I became aware of Project 2025 some time ago. It is the plan for the second Trump presidency that has been created for him by a range of far-right US think tanks headed by the Heritage Foundation, but supposedly involving hundreds of such organisations.
The original document is here. It is more than 900 pages long. Few are going to read all that. I thought a summary might be useful, and for once, I thought that ChatGPT might be of use in creating one. This is what I asked it to do:
Please summarise the main policy proposals in 'Project 2025', noting who is making these proposals.
This is what it offered:
"Project 2025" is a comprehensive policy blueprint put forward by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, along with contributions from several other right-leaning organizations. Its aim is to provide a roadmap for a conservative-led federal government, specifically targeting a possible administration in 2025. This initiative, with the tagline "A Guide to Winning Back America," is designed to consolidate and streamline conservative policy objectives across a wide array of domains, focusing on what it sees as a return to constitutional governance, with an emphasis on reducing the power of federal agencies, enforcing stricter immigration policies, and altering education and climate policies.
Here are the main policy proposals outlined in "Project 2025":
1. Reducing the Federal Bureaucracy and Restructuring Agencies
- Personnel changes: One of the most prominent proposals involves reducing the federal workforce significantly, emphasizing replacing career civil servants with appointees who align with the administration's policy views.
- Agency restructuring: The proposal includes plans to shrink or even dismantle several federal agencies. For example, it advocates for reducing the size and authority of agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Education, which they argue have grown beyond their constitutional mandates.
- Power to the Executive Branch: The project envisions a more centralized power within the executive branch, allowing political appointees to exert greater control over federal operations and reduce what they perceive as bureaucratic resistance.
2. Immigration and Border Security
- Tighter border enforcement: Project 2025 emphasizes the need for strict immigration controls, including bolstering border security measures, expediting the deportation of undocumented immigrants, and potentially ending the policy of "birthright citizenship."
- Overhaul of asylum process: Proposals suggest limiting eligibility for asylum and enacting stricter vetting processes to curb illegal immigration, which the plan characterizes as a threat to national security.
3. Climate and Energy Policy
- Deregulation of the energy sector: A key element of Project 2025 is rolling back regulations on the fossil fuel industry. This includes reducing restrictions on drilling, pipeline construction, and coal usage.
- Ending "Net Zero" goals: The plan proposes abandoning initiatives targeting net-zero carbon emissions, arguing that they hinder economic growth and energy independence.
- Reducing funding for climate science: Project 2025 suggests reallocating resources away from climate science research and regulatory programs within agencies like the EPA, emphasizing that energy policy should prioritize economic factors over environmental concerns.
4. Education Reform
- Return of control to local authorities: The plan advocates for significant reductions in the role of the federal government in education, pushing for a "school choice" agenda that would redirect funding to charter schools and private school voucher programs.
- Curriculum changes: It proposes stronger restrictions on teaching topics like Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender identity, seeking to ban federal funding for any programs that include these concepts.
- Eliminating the Department of Education: Project 2025 calls for dismantling or substantially downsizing the Department of Education, shifting more control over education policy to states and local governments.
5. Social and Cultural Issues
- Gender and Family Policies: Project 2025 proposes restricting federal support for gender-affirming care and opposing policies that allow minors to transition genders. The document supports policies that favor traditional family structures and opposes what it terms "woke" ideologies.
- Military and Defense Culture: It advocates removing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs from the military, arguing that such policies distract from military readiness and focus. Project 2025 also promotes a traditionalist approach to military culture, emphasizing combat readiness and discipline.
6. Healthcare and Welfare Reforms
- Overhauling Medicaid and Social Services: The project proposes tightening eligibility for Medicaid and welfare programs to reduce spending, focusing on "work-first" policies for welfare recipients.
- Healthcare deregulation: Project 2025 promotes deregulation within the healthcare system, aiming to foster more market competition and reduce government involvement, which they argue would lower costs and improve quality.
7. Foreign Policy
- "America First" approach: Project 2025 leans toward a more isolationist stance, suggesting reduced involvement in international organizations that it claims constrain American sovereignty. It recommends cutting funding for international aid and institutions, with a focus on bolstering national defense instead.
