Project 2025 – Page 4 – Sheila Kennedy

Heritage Makes It Explicit

When I was much younger, I would have bristled if someone told me to vote a straight ticket. I was one of those scolds who insisted that one’s duty as a citizen was to research the bona fides of all candidates, from President to coroner, and vote accordingly. And in a perfect–or even marginally better–world, I would probably stand by that assertion.

But we are in uncharted territory. Thanks, ironically, to decades of weakening political party structures and influence, the voting public has separated itself into two blocs, one of which is a more-or-less normal political party spanning a fairly wide range of policy preferences and engaging in relatively typical intra-party disputes, while the other has morphed into a cohesive racist cult that threatens the most fundamental bases of the American Idea.

The accuracy of that last paragraph is demonstrated by the fact that I don’t have to tell you which is which.

A vote for anyone in the cult is a vote for the goals of Project 2025, because even Republicans who are personally conflicted about or even opposed to the MAGA zealots have shown zero willingness to confront the crazies who are firmly in control of their party. Those who recognize the threat and retain their spines have all declared their intent to vote Democratic.

And let’s be quite clear about that threat.

Heather Cox Richardson has described it accurately and succinctly:

Project 2025 stands on four principles that it says the country must embrace: the U.S. must “[r]estore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children”; “[d]ismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people”; “[d]efend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats”; and “[s]ecure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls ‘the Blessings of Liberty.’”

In almost 1,000 pages, the document explains what these policies mean for ordinary Americans. Restoring the family and protecting children means using “government power…to restore the American family.” That, the document says, means eliminating any words associated with sexual orientation or gender identity, gender, abortion, reproductive health, or reproductive rights from any government rule, regulation, or law. Any reference to transgenderism is “pornography” and must be banned.

The overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized the right to abortion must be gratefully celebrated, the document says, but the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision accomplishing that end “is just the beginning.”

Dismantling the administrative state starts from the premise that “people are policy.” Frustrated because nonpartisan civil employees thwarted much of Trump’s agenda in his first term, the authors of Project 2025 call for firing much of the current government workforce—about 2 million people work for the U.S. government—and replacing it with loyalists who will carry out a right-wing president’s demands.

The plan asserts “the existential need” for an authoritarian leader to dismantle the current government that regulates business, provides a social safety net, and protects civil rights. Instead of the government Americans have built since 1933, the plan says the national government must “decentralize and privatize as much as possible” and leave “the great majority of domestic activities to state, local, and private governance.”

It attacks “America’s largest corporations, its public institutions, and its popular culture,” for their embrace of international organizations like the United Nations and the European Union and for their willingness to work with other countries. It calls for abandoning all of those partnerships and alliances.

The current head of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, has remade what was formerly a Rightwing think tank into an organization focused upon “institutionalizing Trumpism.” Heritage has negotiated a formal partnership with Viktor Orban and is working to bring the neo-fascist policies of Hungary to the United States.

Unlike members of the MAGA base, Heritage and other Rightwing activists are well aware that Trump is an ignoramus wholly incapable of ushering in their desired policies; he’s basically a convenient tool.

In January 2024, Roberts told Lulu Garcia-Navarro of the New York Times that Project 2025 was designed to jump-start a right-wing takeover of the government. “[T]he Trump administration, with the best of intentions, simply got a slow start,” Roberts said. “And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated.”

The only thing that will stop the completion of the January 6th coup and the remakng of America along the lines of a Rightwing wet dream is a massive and comprehensive rejection of the GOP, from top to bottom.

If the French could do it, surely we can.

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The MAGA Vendetta Against Arts And Education

Well, I see where Ron DeSantis has petulantly stripped thirty-two million dollars of art funding from the Florida budget.

Ron DeSantis stripped more than $32m in arts and culture funding from Florida’s state budget over his hatred of a popular fringe festival that he accused of being “a sexual event”, critics of the rightwing governor say.

DeSantis justified his unprecedented, wide-ranging veto of grants to almost 700 groups and organizations by saying it was “inappropriate” for $7,369 of state money to be allocated to Tampa fringe, a 10-day festival that took place earlier this month with a strong message of inclusivity, and its sister event in Orlando.

I talk a lot about culture war on this blog. Usually, that term connotes the growing willingness of MAGA Republicans to publicly indulge their bigotries against Blacks, women, LBGTQ+ citizens and non-fundamentalist Christians, but DeSantis’ recent fit of pique should remind us that the war against anything “woke” extends to important aspects of the actual culture: the arts, certainly, but also public education. (The GOP proclivity for “projection”–accusing others of their own behaviors–is obvious in their hysterical ranting about public education “indoctrination.”)

