Image by The Now Times.
Ye shall know them by their fruits.
– Matthew 7:16-20
Though the book Project 2025 did not make the best sellers list this year, it should have, given its thousands of media mentions and importance to most Americans no matter who they voted for in the election. Perhaps it would be an apt Christmas gift to those wanting to know exactly what president-elect Donald Trump’s plans are—verbatim—for the next four years either to revolt against or champion them.
The Heritage Foundation’s long-planned (42 years ), conservative Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership, is like Machiavelli’s The Prince for a conservative president on how to govern this country like a dictator. It’s available not from Amazon or a neighborhood bookstore, but from its publisher (Heritage). Be forewarned, however, that it’s long (30 chapters, 922 pages ), yet free to download .
Soon after Trump was first sworn in as president, his Administration began to implement major parts of the 2016 edition. After his first year in office, the book’s publisher claims his “Administration had implemented 64 percent of its policy recommendations (page 885).” The remaining 36 percent lies dead ahead. That’s why the latest version is a “must-read” for ordinary Americans, especially concerning use of nuclear weaponry, according to TomDispatch writer Karen Greenberg .
To help those reluctant to slog through the book, but want to know its major thrusts, a brief, abridged version (with this writer’s comments) follows below the line. They’re taken from the Foreword and three chapters perhaps the most crucial to ordinary Americans. Each contains their salient paragraphs. The authors are bent on making draconian changes—or outright eliminations—to three vital federal departments: Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Health and Human Resources.
The media has boiled down Project 2025’s main objectives affecting the public, but lacks the space to use direct quotes spelling them out. Those favored by its 32 authors are usually labeled “robust.” Those condemned are “woke.” The Merriam-Webster dictionary helpfully defines that pejorative as “politically liberal or progressive (as in
matters of racial and social justice) especially in a way that is considered [by conservatives] unreasonable or extreme.” It stems from the 1970s “Great Awakening” by what conservatives call the “radical chic” (1).
But first, a brief background about Project 2025 from Heritage founder and first board president, Edwin J. Feulner. In its closing page (887), he writes: “The vision for [the mandate] was that it would serve as a guidebook of specific policy recommendations for reducing the size and scope of the federal government and for ensuring that it stayed within its constitutional bounds. Positive plans for freeing the private sector from overblown government interference and regulation could, we believed, result in an explosion of entrepreneurial activity that would reassert America’s leading role in the world’s economy” (884).
This edition is the work of some 400 scholars and policy experts from across the conservative movement and is said to represent all their views, according to Heritage’s current president Kevin D. Roberts in the book’s Foreword. It’s built on the organization’s 1979 efforts by a team initially turning out “a 20-volume, 3,000-page governing handbook containing more than 2,000 conservative policies to reform the federal government.” The 2023 version, he says, contains “four broad fronts” deciding America’s future:
1. Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.
2. Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.
3. Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.
4. Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls “the Blessings of Liberty” (3).
Roberts lays out the conservatives’ perception of the nation’s failings in those four categories that need immediate correction by a president assuming total power: “Today, the American family is in crisis. Forty percent of all children are born to unmarried mothers, including more than 70 percent of black children…. Fatherlessness is one of the principal sources of American poverty, crime, mental illness, teen suicide, substance abuse, rejection of the church, and high school dropouts. So many of the problems government programs are designed to solve—but can’t—are ultimately problems created by the crisis of marriage and the family” (4).
Pornography should be “outlawed,” schools must “serve parents,” and the “noxious tenets of ‘critical race theory’ and ‘gender ideology’ should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country” (5). As for abortion, “Conservatives should ardently pursue …pro-life and pro-family policies….Alternative options to abortion, especially adoption, should receive federal and state support” (6).
In returning self-governance to the public by dismantling the current government’s civil service personnel, the 2025 project’s antidote involves “many executive tools a courageous conservative President can use to handcuff the bureaucracy, push Congress to return to its constitutional responsibility, restore power over Washington to the American people, bring the Administrative State to heel, and in the process defang and defund the woke culture warriors who have infiltrated every last institution in America. [This book] lays out how to use many of these tools including: how to fire supposedly “un-fireable” federal bureaucrats; how to shutter wasteful and corrupt bureaus and offices; how to muzzle woke propaganda at every level of government; how to restore the American people’s constitutional authority over the Administrative State; and how to save untold taxpayer dollars in the process” (9).