- Challenging China: The project emphasizes a more confrontational stance toward China, framing it as a primary economic and security threat. It proposes policies to reduce American dependency on Chinese manufacturing and technology.
Key Players Behind Project 2025
- The Heritage Foundation leads the initiative, but it is supported by a coalition of conservative think tanks and advocacy groups, such as the American Enterprise Institute, Family Research Council, National Taxpayers Union, and Federalist Society.
- The project has also received input from former Trump administration officials and aligns closely with the conservative priorities associated with the Trump presidency, suggesting it could serve as a platform for a second Trump administration or any similarly conservative administration.
In summary, "Project 2025" represents a broad conservative policy agenda aimed at reshaping the federal government, with an emphasis on reducing federal power, advancing conservative social policies, and prioritizing economic and energy independence. The Heritage Foundation and its partner organizations intend it as a guide for a future administration to implement a distinctively conservative governance approach.
I thought this was useful in many areas, but missed some of the human dimension, so I asked again, requesting this:
Please summarise the main policy proposals in 'Project 2025', noting who is making these proposals. Please mention any particular focus on the role of women in society.
As a consequence, I got these additional explanations that I feel are worth adding to the above:
Project 2025, developed primarily by the conservative Heritage Foundation and endorsed by numerous right-leaning think tanks, outlines a sweeping set of proposals aimed at overhauling federal policy in areas like immigration, welfare, education, and government structure. If implemented, these plans could greatly expand executive power, curtail the federal workforce, and reduce government involvement in various social programs. Here are some of its main policy focuses:
- Immigration Reform: Project 2025 aims to restore policies from the Trump era, including heightened border security, restrictive asylum procedures, and a “Remain in Mexico” policy for asylum seekers. Additionally, it calls for limiting student and guest worker visas, especially for those from nations it deems "adversarial" to the U.S., and replacing family-based immigration with merit-based criteria
- Social Services and Welfare: The proposal seeks to impose stricter requirements on social safety net programs, including work mandates for Medicaid, SNAP (food stamps), and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). It also advocates eliminating Head Start and reducing benefits in school meal programs, emphasizing a preference for in-home childcare incentives over universal daycare funding
- Economic Policy: Project 2025 supports a two-bracket tax system that reduces the top income tax rate and the corporate tax rate, aiming to stimulate private sector growth by minimizing taxes on high-income earners. Critics argue that this could shift the tax burden onto lower-income groups and reduce public revenue.
- Environmental and Regulatory Rollbacks: It promotes significantly loosening environmental regulations, including withdrawing recent climate measures, to reduce what it views as "bureaucratic overreach" that stifles economic productivity. This includes scaling back regulations on polluting industries and opposing federal mandates on clean energy.
- Reproductive Rights and Gender: Project 2025 proposes limiting access to reproductive healthcare and restricting medication abortion. In terms of the role of women, the agenda leans towards supporting policies that incentivize traditional family structures. It encourages funding for parental support in the form of at-home childcare instead of external childcare facilities, indicating a preference for traditional gender roles in childcare and domestic life
- Government Workforce Changes: The plan seeks to eliminate protections for civil servants, making it easier to replace them with political appointees. This initiative, known as the “Schedule F” classification, would permit mass firings, ostensibly to allow each administration to implement its policies without opposition from entrenched federal employees
These policy recommendations, together with a planned expansion of executive authority, signal a far-reaching reorganization of government aligned with conservative values and a stronger role for state control over individual rights and welfare. While the proposal emphasizes limiting government spending, critics argue that its policies may reduce protections and resources for low-income populations and increase societal inequalities
What is clear is that this agenda is profoundly:
- Anti-government and its obligation to act without bias or favour in the USA
- Threatening to migrants in the USA, their spouses and dependents
- Threatening to women and their reproductive rights
- Threatening to free speech and equality in education and elsewhere
- Damaging to the hopes of managing climate change
- Harmful to those on low pay in the USA, with consequences for growing inequality.
There are millions of Americans who have reason to fear what Trump is doing, including many of those who voted for him, I am sure.
And with Trump now an elected autocrat, likely to exist without checks or balances on his power, the chance that he will try to deliver large elements of this programme is high.