The most successful effort to replace American public education with religious indoctrination, of course, has come in the guise of “parental choice,” or vouchers, which allow public monies to be siphoned from the public schools and sent disproportionately to religious schools. I have posted repeatedly about that effort, which has not only failed to improve test scores but has increased civic divisiveness and re-segregated the schools in several places.

I forget who first popularized the phrase “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” but if Trump should win in November, Project 2025 has outlined policies that would dramatically escalate the attack on public education.

Here are some of the elements of what I can only describe as an assault on steroids:

Title I, the $18 billion federal fund that supports low-income students, would disappear in a decade.
Federal special education funds would flow to school districts as block grants with no strings attached, or even to savings accounts for parents to use on private school or other education expenses.
The U.S. Department of Education would be eliminated.
The federal government’s ability to enforce civil rights laws in schools would be scaled back.

The proposals are contained in a comprehensive policy agenda that’s part of a Heritage Foundation-led initiative called Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project, which includes nearly 900 pages of detailed plans for virtually every corner of the federal government and a database of potential staffers for a conservative administration. It will also feature a playbook for the first 180 days of a new term.

Project 2025 was devised by several former Trump administration officials and allies, working with dozens of aligned advocacy organizations (misnamed “think tanks.”) including Moms for Liberty. You will recall that Moms for Liberty is the organization that fought school boards over COVID-19 safety protocols, advocates for censorship of books in school libraries, and endorses far-right school board candidates.

Trump has said that parents should elect school principals. He advocates the abolition of teacher tenure, has promised to cut federal funding to schools pushing “progressive” social ideas, and pledges to establish universal school choice.

Under the Project 2025 agenda, states would be able to opt out of federal education programs, whose “regulatory burden far exceeds the federal government’s less than 10 percent financing share of K–12 education,” the document asserts.

States would also have full authority to decide how to spend Title I funds, which currently go to schools with large populations of low-income students.

Under the Project 2025 plan, those funds would first flow to states as “no-strings-attached” block grants before they’re phased out in a decade. Parents of students attending Title I schools could even have access to the federal funds in “micro-education savings accounts” to pay for private education or supplemental services for their kids. The plan outlines similar ambitions for funds distributed under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the nation’s special education law, though it doesn’t propose phasing them out.

The assault on public education has displayed the fundamental disconnect between the civic purposes of education and citizens who see education as just another private, consumer good–skills to be acquired (by those who can afford it) in order to enhance the ability of one’s children to succeed in the marketplace.

Access to the arts and a common base of educational knowledge both facilitate civic conversation and cohesion. Both enlarge our understanding of the world we inhabit–its complexity and, yes, its diversity. The arts and liberal education are the antithesis of rigid ideology and group-think.

I assume that’s why MAGA cannot tolerate either.

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The New McCarthyism

Americans have long demonstrated a distrust of bureaucracy–generally seeing the growth of that managerial cohort as exclusively governmental, although it is typical of any large corporation or organization. More recently, MAGA Republicans have deepened the hostility to government workers by accusing civil servants of being a malevolent “deep state.”

That “deep state” of MAGA imagining is a cabal of anti-American “woke-ism,” dedicated to helping “those people” and restricting the God-given rights of the good White Christian men who are the only “real Americans.” Any government officials with the temerity to block one of Trump’s fever dreams is clearly a member of that “deep state.”

And according to Project 2025, the denizens of the “deep state” must be removed.

The public is gradually becoming aware of Project 2025, the detailed, thousand-page “transition plan” produced by a consortium of far-Right think tanks led by the Heritage Foundation. These culture warriors have (accurately) determined that their Presidential candidate– profoundly ignorant of government and rapidly losing touch with reality–would, if re-elected, be even more incapable of ushering in their desired changes than he was during his first term, so they have come together to provide a road-map.

That road map is filled with horrifying policy positions, a large number of which are (currently) unconstitutional. One of them, as described in the linked report from Talking Points Memo, takes aim at that hated “deep state.” (When I read it, it triggered a vision of Joseph McCarthy waving a paper and claiming he had the names of multiple Commies working for the government…)

The Heritage Foundation is funding the creation of a blacklist of federal government workers who MAGA loyalists claim might obstruct the Trump II agenda, the Associated Press reported Monday.

The work of compiling the list of names of some 100 government employees is being done by a Kentucky fellow named Tom Jones and his American Accountability Foundation. The work is being financed with the help of a $100,000 “Heritage Innovation Prize” from the Heritage Foundation, long a bastion of Reagan conservatism in DC but now fully in MAGA mode. Heritage announced the prize winner back in May, referring to “the presence of anti-American bad actors burrowed into the administrative state.”

In announcing the prize, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts touted it as effort to expose the “Deep State”:

“The weaponization of the federal government under President Joe Biden is only possible because of the deep state of entrenched Leftist bureaucrats in the White House and its agencies. I am proud to support the outstanding work of AAF in their fight to hold our government accountable and drain it of bad actors determined to undermine our constitutional republic and weaponize government against the American people, our economy, and our institutions.”

