Opinion: Project 2025 policies are on the Nov. 5 ballot

By Steve Corbin

Professor Emeritus of Marketing, University of Northern Iowa

It’s becoming crystal clear the closer we get to the Nov. 5 presidential election, voters need to seriously check out the radical government reformation policies contained within Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Here’s why.

The right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation has written not one, not two, but nine `Mandate for Leadership’ documents for Republican presidential candidates with their first playbook published in 1981. The Heritage Foundation spent $22 million — serious money — to create Project 2025 for Donald Trump to implement.

Trump’s claim he knows nothing about Project 2025 is dubious. The Heritage Foundation’s web site notes Donald Trump “fully embraced” 64 percent of their 321 policy reform recommendations during his 2017-2021 presidency.

The Heritage Foundation compiled a database of Republicans the 2016-elected Trump could hire of which 66 served in his presidential administration. Five key Trump acolytes from that database included: Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education; Scott Pruitt, Environmental Protection Agency; Mick Mulvaney, White House Chief of Staff; Rick Perry, Secretary of Energy; and Jeff Sessions, Attorney General (New York Times, June 20, 2018).

Trump asked the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society to compile a list of 21 potential Supreme Court nominees. John Malcolm prepared the list for the Heritage Foundation and when Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to SCOTUS, Politico referred to Malcolm as “the man who picked the next Supreme Court justice” (Jan. 30, 2017).

In Heather Cox Richardson’s Sept. 7 blog, the Boston College History Professor revealed that on Sept. 5, Trump — at an event with Sean Hannity of Fox News — “embraced the key element of Project 2025 that calls for a dictatorial leader to take over the U.S. That document maintains that `personnel is policy’ and that the way to achieve all that the Christian nationalists want is to fire the nonpartisan civil servants currently in place and put their own people into office.”

Twenty-three videos have been prepared to coach future Trump administration appointees on how to implement Project 2025. Twenty-nine of the 36 video speakers worked for Trump or Vance (ProPublica, Aug. 10).

At least 140 people who worked in Trump’s 2017-2021 administration were involved in writing Project 2025 (CNN, July 11).

CBS News identified 270 of Project 2025′s policy proposals that matched Trump’s past political and current campaign rhetoric.

Heather Cox Richardson’s blog noted that on Sept. 7, Trump held a rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin, where he publicly embraced Project 2025′s promise to eliminate the Department of Education.

Evidence is replete the Heritage Foundation and the Trump-Vance GOP ticket are joined at the hip and, therefore, Project 2025′s extremist policies are implicitly on the Nov. 5 ballot.

Two-thirds (67.8 percent) of Americans are opposed to Project 2025′s extremist policy proposals (Newsweek, July 9). Likewise, none of former GOP presidents or vice-presidents has endorsed Trump.

Voters need to find out — on their own accord — what outlandish policies the Heritage Foundation wants Trump-Vance to implement. One highly credible and factual reporting news agency, The Fulcrum, has published over 30 op-eds devoted to analyzing Project 2025′s content; accessible — free — at: https://thefulcrum.us/tag/project-2025.

The Fulcrum op-ed writers who delve into the nitty-gritty details of Project 2025 policies are cross-partisan and are not associated with the Harris-Walz campaign.

Here’s a partial list of Project 2025 policy topics that have been thoroughly examined, individually, in The Fulcrum: Department of Education, Christian nationalism, Department of Defense, Federal Reserve, Department of Energy, Parents Bill of Rights, Department of Veteran Affairs, Education Savings Accounts, Department of Homeland Security, Voting Rights Act, Department of Labor, Christo-fascist manifesto, Department of Health and Human Services, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of State, Federal Communications Commission, Department of Justice and Schedule F (firing civil servants) threat to democracy.

Since Trump implemented 64 percent of Heritage Foundation’s 2017-2021 manifesto and knowing he’s not a policy wonk, odds are great — if elected to office — he will embrace Project 2025 — lock, stock and barrel. Remember, past actions are the best predictor of future behavior.

Let’s agree that the soul of America is democracy. On Nov. 5, will you embrace Project 2025′s extremist-oriented policies that threaten our form of government or support well-reasoned policies that protect and preserve our Constitutional rights?

Contact Steve Corbin at Steven.B.Corbin@gmail.com