Project 2025 Is Merely “Think Tank Stuff”? Not Really! – Slate

“Think tanks do think tank stuff. They come up with ideas, they say things. But our candidate for president is Donald Trump.” —Sen. Marco Rubio, when asked on CNN’s State of the Union about Trump’s association with Project 2025

In April 2023, a coalition of conservatives organized by the Heritage Foundation think tank released Project 2025, a nearly 900-page report laying out everything they hope Trump might do in a second term as president—and all together, it painted a chilling picture.

The report, titled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” calls for the next Republican president to “bring the Administrative State to heel” and conduct mass firings of government bureaucrats to consolidate his power. It demands that the government criminalize pornography, states that “the Dobbs decision is just the beginning” when it comes to rolling back reproductive rights, and calls for “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” to be banned from schools. “Every threat to family stability must be confronted,” the report says—including, apparently, gay marriage, any acknowledgment of racism, and the very existence of transgender people. While more than 400 conservative thinkers contributed to the report, the whole project was spearheaded by a former Trump administration official who, according to documents obtained by Politico, wants to make infusing Christian nationalism into the government a top priority.

Still, public outcry remained fairly restrained immediately following the report’s release. It received some news coverage but did not immediately touch mainstream awareness. I first heard of it only six months ago—not from a New York Times headline or prime-time CNN report, but from TikTok. And from the comments, it seemed fellow users were also hearing about it for the first time. Some believed it was too extreme to be real, while others tried desperately to inform their followers of its danger in barely 30 seconds of short-form video content.

After all, who besides the politically employed and nerdy have the time, interest, or energy to read a dictionary-sized playbook of extreme conservative ideology? And if it’s just the product of an innocent think tank—as Sen. Marco Rubio is now attempting to argue—why give it much attention?

Well, for one thing, think tanks exist, in part, to … drive political policy. The “Mandate” begins with an anecdote about how a similar Heritage Foundation–coordinated report ended up being a guiding document for the Reagan administration.

And, for another, the people behind the report are enmeshed in Trumpworld—a recent CNN report found that over 140 of his current and former employees have ties to Project 2025. Longtime Trump adviser Stephen Miller starred in an advertisement for Project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy, and later claimed he had “never been involved with Project 2025,” even though the group touts the academy as a key pillar of its strategy. Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s national campaign press secretary, makes an appearance in the same advertisement. Liberty University, a regular preaching venue for Trump-fanatic evangelical Christians, is a member of Project 2025’s advisory board. So is the Trump-endorsed Moms For Liberty organization, and Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA.

So, it’s not such a stretch to think that a potential second Trump administration will also be filled with people who subscribe to Project 2025’s agenda. The Associated Press called the coalition “essentially a government-in-waiting for the former president’s return.”

Last week, Trump also tried to distance himself from the blueprint for his hypothetical second term. “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform. (Funny that Trump has repeatedly praised Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts by name—seems like he knows who he is!) “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” Trump added. “Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

But Trump himself has repeatedly vowed (among many other things) to enforce mass deportation at the southern border, criminalize gender-affirming health care for transgender minors, and eliminate the Department of Education—all policy planks of Project 2025. And his own dictatorial aspirations line up with Project 2025’s vision of consolidating power in the presidency.

Sure, it makes sense that Trump would distance himself from Project 2025 while he’s trying to win his reelection campaign, especially while the Democratic Party sits in chaos after Biden’s disastrous debate performance on June 27. (The plan’s extreme stance on abortion, in particular, is probably giving Trump heartburn, since he’s been keeping his own intentionally vague.) But don’t be fooled by anyone—elected Republican senator or otherwise—trying to hand-wave Project 2025 away as some boring “think tank stuff.”