If he does so, the Tories and Reform will try to do the same here, and as it stands, Labour is clueless as to what to do about that. We are not living in interesting times. We are living in dangerous times.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
While Biden had to drop out because of fears over his health the obvious concern must be Trumps wellbeing.
I’m not suggesting that he might die in office but that we could be in a position where he is simply a titular president and others are making the decisions
My sense is that Trump is an unwitting ‘front’ puppet for hidden interests such as the Project 2025 authors. He will become an obstacle to those interests if he acts like a mafia Don even more this time around than previously (and all the country heads rushing unseemingly to ‘kiss the ring’ yesterday will only have enhanced his sense of omnipotence).
Trump thinks he is an independent actor. He is not. Once his tendency to go off piste becomes too frequent and / or a threat to the objectives of the actors that got him this far, he will be replaced. The alternatives are likely to be worse.
In the meantime, how much more deregulation and abuse can the planet take…….
Richard, when I click on the like heart it often increases by more than 1, usually by 2 but occasionally by 3. Just thought I should make you aware of this.
That may be because others are also clicking on it.
There really are a lot of likes going on
I get the same issue when I look at the YouTube versions – where I can often see them jumping by multiples.
I do not think this is because there is over-counting.
Technically the Like count only changes when you do an action in the browser, such as refresh the page, or indeed, click the Like count. In other words, there is no background process checking with the server what the latest Like counts are and updating the buttons on the page.
So it can indeed jump multiples, and that is as Richard suggests, because others have clicked the button between when you first accessed the page, and then clicked the Like button.
Thanks
[…] have already highlighted some aspects of her viciously nasty agenda this week. Project 2025, to which I have referred this morning, was written by think tanks closely aligned with the far-right ones situated in Tufton Street, just […]
The right-wing think tanks are globally connected and well-organized in the organization known as the Atlas Network.
There is no effective opposition to their agenda from the left of the political spectrum. The opposition is fragmented, with each organization focusing primarily on its area of interest.
All the hard-working environmental groups in the UK; the community, human rights, and equality organizations; the charities providing food and various kinds of support to people in need; the scientists and activists from all backgrounds; non-conventional economists, teachers, researchers, and publishers offering well-thought-out and evidence-based solutions to our crisis.
Despite their efforts, even though they won some battles, we are witnessing a rapid decline in all areas of life.
We are addressing the specific problems the system creates, which is needed, but without confronting the root causes and collectively offering different narratives.
We are losing big time.
We stand no chance unless we organize and find ways to fight back.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/29/rightwing-thinktank-conservative-boris-johnson-brexit-atlas-network
https://www.desmog.com/atlas-economic-research-foundation/
Much to agree with
“We stand no chance unless we organize and find ways to fight back.”
Like Richard, I agree. The follow on question is how to fight back? One needs to “frame the argument”. I’d suggest that like Trump – we need to appeal to people’s gut instincts – it is pointless using numbers/rationalism/logical argument. Has not worked with Trump, does not work with Farage & his ilk.
Let’s try this.
Tufton Street/Farage/etc are funded by foriegn agents that only wish ill on the UK state and its citizens.
The “current set up” running for 40 years has made most UK citizens measurably worse off and has led to the gutting of the Uk state.
Government services are shit, and have been defuned to make them shit. Local government services have been destroyed.
The people driving all this are only interested in their own profit – or making it for their masters.
Tufton St and the people that work there are enemies of the British state – demonstrably so – when one looks back over 40 years. This makes them enemies of the British people. Those that support them are, likewise enemies of the Uk people – the owner of the Times and the Sun (& his lackies) is a foriegn agent – has supported developments over the last 40 years that have emiserated the UK. He is, as such, an enemy of the state.
This is the framing we need. Furthermore, with “Late Soviet Britain” – we have a good description of what happened (neoliberalism), why it happened and why it could never ever deliver the goods. Thus anybody that still thinks that neoliberalism, after reading the book, is good for the UK is, at best deluded and, possibly, lacking reading/English comprehension skills, or, is a state enemy.
Extreme? Nope, because we face a multi-existential crisis both on the climate front and the political economy front.
