Project 2025 Is Conservative Blue Print For A Second Trump Administration

by | Jul 31, 2024 | Editorials and Opinions, Newsletters

What Project 2025 Represents And What’s At Stake If Trump Wins A Second Term 

On July 9, 2024, the CBS national news agency published  on line the following report written by its staff reporters Melissa Quinn and Jacob Rosen entitled “What Is Project 2025; What To Know About The Conservative Blue Print For A Second Trump Administration”. The article outlines what the voting public needs to understand and what Project 2025 means if Trump is elected to a second term.

Following are excerpts from the article.

Overseen by the conservative Heritage Foundation, the multi-pronged initiative includes a detailed blueprint for the next Republican president to usher in a sweeping overhaul of the executive branch. Trump and his campaign have worked to distance themselves from Project 2025, with the former president going so far as to call some of the proposals “abysmal.” But Democrats have continued to tie the transition project to Trump   …  . ” 

 WHAT IS PROJECT 2025?

“Project 2025 is a proposed presidential transition project that is composed of four pillars: a policy guide for the next presidential administration; a LinkedIn-style database of personnel who could serve in the next administration; training for that pool of candidates dubbed the “Presidential Administration Academy;” and a playbook of actions to be taken within the first 180 days in office.

Project 2025 is spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, but includes an advisory board consisting of more than 100 conservative groups.

Much of the focus on — and criticism of — Project 2025 involves its first pillar  that lays out an overhaul of the federal government. Called “Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise,” the book builds on a “Mandate for Leadership” first published in January 1981, which sought to serve as a roadmap for Ronald Reagan’s incoming administration.

The recommendations outlined in the sprawling plan reach every corner of the executive branch, from the Executive Office of the President to the Department of Homeland Security to the little-known Export-Import Bank. 

WHAT ARE THE PROJECT 2025 PLANS?

  • Less federal intervention in education and more support for school choice, work requirements for able-bodied, childless adults on food stamps;
  • A secure border with increased enforcement of immigration laws
  • Mass deportations and construction of a border wall. 

 ABORTION AND SOCIAL ISSUES

“In recommendations for the Department of Health and Human Services, the agenda calls for the Food and Drug Administration to reverse its 24-year-old approval of the widely used abortion pill mifepristone. Other proposed actions targeting medication abortion include reinstating more stringent rules for mifepristone’s use, which would permit it to be taken up to seven weeks into a pregnancy, instead of the current 10 weeks, and requiring it to be dispensed in-person instead of through the mail.

.The policy book also recommends the Justice Department enforce the Comstock Act against providers and distributors of abortion pills. That 1873 law prohibits drugs, medicines or instruments used in abortions from being sent through the mail.

 In a section titled “The Family Agenda,” the proposal recommends the Health and Human Services chief “proudly state that men and women are biological realities,” and that “married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure because all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them.”

Further, a program within the Health and Human Services Department should “maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family.”

TARGETING FEDERAL AGENCIES, EMPLOYEES AND POLICIES

“The agenda takes aim at longstanding federal agencies, like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).  NOAA’s six offices, including the National Weather Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, “form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity,” the guide states. 

The Department of Homeland Security, established in 2002, should be dismantled and its agencies either combined with others, or moved under the purview of other departments altogether.

The agenda seeks to bring a push by conservatives to target diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives in higher education to the executive branch by wiping away a slew of DEI-related positions, policies and programs and calling for the elimination of funding for partners that promote DEI practices.

 The Project 2025 policy book also takes aim at more innocuous functions of government. It calls for the next presidential administration to eliminate or reform the dietary guidelines that have been published by the Department of Agriculture for more than 40 years, which the authors claim have been “infiltrated” by issues like climate change and sustainability.”

 IMMIGRATION

Project 2025’s agenda not only recommends finishing the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, but urges the next administration to “take a creative and aggressive approach” to responding to drug cartels at the border. This approach includes using active-duty military personnel and the National Guard to help with arrest operations along the southern border.