Where U.S. sovereignty and borders have suffered “global threats,” his concern is: “International organizations and agreements that erode our Constitution, rule of law, or popular sovereignty should not be reformed: They should be abandoned. Illegal immigration should be ended, not mitigated; the border sealed, not reprioritized. Economic engagement with China should be ended, not rethought. Our manufacturing and industrial base should be restored, not allowed to deteriorate further. Confucius Institutes, TikTok, and any other arm of Chinese propaganda and espionage should be outlawed, not merely monitored. Universities taking money from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) should lose their accreditation, charters, and eligibility for federal funds. The next conservative President should go beyond merely defending America’s energy interests, but go on offense, asserting them around the world. America’s vast reserves of oil and natural gas are not an environmental problem; they are the lifeblood of economic growth” (12-13).
For Americans to enjoy the blessings of liberty, Roberts believes: “This pursuit of the good life is found primarily in family—marriage, children, Thanksgiving dinners, and the like. Many find happiness through their work” (13). To keep those blessings alive, he says: “The next President should promote pro-growth economic policies that spur new
jobs and investment, higher wages, and productivity. Yes, that agenda should include overdue tax and regulatory reform, but it should go further and include antitrust enforcement against corporate monopolies. It should promote educational opportunities outside the woke-dominated system of public schools and universities, including trade schools, apprenticeship programs, and student-loan alternatives that fund students’ dreams instead of Marxist academics” (15-16).
Lindsey M. Burke , author of the chapter on terminating the federal Department of Education, is Heritage’s director for its Center of Education Policy (xv). Among her recommendations are: “Elementary and secondary education policy should follow the path outlined by Milton Friedman in 1955, wherein education is publicly funded, but education decisions are made by families. Ultimately, every parent should have the option to direct his or her child’s share of education funding through an education savings account (ESA), funded overwhelmingly by state and local taxpayers, which would empower parents to choose a set of education options that meet their child’s unique needs” (319).
She admits President Carter in 1979 pulled all the scattered federal education programs into one department to “reduce administrative costs and improve efficiency” (321). But now argues that: “Transferring most of the programs at the U.S. Department of Education to other agencies and eliminating duplicative and ineffective programs would yield significant taxpayer savings…more than $17 billion annually in various programs. Savings over a decade would be far more robust, as the revenue responsibility for many formula grant programs would be returned to the states” (358-60).
However, because those “other” agencies would have to cover the costs of absorbing those programs and personnel, it’s questionable how all that transferring would save taxpayer dollars. Not to mention public ire at trying to locate an education program buried within another department (Labor, Defense, Agriculture, et al.?). She suggests a new president must destroy the nation’s public school system, efforts begun by previous Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos .
To this end, Burke demands that: “The new Administration must take immediate steps to rescind the new requirements and lessen the federal restrictions on charter schools” (331). Ignored are abrupt charter closures, chiefly over failed finances or
mismanagement. More than 1 in 4 public charter schools have shut down within five years . Most recent was closure of the Acero chain ’s seven Chicago chartered schools (2,000 students, 250 staffers).
For all the complaints about federal control of public schools, Burke implies the states and local governments would do a better job: “Federal money is inevitably accompanied by rules and regulations that keep the influx of funds from having much, if any, impact on student outcomes. It raises the cost of education without raising student achievement. To the extent that federal taxpayer dollars are used to fund education programs, those funds should be block-granted to states without strings, eliminating the need for many federal and state bureaucrats. Eventually, policymaking and funding should take place at the state and local level, closest to the affected families” (320).
The gender controversy would be resolved, Burke believes, when a new president steps in to: “Work with Congress to amend Title IX to include due process requirements; define “sex” under Title IX to mean only biological sex recognized at birth; and strengthen protections for faith-based educational institutions, programs, and activities. On its first day in office, the next Administration should signal its intent to enter the rulemaking process to restore the Trump Administration’s Title IX regulation, with the additional insistence that “sex” is properly understood as a fixed biological fact ” (333-34).
The other major education controversy—student loans and payments—Burke tackles is with a presidential command for borrowers to pay off both interest and principal (353-54). Furthermore: “The new Administration must end the prior Administration’s abuse of the agency’s payment pause and Higher Education Act (HEA) loan forgiveness programs, including borrower defense to repayment, closed school discharge, and Public Service Loan Forgiveness. …[and] also take immediate steps to commence the rulemaking process to rescind or substantially modify the prior Administration’s HEA regulations. The federal government does not have the proper incentives to make sound lending decisions, so the new Administration should consider returning to a system in which private lenders, backed by government guarantees, would compete to offer student loans, including subsidized and unsubsidized, loans. This would allow for market prices and signals to influence educational borrowing, introducing consumer-driven accountability into higher education” (340).
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), though created in 1970 by conservative President Richard Nixon , is also targeted for extinction by Project 2025. Just how was exposed in a secret video of a recent speech by Russell Voight , Trump’s director of Office of Management and Budget. Said he: “We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.”
