One of the scariest items this Halloween season isn’t in a store display or on someone’s well decorated lawn, it’s a document that has seemingly scared more readers than a Stephen King novel … and it’s almost as long as the longest of his books.
“Project 2025” is not a work of fiction. It’s the product of the Heritage Foundation, which is the main think tank of the ultra-conservative movement. This organization attempts to push the Grand Old Party (GOP) toward hardliners and away from the moderate and traditional party establishment. It’s both a beacon of light for those who favor an authoritarian “strong leader” style of government and viewed with horror as the American equivalent of the Taliban for those with liberal leanings.
Since the publication of “Project 2025; Mandate for Leadership, the Conservative Promise” there have been many false claims about what is in the document — possibly because too few of us have the time, energy or desire to wade through a 922-page document written in gobbledygook.
The Republican party has seemingly both dismissed any association with it and embraced large parts of it. At the same time, the Democratic Party has been using it like a hammer to drive fear into potential voters like it’s the Republican platform.
Project 2025 is not the Republican platform. Admittedly, the majority of those who crafted this document are former Trump appointees and likely to be re-appointed after Trump’s election. But that’s not the equivalent of saying any of these proposals are going to be passed on Day One of the Second Trump administration. Or even later.
I read the whole tome over multiple evenings (it is a good cure for insomnia) and would like to clarify some of the common misconceptions about what this document does and does not propose.
Yes, it intends to concentrate more power in the presidency. Yes, it slashes regulations, ditches climate change measures and reduces assistance to the poor. Yes, it includes aggressive proposals to support a religious-right agenda and wants pornography outlawed and its creators and distributors imprisoned.
But it does not call for ending no-fault divorce. The Heritage Foundation does appear to favor the elimination of no-fault divorce on their website at https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/report/encouraging-marriage-and-discouraging-divorce, and that may have contributed to the confusion.
The 922-page document also does not explicitly call for banning contraceptives, although it does want to restrict them.
The document also does not require teaching Christian beliefs in public school or ban Muslims from entering the country. However, the document certainly suggests provisions that would reward the first and some segments suppressing immigration and stressing national security do appear to have Muslims in their crosshairs.
But one thing it does do is go into the nitty-gritty details of each of their proposals, which is something that party platforms and candidates too seldom do and a reason why I urge voters to at least read the sections that pertain to policies in which they have a vested interest.
For example: Republicans have been promising to eliminate the Department of Education since Carter was president, but they seldom tell us what would happen if if they did. Project 2025 lays it out for us.
[For background: excepting student loans, the biggest federal education expenditures are generally Title I funds for high-poverty schools (~$18 billion a year), special education funding (~$15 billion per year), and Pell Grants (~$28 billion a year).]
Project 2025 proposes to essentially turn that $18 billion for high poverty schools into vouchers and then phase them out over a 10-year period.
Thus, the problems associated with high poverty schools will be transferred back to the states.
At the same time, the Heritage Foundation proposes allowing states to opt out of federal education programs and instead, allows states to put their share of federal funding toward “any lawful education purpose under state law.”
[In states like Texas, this could mean more multi-million dollar football stadiums.]
The document also recommends requiring the Sec. of Education to “…allocate at least 40% of funding to international business programs…”; “minimize bachelor degree requirements”; and “Eliminate the PLUS loan program.”
This is just a small part of details available in the 41 pages covering education. The full document is available online at https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf and it’s a long shopping list of proposals that some of us will oppose and others embrace.
It has always been the responsibility of voters to understand the potential consequences of their ballot choices but admittedly this has grown more difficult than in the past. It’s not overwhelming to follow local issues but when we look at national level politics, too many of us encounter “information overload” and there’s seemingly a tidal wave of Political Action Committees (PACs) intent upon muddying the waters so we can’t clearly see what candidates actually support.
It’s far easier to just vote a straight ticket for the party we’ve always trusted but the danger here is that party ideologies shift over time and if we don’t pay attention, we may find ourselves voting for the very things that we are dead set against.
So please set aside some time somewhere in your busy lives to look at what candidates and parties claim they want and what they will do to accomplish their goals and then vote your conscience regardless of what anyone else urges you to do.
Once you’ve marked that ballot, slipped it into the envelope, and sealed it shut, no one will ever know how you voted.
A lifelong resident of Hancock County, Linda Dunn is an author and retired Department of Defense employee.