Echoing Cato: “Tufton Street delenda est”.
Delenda est – must be destroyed
Thank you.
Project 2025 is nothing but a charter for vested interests.
America is a huge country and to me it is as though the ‘flyover states’ have won this ‘election’. We were ruminating about this in the pub the other night – a colleague having been over to the states told me that he still does not understand the country at all – especially in its interior, the low ownership of passports, small town America.
The Americans you meet abroad are a different breed – they actually get out and about and seem to be people of the world, but all I see in the U.S. is huge wodge of ignorance ripe for exploitation.
Since Reagan in particular (and Nixon did not help either), the American rich have been enabled to do to average Americans what they did to the Red Indian – consume what wealth or ownership they had – eat their own. America at one time – for white Americans at least – worked. Now, as a democracy riven with state sanctioned political corruption it does not.
Really, for this ‘election’, it is the U.S. who needed external invigilation of its electoral processes instead of some Yanks turning up in ex-communist and African countries to make sure those elections are fair and proper. What condescension!
In the cold light of day, the U.S. is now a basket case. A failed state. A spoilt, greedy brat of a country which has huge power at its command at the whim of greed and the people bankrolling it are covetous, devious and cannot see any further than the end their own noses (maybe only half way at that).
Dangerous?
Oh yeah…………………………….
The basic flaw though with the whole scheme is that it sounds like it was concocted by a bunch of youthful, inexperienced pantomime villains. It’s not policy, it’s a sociopath’s wish list. Oh, they lament, if only we could make the world this way it’d be milk and honey for us, the Chosen, all the way… only it wouldn’t. It’d be social collapse, and they’re just too dumb to see it. it’s childish, petulant, naive, and insubstantial as a consequence. All the children in the theatre can clap their hands as much as they like but it won’t change anything. Tinkerbell didn’t make it, but this lot just can’t stop wishing…
What follows is true. Small town America. 1983, in “Midland Michigan” – headquarters of Dow Chemical. Dutch family had moved there because dad worked for Dow in Terneuzen (Netherlands – vast petro-chem plant on the Schelde – actually the port from which the Flying Dutchman was supposed to have departed – apologies – I digress). Anyway, its Sunday and as per usual, the family get in the car and drive around for an hour and then back to home. They were pretending to go to church. If you were not a church goer in Midland Mitchigan you had zero social standing. I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the story. I have no idea what church they said they went to (probably made one up).
On an unrelated note, at one point the top people in Dow were:
Paul Orifice (USA)
Big Biggers (NL)
Bob Bum (NL)
I’m not making this up. America – wierd.
The right wing wealthy always justify their wealth by claiming that they are smarter and more hardworking than others. Clearly Project 2025 blows that right out of the water!
Frightening times: that would be my conclusion from this. This for me reads like a wish list for fascism. In particular, objective one (Reducing the Federal Bureaucracy and Restructuring Agencies), reads like the ultimate goal is elected dictatorship (i.e., one of fascism’s main goals). The idea of having ‘career civil servants’ and ‘layers of bureaucracy’ is to not allow elected leaders to act as a dictator and have some form of checks in place – i.e., to have democracy. However, this is of course not project 2025’s goal. Worryingly, we are having the same arguments being put forward in the UK, regarding the civil service and government size. Additionally on this point, most of the electorate are also massively uninformed of how the world works/idiots – so allowing these electorates to vote in these lying fascists is an issue with the system. Although if we didn’t allow politicians/msm to lie without consequences, maybe this wouldn’t be such an issue.
Also, one phrase comes to mind with neoliberalism, far rightism, fascism etc, and that is: Turkeys voting for Christmas. The vast majority of idiots who vote for this kind of leader, however angry they may be with the establishment, are the ones who will ultimately suffer. The fascists eventually will come for the very people who voted for them and with loss of the social state, many will suffer if they are not rich. As you and others have rightly pointed out, Trump/Fascism do not care about anyone apart from anyone who is rich/American.
