Project 2025 is the libertarian conservative Heritage Foundation’s systematic governance plan for the next Republican president. The 920-page plan aims to implement the "unitary executive theory," which would give all of the power of the US government to the executive branch. This week, Derek and Julian break down the dystopic chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services, written by the anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ Catholic nationalist, Roger Severino.
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Okay, Derek, we started the year with our main feed overview episode on Project 2025.
It's a topic on which it's incredibly easy to escalate quickly into big picture, breathless alarm.
The sky is falling.
But I think breaking it down in more detail might be helpful for listeners who want to get more familiar with the practical implications.
So let's just recap quickly.
Project 2025 is the Libertarian Conservative Heritage Foundation's systematic governance plan for the next Republican president.
And it consists of four pillars, the first of which is a 900 plus page policy document that you've been doing the work of slogging through since around Halloween, fittingly, right?
Yeah, slogging is one word for it.
I also want to note that I was listening to the news this morning and I found it pretty funny, although not funny, that this document is set up to Put Trump into office, but that's only because he is the current GOP leader and they will accept anyone to become a conservative president to sign on and it's actually exemplified by the fact that Trump is
We're cruising right now to the GOP nomination.
There's all these pundits talking about, oh, Nikki Haley, this and that.
But the Koch brothers are funding Nikki Haley's campaign, and they are fully on board with Project 2025.
So behind the scenes, I'm going to guess there's a little bit more discord than the unified sort of gloss that we're looking at with this document.
But I can't remember exactly when I found out about it.
It probably was around Halloween.
But I was surprised by the breadth of the document.
And also not shocked that the right and Christian nationalists have solidified their relationship in such a manner, because that's what this document is.
As I told Jeff Charlotte when he joined our Made Fiend episode recently, it's like Voltron coming together.
He laughed at that and talked about how it is these disparate parts coming together.
Yeah.
And while it's spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, it features over 400 contributors and 80 organizations, all of which have signed on, including Koch Brother organizations.
And so while it would be impossible to state an exact Number of dark money, like the actual financial might, flowing through these super PACs.
I'm going to guess there is probably hundreds of millions, if not a billion dollars, being pumped into the 2024 election through all of the organizations and their tentacles associated with Project 2025.
And it all revolves around one idea.
That the next Republican president, which as I said is probably going to be Trump in terms of the nominee at least, would be granted the powers of the Unitary Executive Theory.
Now this is a long contested legal debate in conservative circles and basically it grants the executive branch full control of governance With all of the other branches there just to support that person.
And as we'll see on next week's bonus, that even includes the fourth estate, the media, which they want to, meaning the Republican administration, control as much as possible.
Yeah, and that debate is so bizarre and fascinating and self-contradictory, right?
Because it's based on Article 2 of the Constitution.
You know, these people who claim to be such strong defenders of what the Founders originally intended.
are able to like quote chapter and verse from this one particular you know contested interpretation of a line in the constitution and yet the whole of the rest of the document and what the founders were really trying to do is about checks and balances and it's about not having a king.
This is about trying to figure out how to have a king essentially.
And it's, you know, it's the havocing who will rule in service of corporate interests that want to not have to deal with any business regulations, not have to deal with any environmental protections.
And then, you know, you layer in on top of that all of the conservative religious agenda.
So in addition to this document that you have been You know, sacrificing yourself to absorb.
There's the personnel database that they're building of candidates who will be completely loyal to the agenda of this radical reshaping of the entire government.
They also have an online institute designed to then train up those foot soldiers in the conservative revolution, which is a kind of Dismantling of bureaucracy by this very well-established bureaucracy, if you will.
And finally, the last of these four pillars to guide this whole process from day one,
or as they put it, 12 noon on January 20th, 2025, there's this 180 day playbook for how to implement
their plan. The 920 page document we referred to at the top is the most publicly available aspect
of project 2025 right now. And Anyone can go and download it right from their website.
So it's what we're mostly focusing on.
It's an incredibly combative, ideological, religious text that to my mind seeks to take the culture war caricature of a current America that is filled with soy boys and drag queens grooming children into being non-binary communist atheists who hate their country You know, who love open borders and see family as a form of oppression.
