“Project 2025.” It was mentioned during last night’s debate between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, just as it has repeatedly come up over the course of this year’s remarkably unusual presidential campaign. True to form, it was criticized by Harris and disavowed by Trump.
Much has been written about Project 2025, which is detailed in a 887-page book – Mandate for Leadership, The Conservative Promise -- published last year by the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based, conservative think tank, as a guide for a hoped-for conservative-oriented presidency to follow that of President Biden.
The programs outlined in Project 2025 are neither new nor ground-breaking, and follow similar volumes issued by Heritage in the lead-up to presidential elections since the first edition was published in 1981.
As noted by its authors, it is a “governing agenda” designed as a roadmap for a conservative president to implement where possible and advocate when necessary, for changes in an administration and in the individuals who will populate it, in order to reduce the size, scope, and power of the federal government.
In no other election, going back to those in the 1980s, has this election-year project become a central and recurring target by the Democrat nominee and the Party itself. Why this year?
On the broadest level, one could attribute Project 2025’s prominence this cycle to the basic parameters according to which virtually everything relating to national politics and to candidates and office holders, is subject to virulent objection by whichever side or individual disagrees with all or a portion of whatever is being put forward. Thus, insofar as Project 2025 describes a conservative governing agenda, Democrats blast it as the most evil and anti-American document ever written and presented in the public policy arena.
Such vehemence is not surprising since Project 2025’s central thesis is that the federal government, particularly in its regulatory reach, has become far too powerful and unacceptably restrictive of individual liberty. It aims to curb that behemoth and return as much power as possible to the states and to individual citizens. Project 2025 is in this sense, a red flag and a logical target of Democrat ire.
A review of some of Project 2025’s proposal illustrates why Democrats, including the Party’s presidential nominee, are so disdainful of the program:
Reducing the reach and influence of the federal Department of Education, including reforms to Title IX that would return the expansive reach of the Title back to basics, and also restoring due process rights to students and others accused of violating Title IX’s mandates.
Restructuring and streamlining the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a way to avoid a repeat of the incompetent manner by which it administered defenses against the COVID-19 pandemic, and implementing reforms that would stop the pharmaceutical industry from contributing millions of dollars to the CDC through its “Foundation.”
Ensuring federal policies and programs are centered on pro-life rather than pro-abortion principles.
Eliminate the scandal-ridden Head Start program, long a shibboleth of big government proponents.
Bring the FBI under tighter accountability within its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Justice, and support a move by Congress to remove the current 10-year term for the Director of the FBI.
Secure our southern border, not only directly through policy and advocating for increased appropriations for border security, but also requiring U.S. Attorneys across the country to vigorously prosecute immigration-related offenses.
Reorganize and refocus the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
Add a citizenship question to the decennial census form.
Close all “Confucius Institutes” in the U.S., which have served to spread Chinese Communist Party propaganda throughout American universities.
Repeal the century-old “Jones Act” that has decimated U.S. shipbuilding but is a favorite of maritime-related unions.
It seems clear why Democrats and nominee Harris don’t like Project 2025, but why Trump’s statements disavowing it? Hard to say, especially insofar as many members of his first administration helped draft it.
It is, however, deeply disappointing that both major political parties in 2024 are at pains to distance themselves from a substance-laden policy document like Project 2025, and that neither presents any alternative of substance. Sadly, both major political parties appear to have concluded that their voters no longer will make decisions based on substance. In this, we have come a long way downward since the 1980s.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and is president of the National Rifle Association.