Reading the rest of the project 2025, it reads like neoliberalism on turbo. I think eventually, there comes a point though where the fascist leader/ government and money men in society will end up fighting each other for the control of the power as well. Ultimately, this is what neoliberalism/fascism is about: uncontrolled power. I believe this is what happened with previous fascist regimes in the past. Fascism is the end result of neoliberalism in my opinion, a bit like if you go the other way and go too far left, you end up with communism. So really, you could blame the ‘centre’ / ‘centre right’ politicians/parties of the past for this result in society. Their failure to bring equality and promote neoliberalism has created a space for the fascists.
We are likely past the point of no return now, unless we have radical centre-left, left wing governments rise quickly. I am not optimistic though.
Thank you, Richard.
Richard and readers will be delighted to hear that, along with the Koch brothers, the Heritage Foundation hosted Lammy and Kinnock in NYC and Washington in June.
The foundation used the big pharma and private hospital dominated Swiss healthcare insurance system as the model for (Mitt) Romneycare in Massachusetts. That became the model for Obamacare, which some people in the UK think is the NHS as St Barry Obama implemented.
Richard and readers will also be delighted to hear that Streeting favours this insurance model and has held talks with the Heritage Foundation, Wall Street (including a former City bankster turned politician, including a brief stint as chancellor, turned City bankster) and tech firms. Bits of Project 2025 are on their way to the UK. The uniparty in the UK and US is owned by the same people.
Thanks
I agree about the uniparty
I came across this savagely clever parody of Project 2025’s social policies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojr4ryZZzpY
Very good
“savagely clever parody of Project 2025’s social policies:” – or simply a description of what is coming down the track? I favour the latter. The headbangers are now in control in the USA and the best those living there can do is get out – whilst they still can.
The problem the Uk and its politicos make is that they think the USA is our friend, our ally. This has never been the case. The USA has exploited UK weaknesses and regards us as at best a supine poodle. This being the case (& it is) this makes the rabble on Tufton Street etc at best enemies of the British state, at worst, traitors, Gloves need to come off on this.
Much to agree with
Project 2025 was written by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing neoliberal organisation that is partly funded by the Koch brothers. The Heritage Foundation also wrote a policy guide for Ronald Reagan containing some 3000 policy proposals. At the end of his first year, Reagan had implemented about 60% of them. Thatcher followed suit, and here we are after 40 years of neoliberalism.
Read: The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& How It Came to Control Your Life) (2024) by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison
https://amzn.eu/d/bNeci8m
Thank you, Ian.
It has been noticeable how oligarchs have infiltrated parties on the left in Europe in the past thirty years. It started with the Blairites in the UK, but soon spread to the continent, especially after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The German SPD and Greens are neocon and neoliberal. Oligarchs can’t afford to use right wing parties only as proxy.
Readers may be interested in Reagan representing the bosses, not workers: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2635094/EXCLUSIVE-Revealed-MAFIA-helped-Ronald-Reagan-White-House-Shocking-documentary-reveals-Mob-connections-catapulted-presidency-probe-thwarted-highest-levels.html.
Re US foreign policy:
Attac has a petition urging Biden to act NOW (while he still can) to stop arms sales to Israel in the absence of “a ceasefire and a just, sustainable peace”. I have just signed.
Can I encourage all who agree to do likewise NOW?:
https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/biden_act_now_on_palestine_1_0/?
Mmm…It wouldn’t be too big a stretch to imagine that the UK got there first and that we’re living through the initial stages of “Project 25 (GB)”.
The folks who created P25GB could clearly see that the Tories lacked the skills, determination and credibility to implement the cutting edge/laser focussed changes that are needed to achieve the neoliberal switch that would finally drive the nail in the coffin of the post-war Welfare State.
The “reform” of the Labour Party was an enormous success and the screening out of any contrary voices was executed with elan. Any legacy individuals were hoisted on their own petard and marginalised.
“Believers” were promoted, in every sense; access to representation on the airwaves/media was strictly controlled.
Policies were ditched and “the offer” became increasingly vague – till eventually people were offered “Change”
This transformation of the British political landscape will be studies by later generations or perhaps, like neoliberalism, not examined at all and simply seen as inevitable.
Quite what Britian’s reward will be for leading the way is difficult to envisage, so far we’re just anticipating the costs.