Notably, the plan is to publish the list online. A doxxing in the public square as it were, with all the obvious historical echoes, as the AP rightly notes:

The public list-making conjures for some the era of Joseph McCarthy, the senator who conducted grueling hearings into suspected communist sympathizers during the Cold War. The hearings were orchestrated by a top staffer, Roy Cohn, who became a confidant of a younger Trump.

As for the criteria used to determine who makes the list and how those criteria are applied, the AP provides this chilling methodology: “They’re relying in part on tips from his network of conservative contacts, including workers.”

Civil service protections are only one of the many, many elements of American government that would be jettisoned by Project 2025. If even a small number of the desired changes were to become law, America would be a profoundly different place–and far less hospitable to women, non-fundamentalist Christians and minorities.

As Congressman Jared Huffman explained,when he announced the creation of a Stop Project 2025 Task Force:

“Project 2025 is more than an idea, it’s a dystopian plot that’s already in motion to dismantle our democratic institutions, abolish checks and balances, chip away at church-state separation, and impose a far-right agenda that infringes on basic liberties and violates public will.

Project 2025 advocates placing all government workers– including employees of independent agencies like the Department of Justice– under direct presidential control, allowing the president to “efficiently” implement policies in a number of areas. Civil service employees would be replaced by “loyal” political appointees.

In other words, Separation of Powers would be replaced with a “streamlined” dictatorship.

So much for those silly Founders, and their devotion to “checks and balances”…Meanwhile, people upset with Biden’s debate performance want to replace him, a mere ten weeks before early voting starts. They are mimicking Nero, who–you will recall– fiddled while Rome burned.

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The Vision Thing

I still remember when George H.W. Bush introduced the phrase “the vision thing” into political discourse. (Bush, of course, was routinely criticized for deficits in the vision department.) This year, we have Presidential candidates who offer us dramatically different “vision things.”

President Biden has been explicit about his goals–his “visions” of a fair America. Perhaps the best summary of his vision comes from his often-employed phrase “from the middle out.” Biden wants to strengthen and increase the middle class by ensuring the availability of jobs paying living wages, and by supporting the full inclusion of women and minorities in the workforce and civic life (those “DEI” efforts hysterically denounced by MAGA folks).

Although Trump’s “vision” is difficult to discern from his incoherent speeches and verbal tics, it’s easy enough to see the autocratic and racist goals communicated through his rambling word-salads. Those who want more comprehensible specifics about his plans for a second term need only consult the Heritage Foundation plan endorsed by his campaign: Project 2025. Project 2025 is a compendium of chilling and profoundly anti-American policies that the radical Right has long pursued–including use of the military to round up dissidents and immigrants, federal laws banning abortion and favoring a White male patriarchy, and numerous other policies inconsistent with civic equality and civil liberties.

Trump’s “vision” can be illustrated by Project 2025’s approach to urban life. The Guardian recently reported on a section describing the proposed “handling” of so-called “sanctuary cities.”

Trump has for years railed against cities, particularly those run by Democratic officials, as hotbeds for crime and moral decay. He called Atlanta a “record setting Murder and Violent Crime War Zone” last year, a similar claim he makes frequently about various cities.

His allies have an idea of how to capitalize on that agenda and make cities in Trump’s image, detailed in the conservative Project 2025: unleash new police forces on cities like Washington DC, withhold federal disaster and emergency grants unless they follow immigration policies like detaining undocumented immigrants and share sensitive data with the federal government for immigration enforcement purposes.

Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, an extensive document breaking down each part of the federal government and recommending changes to be made to advance rightwing policy, was created by the Heritage Foundation, with dozens of conservative organizations and prominent names contributing chapters based on their backgrounds.

This part of the project is another Republican attempt at a crackdown on so-called “sanctuary” cities, places around the country that don’t cooperate with the federal government on enforcing harsh immigration policies.

A prime target is Washington DC. Trump’s stump speech includes accusing the city of crime, graffiti and general mismanagement–and promising that the federal government will take over the city and run it. Since Trump’s own incompetence at running anything is fairly obvious, Project 2025 maps out the “how.” It includes using the Secret Service to police the city–despite the fact that, under current law, the Secret Service lacks any authority to enforce laws outside the White House and its immediate surrounding area. (“Laws can be changed…”)

It isn’t just D.C.

The article noted that Trump has called America’s cities “uninspiring” and has talked about building “freedom cities” on federal lands– new cities (with flying cars!) that would be erected on unspecified vacant, federally owned land. He’s invited local leaders to work with him to get rid of “ugly buildings” and build new monuments to “our true American heroes”.

