a "180-day playbook." The four pillars, combined, are intended to institutionalize Trumpism: to implement Trump's goals from his first term, in a permanent way, especially those which Trump failed to institutionalize.

A major complaint in Trump's first term was that Trump failed to "drain the swamp" of the federal bureaucracy because so few Trump officials had the necessary experience. Now they do, and many members of the first Trump administration participated in authoring this document. Trump's liberal opponents point to this document as an indication that Trump's second term will be worse than his first term -- because the second time around, they know what to do.

Trump's liberal opponents also hint darkly about the horrors that will ensue from Trump's second term -- but there's no secret agenda -- it's all laid out here. The only secretive part is that the details are buried in 920 pages -- but we've excerpted the most important parts.

The Heritage Foundation, the organization behind Project 2025, is a long-standing conservative think tank. OnTheIssues has covered the Heritage Foundation for many years, mostly when they offer opinions on Supreme Court rulings or state legislation, alongside three other organizations with differing views (the Sierra Club, the ACLU, and the Cato Institute). The Heritage Foundation is much more "traditionally conservative" than MAGA, but recognizing that Trump's administration needs this document, there's plenty of MAGA policies here too.

So what's in Project 2025? We show the chapter headings to the right -- it's organized by federal agency. It's also organized with specifics about what to do -- not just in theory, but actual steps that could be implemented immediately. Our Biden excerpts are all about what Executive Orders the Biden administration put forth, and how the second Trump administration could immediately undo those (or sometimes not so immediately -- Project 2025 documents what Congress needs to do, too). Our Ohama excerpts are similarly about which Obama-era Executive Orders the Trump Administration should undo (evidently having missed them in the first Trump Adminstration). So is Project 2025 a MAGA dream and a liberal nightmare? Well, it's a serious policy document, which means it avoids conspiracy theories and focuses on action plans. But it does kowtow to SOME conspiracy theories -- and they're self-aware that they're doing that -- our favorite: "the PRC's actions often do sound like conspiracy theories--because they are conspiracies" (p. 180, referring to the People's Republic of China -- wonky terms like "PRC" appear throughout). That's followed up with examples like that COVID was "almost certainly spawned in a CCP biological weapons lab in Wuhan, China (p.768, that's the "Chinese Communist Party", and use of the "CCP" acronym gives away the writer as anti-China). Some sections are more MAGA than others, reflecting the numerous authors. Project 2025 largely ignores MAGA's biggest conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and Trump's criminal prosecutions. We excerpt a bit about the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling on correcting mail-in ballots (pp. 563-4) but there's nothing here that says "Trump won". There are several references to Hunter Biden's laptop, such as dismissing that the laptop was "Russian disinformation" (p.213). But Project 2025 was published in April 2023 -- before Hunter Biden's criminal conviction (which included evidence from that laptop). Project 2025 was also published before Donald Trump's criminal conviction and civil trials, so they're not mentioned either. But we're not so sure that the Heritage Foundation would discuss those anyway, since there's nothing there about which federal department to fix. The DOJ chapter does label the FBI and other agencies as "corrupt," (p.557ff) but the recommended fixes focus on "tough on crime" rather than "back off Trump." OnTheIssues observes with dismay that the mainstream media is producing frantic analysis denouncing Project 2025. We like the analyis -- the franticness is the problem. Here's some typical franticness, compared with what Project 2025 actually says: Ending the Affordable Care Act?: Nope; Project 2025 wants to reform ObamaCare to reduce its mandates, but not end it. Complete Ban on Abortion?: Nope; Project 2025 wants to end all aspects of federal funding for abortion, but doesn't propose any "national abortion ban" (which Trump agrees with, to the dismay of many conservative Republicans). Defunding the FBI?: Nope; Project 2025 wants the FBI to focus on actual threats and crime, instead of Hunter Biden's laptop Eliminating the EPA?: Nope; Project 2025 wants the EPA to focus on environmental protection instead of land use policy. Muslim Ban 2.0?: Nope; it's just not there. Project 2025 suggests plenty of immigration restrictions -- from building the wall to ending Temporary Protected Status -- but those mostly apply to Mexico and Haiti and Latin America, not focused on Muslim countries at all. Banning Pornography?: Yup; Project 2025 does want to imprison porn producers and outlaw porn websites. The point is, SOME of Project 2025's proposals ARE crazy -- there's no need to exaggerate their proposals!

Project 25 Chapters: SECTION 1: TAKING THE REINS OF GOVERNMENT White House Office Executive Office of the President Central Personnel Agencies SECTION 2: THE COMMON DEFENSE Department of Defense Department of Homeland Security Department of State Intelligence Community Media Agencies / Public Broadcasting Agency for International Development SECTION 3: THE GENERAL WELFARE Department of Agriculture Department of Education Department of Energy Environmental Protection Agency Department of Health and Human Services Department of Housing and Urban Development Department of the Interior Department of Justice Department of Labor Department of Transportation Department of Veterans Affairs SECTION 4:THE ECONOMY Department of Commerce Department of the Treasury Export-Import Bank Federal Reserve Small Business Administration Trade SECTION 5: INDEPENDENT REGULATORY AGENCIES SEC and CFPD FCC FEC FTC

(All of the bold italic phrases are quoted verbatim directly from "Overview of Project 2025", a video by the popular podcaster Molly Jong-Fast, available on YouTube iHeartRadio. Ms. Jong-Fast is a well-established member of the mainstream media: an editor at The Daily Beast; a writer at The Atlantic; and a political analyst at MSNBC News)

Bottom line: Yes, Project 2025 outlines what the second Trump administration would do. Yes, those opposing Trump's election should read it (or more plausibly, read our excerpts), because Trump really can't be accused of having a hidden agenda. Trump had no hidden agenda in 2016 either -- he outlined his plans and then tried to implement them -- but no one believed him in 2016. And now everyone should believe Trump, because he has a detailed implementation plan.

Remember how OJ Simpson went free because the police and prosecutors "framed a guilty man"? The media's over-reaction to Project 2025 does the same thing. There's no need to exaggerate what Project 2025 wants -- as we show in our excerpts -- there's plenty to antagonize the left. Liberal commentators should focus on what Project 2025 actually says -- rather than extreme interpretation. In the firestorm of anti-Project 2025 commentary because of the upcoming election, liberal media commentators are trying to "frame a guilty man" -- just let the facts speak for themselves. Here are the facts!

-- Jesse Gordon, editor-in-chief, OnTheIssues.org, June 2024

Commentary:
• Biden campaign response, www.TrumpsProject2025.com and https://joebiden.com/project2025/
• (more commentary to follow)

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