Project 2025
Project 2025 has become the monster in the closet. Yeah, it’s bad, real bad, but without getting eyes on it, without understanding what it’s made of, it’s nebulous, which loses attention over time.
Mendi and I were asked to speak on Project 2025, and to get ready, we read the whole thing (well, Mendi read the whole thing, I skimmed it) and what stood out to us was there were so many items that would have real impact on people that we hadn’t seen discussed. As we assembled our presentation, we decided to focus in on those elements, the things that would impact someone in the crowd, someone they know and love, or friends in other places. By connecting into the small elements, it makes the monster in the closet very real. And when it’s real, you will show up to fight it. You will DO SOMETHING.
We presented on Saturday and yeah, it seemed to resonate with the room. So I’m going to duplicate the deck below, and at the end will post a link to the pdf of the whole thing.
I’m a big believe in getting to the source for info. So if you want the Project 2025 playbook, you go to the site Heritage Foundation set up and either read it online or download the whole pdf.
This isn’t the first time Heritage has written a Mandate for Leadership. The first one was in 1980 for Ronald Regan.
This isn’t Donald Trump’s Project 2025. This is the conservative movement’s Project 2025. These organizations have been trying to jerk this country further and further right, using their interpretation of Christianity to use faith as a weapon. Trump has been their vehicle. He’s willing to use them to gain and hold power, as it benefits him. They are willing to back him as he gives them the ability to force their worldview on all of us. Even if Trump wasn’t here, Project 2025 would be.
The groups behind Project 2025 are a who’s who of the groups trying to impose religion on this country via government for 40 years, including the Texas Public Policy Foundation, who has Tim Dunn as their Vice Chairman of the Board, and where Kevin Roberts served as CEO prior to joining Heritage. And Heritage is the center of all of this.
The book is set up in 5 sections that touch on every aspect of the government, with intent to permanently change how the government operates, to ensure it always gives them exactly what they want and excludes anyone against them.
This is the disclaimer. We know there will be many things about Project 2025 we don’t touch on. We know there are many more bad things. We are giving page numbers to all of what we call out, so that you can dive into the playbook and see for yourself. And when you are in there, hopefully you read other pages. And when you get fired up, you go do something. Share it with others. Talk about it. Make sure people know they want to tear down democracy.
As we move through the various proposals in the playbook, we’ve included various quotes directly from Kevin Roberts in his intro Project 2025. They provide meaning insight into the intent, which is to completely remove influence and participation in government for anyone who doesn’t agree with them.
Roberts, Heritage, and their partners don’t want to have anything stand in the way of discriminating against and removing the rights from anyone they want to.
This one really hit folks. They want to lower the pay rate where a company is required to pay you overtime when you work more than 40 hours in a week. Meaning they want more jobs designated as “exempt” or salaried and not overtime eligible. That takes dollars right out of employees paychecks and straight into corporate ownership.
At the same time, they want to take the roles that are still overtime eligible and extend the period you calculate it over. So instead of getting paid for 50 hours in a week with 40 straight time and 10 at time and a half, followed by a week with 30 hours worked, they want it to be OT after 80 hours, so that week with 50 and the week with 30, NOT ONE hour would be paid at time and a half.
This is some of the most insane projection I have ever seen. I mean seriously.
Who benefits from Head Start? Parents who both have to work. Remove Head Start and someone is staying home to take care of kids.
But no free rides for SNAP benefits.
We can’t have veterans getting disability benefits and milking off the system due to things that likely happened while they were serving their country, so let’s cover less things.
And yeah, farmers have it too good, so we should pretend they don’t have years where they lose money on price of good and the revenue they can get on their products and not cover that on their crop insurance, but we should also not subsidize that same crop insurance.
We can’t forget those awful public transportation projects who help those who can’t afford personal vehicles to get to work and attempt to raise their station in life, or feed their kids, or keep a roof over their heads.
Lower drug prices = bad
Being able to control your own body = bad
Forcing you to pick a Medicare plan that isn’t as effective (but makes private orgs more money) = good
Giving law enforcement the ability to force doctors to tell them who has received abortion care = good
It’s through the looking glass stuff.
They don’t want to make small changes to government. They intend to “[rip] out the trees - root and branch”.
Project 2025 wants to take this country back before Brown v Board of Education
Back before the Civil Rights Acts
Back before Obergefell
They’ve already knocked off Roe v Wade, and they aren’t done.
We believe in specifics. We believe in knowing what people intend. We believe in education. If you want to fight something, you must know what you are fighting. That’s why we highlighted specific sections of Project 2025, as they will impact real people you know. Getting away from just the term to something tangible, that can motivate people to pay attention, to get engaged, and get to the polls.
You’ve got to be able to See It first. You’ve got to be able to Name It, get specific about what it is. THEN you are ready to Fight It.
And when we fight, WE WIN!
Thanks for hanging with us. Please share this post, this deck, individual elements, any part that resonates with anyone you think it might help. We can only win when we do this together.
And, as promised, here is a link to the full deck as a standard pdf file.
See It. Name It. Fight It.