The chapter on its planned demise was written by Mandy M. Gunasekara , also in Trump’s previous administration as his EPA chief of staff. Her mission statement is: “The challenge of creating a conservative EPA will be to balance justified skepticism toward an agency that has long been amenable to being coopted by the Left for political ends against the need to implement the agency’s true function: protecting public health and the environment in cooperation with states. Further, the EPA needs to be realigned away from attempts to make it an all-powerful energy and land use policymaker and returned to its congressionally sanctioned role as environmental regulator” (417).
The method she recommends appears similar to immediately axing the federal Education Department piece by piece: transfer of most EPA offices to other departments or liquidation. Among those to be relocated are: International and Tribal Affairs, Children’s Health Protection, and Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization. Eliminations involve Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, Enforcement and Compliance Assistance, Public Engagement and Environmental Education, Emergency Management (421-22), Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (425), and Research and Development (437).
Gunasekara adds: “Reviewing the grants program to ensure that taxpayer funds go to organizations focused on tangible environmental improvements free from political affiliation. Resetting science advisory boards to expand opportunities for a diversity of scientific viewpoints free of potential conflicts of interest…. Develop a tiered-down approach to cut costs, reduce the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) positions, and eliminate duplicative programs. EPA should not conduct any ongoing or planned activity for which there is not clear and current congressional authorization, and it should communicate this shift in the President’s first budget request. . …Stop all grants to advocacy groups and review which potential federal investments will lead to tangible environmental improvements” (422).
Congress should: “Pause for review all contracts above $100,000 with a heavy focus on major external peer reviews an regulatory models. Call for the public to identify areas where EPA has inconsistently assessed risk, failed to use the best science, or participated in research misconduct. Eliminate the use of unauthorized regulatory inputs like the social cost of carbon, black box and proprietary models, and unrealistic climate scenarios, including those based on Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5” (436).
The Health and Human Services Department (HHS) probably would be the most-read chapter, in terms of America’s basic health needs matched with Heritage’s fiscally restrained dispensation of taxpayer dollars. Instead of naming a Secretary with an extensive professional medical background, Trump has singled out presidential rival Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. with none. Called “a far-right anti-vaccine zealot” by a progressive online newsletter , Kennedy’s appointment to a short list was announced by the president-elect with the chilling rally message of: “I’m going to let him go wild on health. I’m going let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on medicines….you can do anything. You just go ahead and enjoy yourself, Bobby.”
The HHS chapter’s author Roger Severino is a lawyer who served Trump as HHS director of Civil Rights from 2017-21. His mission statement for reforming this $1.6 trillion department is: “HHS must return to serving the health and well-being of all Americans at all stages of life instead of using social engineering that leaves us sicker, poorer, and more divided…. The federal government should focus reform on reducing burdens of regulatory compliance, unleashing innovation in health care delivery, ceasing interference in the daily lives of patients and providers, allowing alternative insurance coverage options, and returning control of health care dollars to patients making decisions with their providers about their health care treatments and services” (449-50).
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) section reflects conservative rage over its handling of the COVID pandemic, not Trump’s delayed and deliberate bungling: “COVID-19 exposed the CDC as perhaps the most incompetent and arrogant agency in the federal government. CDC continually misjudged COVID-19, from its lethality, transmissibility, and origins to treatments…. Congress should ensure that CDC’s legal authorities are clearly defined and limited to prevent a recurrence of any such arbitrary and vacillating exercise of power. The CDC should be split into two separate entities housing its two distinct functions. On the one hand, the CDC is now responsible for
collecting, synthesizing, and publishing epidemiological data from the individual states—a scientific data-gathering function. This information is crucial for medical and public health researchers around the country. On the other hand, the CDC is also responsible for making public health recommendations and policies—an inescapably political function”(452-53).
Heavy emphasis in this chapter is on opposing abortion. Severino writes: “The CDC should eliminate programs and projects that do not respect human life and conscience rights and that undermine family formation. It should ensure that it is not promoting abortion as health care. It should fund studies into the risks and complications of abortion and ensure that it corrects and does not promote misinformation regarding the comparative health and psychological benefits of childbirth…. Policymakers should end taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood and all other abortion providers and redirect funding to health centers that provide real health care for women. The bulk of federal funding for Planned Parenthood comes through the Medicaid program. HHS should take two actions to limit this funding: Issue guidance reemphasizing that states are free to defund Planned Parenthood in their state Medicaid plans. Propose rulemaking to interpret the Medicaid statute to disqualify providers of elective abortion from the Medicaid program” (454-55).
