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What is Project 2025?
On Tuesday, President Biden tweeted three words: “Google Project 2025.” Google Trends saw search interest surpass even Taylor Swift this week.
Unfortunately for the Biden campaign, searching for the term first brings up the project’s glossy homepage, complete with fireworks and flags and rousing language. So what exactly is Project 2025?
In short, it’s a playbook for how to drastically reshape the federal government if the Republicans win power. Technically, it comes from the Heritage Foundation, not the GOP presidential campaign, allowing Trump to claim he knows no more than your average confused Googler. “Don’t fall for it,” Catharina Rampell writes. Project 2025 and the MAGA machine are inextricably linked, with hundreds of Trump officials participating in the planning.
The planning of what? Let’s see:
- Project 2025 would drastically cut Medicaid funding and take abortion drugs off the market.
- It would shut down LGBTQ+ health programs, have the government declare that heterosexual couples are the superior family structure, and ban the term “sexual orientation” from federal law.
- It would end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows “dreamers” to remain in the United States, and would also lower legal immigration limits.
- This would place the FBI under the direct authority of the president and abolish the Department of Education.
- It would stop the expansion of the electricity grid for wind and solar energy.
- This would make pornography illegal and its makers would be imprisoned.
- This would officially recognize the Sabbath and enshrine Judeo-Christian values throughout the government.
- And it describes how the president could purge nonpartisan officials and appoint loyal politicians who could accomplish all this.
But don’t worry: Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, has promised that this revolution will be “bloodless” if the left accepts it.
It is no wonder that the Editorial Board writes that Trump wants the official GOP platform to be “as anonymous and vague as possible.” But his intentions are anything but that.
Catherine concedes that Trump may be unaware of some of the details of Project 2025—“few would mistake him for a policy nerd.” Even if he were, that’s just as dangerous; Trump delegated key decisions to his subordinates last time around and would do so again.
The underlings who write Project 2025.
Hunter: President Biden says he will do everything he can to prevent any of this from happening. Alexandra Petri asks: Would we accept the same from a pilot landing our plane?
From political strategists Celinda Lake And Justin Zorns op-ed about the crisis of trust in government. The piece is filled with statistics about how distrust among Americans is not only growing but also diverging, with Republicans investing their limited remaining stakes in very different institutions than those favored by Democrats.
But here’s what you need to remember most of all: it can be better.
Lake and Zorn point out that “Republicans have a strategic advantage in an era of distrust,” with individual-oriented skepticism at the heart of the conservative message. That doesn’t mean Democrats can’t adapt to the political culture, however.
The authors outline a plan of action to do just that – for example, “working to redefine voting and political participation as not just civic duties but also as ways to challenge the power of lobbyists or transform entrenched systems.”
Hunter: Mat Bai offers some tips on how Biden should run if he really wants to stay in the race: no more “bridge” presidency; he needs to be a baby boomer who steps off the race’s exit ramp.
More politics
Robert Hur earns his reputation back.
Hurrah, Chuck Lane reminds us in a column that he was the special counsel who prepared a report on Biden’s retention of classified documents after he left the vice presidency in 2017. That report also commented extensively on the current president’s memory problems, which are related to his age.
At the time, Hur’s work was criticized by many observers, with the writers of Post Opinions calling it variously a “grave insult” and a “political massacre.”
Or was it simply “an honest report from an objective outsider” (albeit a bit too thick)? So says Chuck, who adds that “if Democrats had not met Hur’s report with such a barrage of denial, but had treated it as a warning, they might not be in such a difficult position today.”
Smartest, fastest
- Robert Wright coined the term “progressive realism”, now adopted – and slightly updated – by Britain’s new Foreign Secretary. But what does progressive realism actually mean?
- Jason Rezaian continues his Tastes Like Home series with a visit to a restaurant ready to reintroduce Balkan eaters to the world, with burek as the first course.
- Netflix lured us from the mall to the bank. Marc Visser looks at the streamer’s new physical projects and asks: Can it tempt us back?
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s… The Bye-Ku.
Do you have your own news haiku? Send it to me by emailalong with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
