If–as I fondly hope–the Democrats are victorious in November, future analysts of this year’s election are likely to focus on two major reasons for that success: Donald Trump and Heritage’s incredibly witless decision to leak the existence of Project 2025.
I need not belabor Trump’s rapidly disintegrating campaign. He can still pull this election out–if there are more MAGA cult members than I want to believe and too few rational people who vote–but at this juncture, he is rapidly descending into incoherence and obvious senility, and struggling to find an insult for Harris that will resonate. His choice of JD Vance as Vice-Presidential candidate once again displayed his lack of judgment. His constant insistence that America is a hellhole teetering on the edge of depression and teeming with criminals is evidence of his looney-tunes detachment from reality.
Trump’s inability to reach beyond his base– the voters who applaud his incivility and share his bigotries– is one thing; the revelations of Project 2025– the GOP’s transition plan–is another. To call the Plan’s measures “unpopular” is an understatement. As one pundit observed, “it polls like Ebola.”
In a recent Letter from an American, Heather Cox Richardson reported on several of the elements of that document, calling it an “extremist vision of a country ruled by a strongman who took the civil service, the Department of Justice, and the military under his own control in order to slash the popular, secular parts of the government and replace them with Christian nationalism.”
Right-wing evangelicals liked what was outlined in the project, but when the majority of Americans began to understand what was in it, they were quite clear they wanted no part of it. Trump then tried to distance himself from it, although he had publicly praised it, his political action committee had called it his plan, and more than 100 of its architects were people who had served in his administration.
And then it turned out that Trump’s vice presidential pick, J. D. Vance, had written the introduction for a book by Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, the chief author of Project 2025. The original publication date for the book, which calls for “a peaceful ‘Second American Revolution,’” was in September, shortly before the election, but today the publisher announced it would put off publication until November, after the election.
The publication may have been delayed, but several copies of the book were already in the hands of reviewers. Despite Republican efforts to soften or otherwise obscure the party’s efforts to ban women’s reproductive freedoms, the book makes very clear that the folks currently in control of the GOP intend to come not just for abortion, but for birth control and in vitro fertilization. According to these Christian Nationalists, having children should not be considered an ‘optional individual choice,’ but a ‘social expectation.’” The book characterizes reproductive choice as a “snake strangling the American family.”
(The book also says dog parks are “anti-family.” I am not making this up–google it. In the book, Roberts complains that parks catering to dogs, rather than children, are evidence of “the antifamily culture shaping legislation, regulation, and enforcement throughout our sprawling government.” Take that, Rover!!)
Richardson also tells us that–in addition to his enthusiastic introduction to Project 2025–Vance wrote a glowing blurb for another Right-wing screed.
The book, titled “Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them),” calls for purging their enemies from society. “In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags,” Vance wrote. “Today, they march through HR, college campuses, and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people… In ‘Unhumans,’ Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.”
Vance, Heritage and the MAGA movement don’t just oppose reproductive liberty. They oppose Separation of Church and State, “HR, college campuses and courtrooms”–in other words, diversity (“those people”), education (Project 2025 proposes to replace public schools with voucher programs, and endorses current Republican assaults on academic freedom) and the rule of law. The GOP doesn’t just want women returned to the kitchen and bedroom; it wants gay folks back in the closet. And it denies the existence–let alone the medical needs– of trans people.
CNN recently reported on the secret taping of a conversation with one of the Project’s authors, a self-described Christian Nationalist who disclosed–among many other things– the current preparation of Executive Orders and other legal documents in order to facilitate the rapid implementation of Project policies by an incoming Trump Administration.
A vote for any Republican is a vote for this entirely anti-American Project.
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