Everyone's talking about Project 2025. Here's what they're missing.
You don’t have to look very hard to find someone talking about Project 2025. Celebrities. Billboards and memes. And like all hot topics, Google trends is showing a significant uptick in searches. And while its most recent director stepped down this week, it would be a mistake to assume that a change in leadership has any impact on the strategy.
Project 2025 is in the news, and it’s easy to find out what’s in it.
The reason it’s so easy to find out what’s in this 900-page, Orwellian-sounding manifesto is that it’s public. You can buy it from the Heritage Foundation. Or if you search just a little bit harder, you can read it for free on Document Cloud.
With so much free and available information on Project 2025, what else is there to discuss, you ask?
I think there are three things missing from the conversation about Project 2025.
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The first thing
Project 2025 is a sequel. In fact, its full name is "Mandate for Leadership: Project 2025." It’s the ninth edition of the "Mandate for Leadership" series.
The first edition was published in January 1981, when it was called "Mandate for Leadership: Policy Management in a Conservative Administration." It was a guidebook for President Ronald Reagan, and he loved it so much, he gave it to his cabinet to use as a blueprint.
According to the Heritage Foundation, Reagan had implemented 60% of the "Mandate's" 2,000 ideas by the end of his first year. And thus, the Heritage Foundation proudly assumed the role of the Republican Party’s policy arm, providing new presidents with each new edition of "Mandate for Leadership," and a revision to Republican presidents in anticipation of their second terms. In fact, you can watch the video of the Heritage Foundation ceremoniously presenting the first two copies of the 2020 "Mandate" to Mark Meadows, Trump’s former Chief of Staff.
Over the years, the policy agenda has shifted, and the content of the "Mandates" has changed. In the first "Mandate," the focus was on restructuring the federal government, eroding the New Deal and containing the Soviet Union. It wasn’t as focused on social issues, marriage equality or reproductive health, and it didn’t have the vitriol of the most recent edition.
The second thing
But the first edition and every edition since have some common threads: Namely, tax cuts for the wealthy, and union-busting. And they have had many successes over the years.
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In fact, this well-funded strategy of The Heritage Foundation has been at the core of the systematic attacks against working people since 1981. NAFTA was a Heritage Foundation “victory,” as were state Right-to-Work laws, repealing state prevailing wage laws and impeding the National Labor Relations Board. In fact, the original "Mandate for Leadership" foreshadowed Reagan’s retaliation against air traffic controllers, and called for Right-to-Work legislation for students and journalists.
Make no mistake, the Heritage Foundation may move its policy spotlight to focus attention on whomever it’s popular to hate, but they never forget their core mission: increase the wealth of America’s 1% and hamstring the government from serving anyone else. "Anyone else," it seems, includes people on Social Security, people who use prescription drugs, workers, working families, kids in college, kids in apprenticeships, people with disabilities, small business owners, nurses, doctors, firefighters, teachers, police officers.
We are the anyone else, and they are not advocating for us.
The third thing
The third thing I think is missing from the conversation about Project 2025 is that it keeps being referred to as a "wish list."
It is not a wish list. Nobody at the Heritage Foundation is throwing pennies into a fountain or blowing on dandelions and hoping someone at the Trump White House sees a version of this.
We know this because it was the first Trump Administration’s agenda, too. (Scroll back up to that video of Mark Meadows.) In his first term, Trump embraced 64% of the "2016 Mandate for Leadership" — 64%. Nobody’s wishing with a 64% success rate. The now-former director and two of the associate directors of the current edition served in the Trump Administration. Several of Project 2025’s authors served in the first Trump Administration and at least two more spoke at the Republican National Convention this year. And while Trump may say he has "nothing to do" with Project 2025 — just wait until he finds out that his vice presidential candidate wrote the forward to a new book by Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation president and leader of Project 2025.
If we look at this document as the Trump platform, we see a clearly articulated vision of his second term. And that second term includes decertifying labor unions, ending project labor agreements, repealing prevailing wage, making it harder for workers to claim overtime, making it easier for companies to misclassify workers as independent contractors and terminating multi-employer pension plans.
And that’s just a small sample. If you read through the Heritage Foundation’s past recommendations, you will see the origin stories of Newt Gingrich’s "Contract with America," of George W. Bush’s "No Child Left Behind," of the fight to repeal Obamacare, and of the U.S. Supreme Court nominations made by Donald J. Trump.
Project 2025 is not a wish list. It is a checklist.
Jen McKernan is the communications director for the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters, and we may publish it online or in print.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Project 2025 is a sequel to the blueprint for Reagan’s war on unions