“Now that the Supreme Court has acknowledged that the Constitution contains no right to an abortion, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is ethically and legally obliged to revisit and withdraw its initial approval, which was premised on pregnancy being an “illness” and abortion being “therapeutically” effective at treating this “illness.” The FDA is statutorily charged with guaranteeing the safety and efficacy of drugs and therefore should withdraw [mifepristone, misoprostol] … proven to be dangerous to women and by definition fatally unsafe for unborn children. As an interim step, the FDA should immediately restore the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) by removing the in-person dispensing requirement to eliminate dangerous tele-abortion and abortion-by-mail” (458).
Then there’s the gender-intervention issue. Severino says: ““[The] National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been at the forefront in pushing junk gender science. Instead, it should fund studies into the short-term and long-term negative effects of cross- sex interventions, including “affirmation,” puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries, and the likelihood of desistence if young people are given counseling that does not include medical or social interventions” (462).
He follows this view under the Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) program with a mandate: “Utilize HMRE funding or grants to provide state-level high school education resources and curriculum on healthy marriages, sexual risk avoidance, and healthy relationships…. Additionally, the positive role of faith-based programs should be protected and prioritized so that these programs do not receive undue scrutiny or pressure to conform to nonreligious definitions of marriage and family as put forward by the recently enacted Respect for Marriage Act….HMRE program grants should be available to faith-based recipients who affirm that marriage is between not just any two adults, but one man and one unrelated woman” (479-81).
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) come under Severino’s cost-slashing scrutiny of previous $1.6 trillion taxpayer revenues. His advice to the new Trump administration on Medicare is that: “Critical reforms are still needed to strengthen and improve the program for the future. Specifically:
1. Make Medicare Advantage (MA) the default enrollment option.
2. Give beneficiaries direct control of how they spend Medicare dollars.
3. Remove burdensome policies that micromanage MA plans.
4. Replace the complex formula-based payment model with a competitive bidding model.
5. Reconfigure the current risk adjustment model.
6. Remove restrictions on key benefits and services, including those related to prescription drugs, hospice care, and medical savings account plans” (465).
“Additionally, regulations should advance site neutrality by eliminating the inpatient-only list and expanding the ambulatory surgical center covered procedures list. Medicare generally pays more for inpatient hospital procedures and less for the same procedures performed in an outpatient setting. Whether a medical service is delivered in a physician’s office, a clinic, or a hospital setting, the Medicare payment for that service should be the same” (464).
As for Medicaid, he points out: “As [its] enrollment continues to climb, it is imperative that there are appropriate and accurate eligibility standards to ensure that the program remains focused on serving those who are in need. To this end, CMS should: Hold states accountable for improper eligibility determinations. Require more robust eligibility determinations. Strengthen asset test determinations within Medicaid” (467).
Too, “CMS should launch a robust “personal option” to allow families to use Medicaid dollars to secure coverage outside of the Medicaid program. CMS should also: Clarify that states have the ability to adopt work incentives for able-bodied individuals …and the ability to broaden the application of targeted premiums and cost sharing to higher-income enrollees. Add targeted time limits or lifetime caps on benefits to disincentivize permanent dependence” (468).
One program designed to augment financial support for fatherless families is in Human Services. Serverino explains how it would work: “Each state should be induced to implement a high-tech, easy-to-use application to centralize child support payments. As with Venmo or Cash App, nonresident parents would link their bank accounts and provide one-click monthly payments (or contribute incrementally throughout the month while tracking how much is due). Additionally, the nonresident parents could track “informal” gifts from money, groceries, clothes, sports gear, and more through the app” (479).
Yet he wields a snickersnee against the 70-year-old Head Start pre-school that has served some 38 million disadvantaged youngsters—1 million per year. His defense is: “With a budget of more than $11 billion, the program should function to protect and educate minors….Research has demonstrated that federal Head Start centers…have little or no long-term academic value for children. Given its unaddressed crisis of rampant abuse and lack of positive outcomes, this program should be eliminated along with the entire Office of Head Start”….Instead of providing universal day care, [federal] funding should go to parents either to offset the cost of staying home with a child or to pay for familial, in-home childcare” (482, 486).
Twenty other chapters devoted to upending federal departments remain in Project 2025, portending a nickel-squeezing government for the next four years under Trump’s new administration. Yet it’s heartening after the 2024 election for former Heritage president Edwin J. Feulner to remind readers that: “In Washington, there are no permanent victories. But neither are there permanent defeats. Rather, there are permanent battles throughout the policy arena. The other side is never standing still. While we may achieve tremendous successes under conservative leaders, the Left is always working to chip away at them, which is why we must constantly be prepared for the next fight…. We do this not to expand government, grow its largesse for some special interest, or centralize more control in Washington. Instead, we do this to build an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish for all…. our next mission is just beginning” (887).