THE BBC TAKE ON PROJECT 2025

On July 7, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) had its own take on Project 2025 and published on line the following news article entitled “Project 2025: A wish list for a Trump presidency” written by BBC staff reporter Mike Wendling. Much of the BBC report is a repetition of major points in the CBS news reports but with the following noteworthy additions:

GOVERNMENT

“Project 2025 proposes that the entire federal bureaucracy, including independent agencies such as the Department of Justice, be placed under direct presidential control – a controversial idea known as “unitary executive theory”.

The document labels the FBI a “bloated, arrogant, increasingly lawless organization” and calls for drastic overhauls of this and other federal agencies, including eliminating the Department of Education.”

CLIMATE AND ECONOMY

“The document proposes slashing federal money for research and investment in renewable energy, and calls for the next president to “stop the war on oil and natural gas”. Carbon-reduction goals would be replaced by efforts to increase energy production and security.

But the economic advisers suggest that a second Trump administration should slash corporate and income taxes, abolish the Federal Reserve and even consider a return to gold-backed currency.”

ABORTION

“Project 2025 does not call for a nationwide abortion ban. However, it proposes withdrawing the abortion pill mifepristone from the market.”

TECH AND EDUCATION

“Under the proposals, pornography would be banned, and tech and telecoms companies that facilitate access to such content would be shut down.

The document calls for school choice and parental control over schools, and takes aim at what it calls “woke propaganda”.

It proposes to eliminate a long list of terms from all laws and federal regulations, including “sexual orientation”, “diversity, equity, and inclusion”, “gender equality”, “abortion” and “reproductive rights”.”

DRACONIAN CUTS TO MEDICARE

On June 17, 2024, the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy reported that Project 2025 blueprint also includes draconian cuts to Medicare. The report states in part as follows:

The Project 2025 plan would convert federal Medicaid funding to block grants or per capita caps.

The Project 2025 plan would encourage the federal government and states to impose more red tape and make it harder for eligible individuals and families to apply for, enroll in, and renew their Medicaid coverage.

The Project 2025 plan would establish an option for individuals to convert their Medicaid coverage into a voucher, presumably for the purchase of coverage in the private insurance market.

The Project 2025 plan would appear to largely sweep away existing federal oversight of state Medicaid programs.

 COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS

You always know when Der Führer Donald Trump is lying.  It’s when you see him open his big mouth and hear the words he speaks. When Trump said “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them” there is little to no doubt Trump is again lying.

Simply put, Project 2025 is Der Führer Trump’s extreme and dangerous blueprint for a second term. Project 2025 was written for Trump and by some of his closest advisors who themselves want to return to power. Project 2025 if implemented fully would give Trump limitless power over American’s daily lives and let him use the presidency to enact “revenge” on anyone who has opposed him or whoever has gotten in his way. The recent Supreme Court decision giving Presidents absolute immunity ensures that Trump will believe he is above the law and all that he does are official acts ensuring he will never be prosecuted for crimes he commits.

Major goals and highlights of Project 2025 include the following:

  • Allow Trump to use the presidency for revenge and retribution and be a “dictator”on day one.
  • Allow Trump to ban abortion nationwide with or without Congress.
  • Allow Trump to repeal Obamacare, ripping health care away from tens of millions of Americans.
  • Allow Trump to slash Social Security and Medicare.
  • Allow Trump to raise costs for workers to line the pockets of his billionaire donors.
  • Allow Trump to abandon our NATO allies and encourage Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
  • “The Family Agenda” proposal is a clear attack on the rights of the LGBTQ+ community. The proclamation that the Health and Human Services Department should “maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family” is evidence that every effort will be made to reverse court decisions that allow for gay rights and marriage.
  • Continue the vilification of immigrants and place roadblocks to any and all comprehensive immigration reform.

Excerpted from Pete Dinelli’s Blog of July 14, 2024

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