(When I read these remarks, I had a sudden, nauseating vision of cities composed of multiple, garish Trump towers erected on “vacant” national park land, populated by “freedom-loving” White men and their “tradwives.” I’m not sure who’d work in the restaurants of this city, since there wouldn’t be any of those brown-skinned immigrants…but then, Right-wing fantasies have never been noted for their logic…)

I am one of many Americans who do find the nation’s cities inspiring. As I have previously noted, my husband and I live in the urban center of our city–where an increasingly diverse population routinely introduces us to new foods, new musical and artistic trends, and new political and religious perspectives. Our city–like most American cities–is currently experiencing a blossoming of cultural and sporting offerings, and women and minority folks are prominent in government and business, as well as in sports and the arts.

In short, my everyday urban experience is the antithesis of the Rightwing’s wet dream of returning to the 1950s.

The terrifying goals described in Project 2025 illustrate the vast gulf between the visions of MAGA folks and the rest of us. In November, voters won’t simply choose between partisan candidates. We will choose between incompatible visions of America’s future.

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About That Plan…

An increasing number of media outlets are reporting on Project 2025–a plan by the Heritage Foundation together with other right-wing organizations intended to be a road map for a second Trump presidency.

Pundits have noted Project 2025’s similarity to Victor Orbán’s “illiberal” democracy in Hungary, where Orban has gutted the civil service and filled government positions with loyalists who support his attacks on immigrants, women, and the LGBTQ+ community, and his efforts to distance Hungary from other NATO nations. Orban’s recent trip to Mar-A-Lago was followed by a less-publicized meeting at Heritage.

So–what is in the Project 2025 plan for a second Trump Administration? Heather Cox Richardson recently spelled it out:

Project 2025 stands on four principles that it says the country must embrace. In their vision, the U.S. must “[r]estore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children”; “[d]ismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people”; “[d]efend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats”; and “[s]ecure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls ‘the Blessings of Liberty.’”

In almost 1,000 pages, the document explains what these policies mean for ordinary Americans. Restoring the family and protecting children means making “family authority, formation, and cohesion” a top priority and using “government power…to restore the American family.” That, the document says, means eliminating any words associated with sexual orientation or gender identity, gender, abortion, reproductive health, or reproductive rights from any government rule, regulation, or law. Any reference to transgenderism is “pornography” and must be banned.

The overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the right to abortion must be gratefully celebrated, but the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision accomplishing that end “is just the beginning.”

Dismantling the administrative state in this document starts from the premise that “people are policy.” Frustrated because nonpartisan civil employees thwarted much of Trump’s agenda in his first term, the authors of Project 2025 call for firing much of the current government workforce—about 2 million people work for the U.S. government—and replacing it with loyalists who will carry out a right-wing president’s demands.

The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism describes Project 2025 as a significant threat to democracy. Spearheaded by Heritage and supported by more than 80 extremist organizations, the plan aims to “rescue the country from elite rule and woke cultural warriors.” The Global Project notes reports of internal discussions centered around a proposal that the next “conservative” President invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office, in order to allow use of the military to quell civil unrest.

Project 2025 plans what it calls a “robust governing agenda,” with all of the hallmarks of authoritarianism.

It threatens Americans’ civil and human rights and our very democracy. The America that Project 2025 wants to create would involve a fundamental reordering of our society. It would greatly enhance the executive branch’s powers and impose on all Americans policies favored by Christian nationalists regarding issues such as sexual health and reproductive rights, education, the family, and the role of religion in our society and government. It would strip rights protections from LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, women, and people of color. It would dismantle much of the federal government and replace our apolitical civil service with far-right partisans it is already training in anticipation of a power shift. It would end attempts to enhance equity and racial justice throughout the government and shut down agencies that track progress on this front. Efforts to tackle issues such as climate change would be ended, and politicized research produced to back the project’s views on environmental policy, the evils of “transgenderism,” and women’s health would take priority.

There is more, obviously, in a thousand-page document, and it’s all very chilling, but what strikes me is how explicit and professional it is.

Project 2025 represents a very troubling step up from the tracts and manifestos produced by the disaffected and generally disturbed members of militias and groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. This is a professional document, produced and endorsed by people and organizations that already wield considerable power and influence–extremists who have already massively infiltrated the courts, completely taken over of one of America’s major political parties, and who “own” numerous lawmakers in Congress and in a number of states. Those “fellow travelers” are easily identifiable: we need only look at the GOP Representatives who oppose aid to Ukraine, attack trans children, and advocate for a national abortion ban. (Here in Indiana, that includes far-Right Congressman Jim Banks, currently running for the Senate, among others.)

The fact that Heritage felt free to put it in writing tells us the takeover is well underway. That should terrify us all…..

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