Mercedes Schneider: Project 2025: Politicking for Jesus.
Teacher and scholar Mercedes Schneider takes a look at Project 2025. Reposted with permission.
Project 2025 identifies itself as “The Presidential Transition Project,” further described as “an agenda prepared by and for conservatives who will be ready on Day One of the next Administration to save our country”:
The Heritage Foundation is once again facilitating this work, but as our dozens of partners and hundreds of authors will attest, this book is the work of the entire conservative movement.
The next conservative President will enter office on January 20, 2025, with a simple choice: greatness or failure. It will be a daunting test, but no more so than every other generation of Americans has faced and passed. The Conservative Promise represents the best effort of the conservative movement in 2023—and the next conservative President’s last opportunity to save our republic.
Though the 900+-page document is clearly meant for “the next conservative President,” former president and 2024 Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, has publicly attempted to distance himself from the far-right, Heritage-Foundation-steeped governing plan.
In the opening pages of the document, numerous contributors include in their bio sketches connection to the Trump administration. So there’s that.
But one issue that has my attention is that the July 17, 2024, Intercept reports that “Conservative Groups Are Quietly Scurrying Away from Project 2025”:
THE MORE PEOPLE learn about it, the more unpopular and politically toxic Project 2025 has proven to be. This has led the Trump and Vance campaign to attempt to distance itself from the effort. Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller now says he had “zero involvement with Project 2025,” despite appearing in a promotional video. And just today, The Intercept discovered two more conservative groups that have quietly bowed out from the controversial 900-page manifesto — including a national anti-abortion organization.
Miller’s group, America First Legal Foundation, was one of the first organizations to jump ship from the Project 2025 advisory board. Last week, America First Legal asked to be removed from the Project 2025 advisory board webpage. The organization was part of Project 2025 since at least June 2022, when the Heritage Foundation first announced the advisory board’s formation.
America First Legal staff were deeply involved in writing and editing the Project 2025 playbook. Its vice president and general counsel, Gene Hamilton, drafted an entire chapter about the Justice Department, which proposes launching a “campaign” to criminalize mailing abortion pills. In a footnote, Hamilton thanked “the staff at America First Legal Foundation,” who he wrote deserved “special mention for their assistance while juggling other responsibilities.” …
America First Legal did not respond to questions about why it asked to be removed from the Project 2025 advisory board despite its prior participation.
As of Tuesday afternoon, Americans United for Life, an anti-abortion group, and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Michigan think tank, were among the more than 100 groups listed on the Project 2025 website as part of its advisory board. By Wednesday, Americans United for Life and the Mackinac Center had vanished.
Both organizations were relatively recent additions to the Project 2025 coalition. The Heritage Foundation announced they had joined in February 2024, several months after the massive playbook was released.
Neither organization would elaborate as to why it had joined the Project 2025 board in the first place or why it was exiting it now.
The distancing of conservative groups from a plan that has clearly been brought into the public eye reminds me of the 2011 exposure of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) by the nonprofit watchdog, Common Cause, and subsequent corporate member exodus.
Seems like far-right conservatives have a history of not really wanting the public aware of those conservative plans and schemes.
It should come as no surprise that ALEC is a Project 2025 advisory board member:
Project 2025 is the conservative, American white Evangelical Christian plan for operating government. Below is a “note” from Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 director, Paul Dans:
Let me offer some excerpts. Not many, for it does not take much reading to realize that the Project 2025 overarching goal is to force all of America into a white Evangelical Christian mold.
A smidge from Heritage Foundation president, Kevin Roberts’, foreword:
Free the churches, imprison the librarians.
Roberts was in the news for stating that an “ongoing American Revolution” will “remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” According to The Hill, that comment caused “blowback” for Roberts and the Heritage Foundation.
None of Jesus’ ministry involved any political agenda, much less the government-driven denigration of “other” or the imposing of His will on any human being.
Yet here we are.
I’ve just been selecting chapters to see what “bloodless” changes Roberts et al. have in mind for remaking America into their preferred image.
Some excerpts from Project 2025 chapter 18, “Department of Labor and Related Agencies,” where one witnesses the priorities of both religion and employer rights:
With the “alternative view,” Project 2025 authors are trying to sort it out amongst themselves. However, what is clear is that the Project 2025 authors cannot seem to promote a day of rest separate from a religious “Sabbath.” Also obvious is that these authors value the freedom of the employer and do not want to limit a business’ rights– a theme in this chapter, and an expected one, given that the likes of corporation-biased ALEC is involved as an “advisor.”
Also in keeping with corporate preference, one must have limits to overtime pay because one must think of the economic burden for employers (but carefully construct such concern to make it appear that the worker is not getting slighted):
Regarding religious apprenticeships and allowing teens to work in more dangerous occupations, especially if there are worker shortages (again thinking of employers but framing as a positive for kids, who may prefer the danger):
Next, in the discussion to require the private sector to ditch a four-year-degree requirement, some dissention about overstepping– because we don’t want to hamper the employer. (Note no dissention about having teens in hazardous jobs so long as parents are on board.)
Next, Project 2025 wants an alternative to labor unions “whose politicking and adversarial approach appeals to few” (and an alternative to the alternative):
Somehow, the Heritage Foundation has discovered that “most” workers want some “more cooperative model.” How one actually achieves this without the leverage of collective bargaining is not explained, nor is it explained how the non-union “employee involvement organization” would not simply be some sham arm of management’s dictates.
The “alternative view” is basically, “looks like workers are fine and in control.” Too, “let’s pass legislation to set unions *free* from representing nonmembers.”
There’s a lot more about unions in this chapter. Lots of technical suggestions connected to current legislation.
As for immigration: “Phasedown” the H-2 visa program (temporary agricultural workers) because of undercutting American workers.
Keep in mind these are the same folks that a few pages prior suggested having teens work in dangerous jobs because of worker shortages. But let’s not really support the supposed American workers because we should replace those American workers with machines (??):
In short, we just don’t want *those people* in Our Country– even though the “surpassing 200,000 visas” occurred in 2019– during the administration of the last conservative president who happens the be the current Republican presidential nominee.
There is, however, this let’s-not-be-hasty-in-kneecapping-employers “alternative view”:
Here’s another more moderate “alternative view,” this one following a proposed mandate to “hire American”:
It seems like the “alternative view” is trying to be less radical in a document that offers plenty of fodder for pre-election, attention-grabbing negative press.
I have only offered the slightest examination of Project 2025. readers can see for themselves by choosing a chapter or even buying the book. The good news is that Project 2025 is smothered in media coverage. Take this July 17, 2024, Prospect article, “Needles in Project 2025’s Haystack” by Rick Perlstein, which includes some of what I discuss above but also more. For example,
There is impressive language on promoting “workplace accommodations for mothers”—except that’s under the heading “Pro-Life Measures,” and followed by advice on how the Labor Department can contribute to the cause of forced childbirth. (“ERISA does not preempt states’ power to restrict abortion, surrogacy, or other anti-life ‘benefits.’”) And when the most powerful federal tool for fighting workplace discrimination, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, is invoked, it’s mostly to affirm that it does not apply to “discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, sex characteristics, etc.” (“Etc.”: If you know, you know, I guess.)
Discrimination is singled out as a bad thing, to be sure. Heritage would just render it impossible to fight: “Direct DOJ and EEOC,” one recommendation reads, “to prohibit racial classifications … Eliminate disparate impact liability.” That means you would not be allowed to evaluate whether discrimination exists in a workplace by counting its employees by identity. To fight discrimination, naturally: “Crudely categorizing employees … fails to recognize the diversity of the American workforce.”
But one category does earn a special solidarity as the most oppressed people in the U.S. Their rights get affirmative action:
“Provide robust protections for religious employers … an executive order protecting religious employers and employees … make clear via executive order that religious employers are free to run their businesses according to their religious beliefs, general nondiscrimination laws notwithstanding … reasonable accommodations for an employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs …”
Let us be as clear as possible, because people do not say this enough: Once upon a time, racism was a sincerely held religious belief—by millions. Jerry Falwell, in a 1958 sermon, explained how God consigned the descendants of Noah’s son Ham forever to be cursed as “servants of servants.” “Ham was the progenitor of the African, or Ethiopian, or colored race … If Chief Warren and his associates had known God’s Word and had desired to do the Lord’s will, I am quite confident that the 1954 decision would never have been made.”
There’s so much in these 900 pages. Perlstein apologizes for possibly confusing readers in a previous article:
SOME READERS OF MY FIRST INSTALLMENT in this series got lost in my nuances. This time, I’ll supply less nuance. This will just be the stuff you should be shit-scared about. First off, a few more needles in the haystack—the hypodermic kind, oozing unregulated poison.
- They want to get rid of vehicle fuel efficiency standards, a major reason why cars made in the 1970s got under 20 miles to a gallon, but ones made now get over 40. The Heritage Foundation, in a detour to Alice’s Wonderland, says fuel efficiency has “negative consequences for air quality.”
- They blame the deadly, underregulation-driven failure of the nation’s only independent power grid, in Texas in 2021, on “pressure to use 100 percent renewables,” which somehow forces installation of power lines that can’t access electricity from any other source. The solution? Increase “diversity” by sticking to “coal, nuclear, and natural gas.”
- “Eliminate or Reform the Dietary Guidelines,” because those tables we used to read on the sides of cereal boxes when we were kids might become Trojan horses for “objectives unrelated to the nutritional and dietary well-being of Americans” such as “the health of the planet.”
- “Transition the Safer Choice program”—a voluntary perk allowing companies to slap a label on cleaning products indicating they meet EPA safe product standards—“to the private sector.” On the bright side: If industry chooses the standards, many more will volunteer to participate.
Politicking for Jesus sure makes for lots to condemn and control.
Educate yourself, America.