Foreward – A Promise to America

Project 2025 link: FOREWARD – A PROMISE TO AMERICA.

This section was written by Kevin D. Roberts, PhD, current president of The Heritage Foundation, (the organization which spent $22 million dollars creating Project 2025), former CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation and former president of Wyoming Catholic College. He’s as “elite-y” as it gets, so we find his jabs at other “elites” hilarious!

The 4 stated goals of the plan

  1. Restore the Patriarchy: “Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.”
  2. Small Government: (Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green has just admitted that the GOP is incompetent at running “Big Government) “Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.”
  3. Isolationism: “Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.”
  4. Christian Nationalism values: “Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls ‘“’the Blessings of Liberty.’” “Christian Nationalism Is ‘Single Biggest Threat’ to America’s Religious Freedom“

The main contradictions of the plan

  • “The authors of “The Conservative Promise” claim to support equality, while advocating for dismantling the government agencies that enforce laws ensuring equality, such as Title VII and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. 
  • They claim to support freedom and liberty, while advocating for a total ban on abortion, rolling back the rights of LGBTQ people and closing the border.
  • They claim to support free speech, while advocating for banning any mention of “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” from schools and other societal institutions. States are already proposing legislation to criminalize librarians and teachers.
  • They claim to support the working class, while calling for tax cuts for the rich, elimination of labor protections, destruction of unions and deregulation of big business and the oil industry.” Environmental justice – addressing the health disparities of the working class who live in more polluted areas, will no longer be a consideration. Education, the major tool for advancement for the children of the working class, will be made more difficult to obtain in the K-12 years and of lower quality in school districts starved of funding by universal vouchers-perks for the wealthy.
  1. Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.
    • (Pg. 4) Elevate traditional marriage: “Eliminating marriage penalties in federal welfare programs and the tax code and installing work requirements for food stamps.”
    • Elevate patriarchal structure: Elevate family authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority.
    • Privilege Christian organizations above others: Protect tax-exempt status of churches, charities and Christian schools and clubs.
    • Erase LGBTQ and minorities issues: “…delet[e] the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion — (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.“
    • (Pg. 5) Criminalize transgender issues:
      • Transgender issues are pornography and have no First Amendment protection and should be outlawed and those who “produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.
      • Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders.
      • And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”
    • Kill public education:
      • Voucher madness: Elevate”Parental rights above all in education,” and promote universal school choice [this accelerates the GOP’s goal of killing off public education.]
      • Defunding: Cut off federal funding from all dissenters – including states, cities and counties, school boards, union bosses, principals, and teachers. (Trump has already threatened to cut federal funding to public schools that require vaccination mandates or mask mandates – his peeps say now it’s just for COVID, but the evangelicals and anti-vaxxers will press for more.)
      • Recreate lessons in their image: “The noxious tenets of “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country.…For public institutions to use taxpayer dollars to declare the superiority or inferiority of certain races, sexes, and religions is a violation of the Constitution and civil rights law and cannot be tolerated by any government anywhere in the country.”
        • GOP operative Christopher Ruffo deliberately mis-defined CRT as divisive discourse that pits people of color against white people – which makes it easy to spot people who’ve never looked it up.
          • It’s actually a 40-year-old college-level academic course with the core idea that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.
          • One of the most visible manifestations is the existence of “redlining.”
          • The Heritage Foundation “recently attributed a whole host of issues to CRT, including the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, LGBTQ clubs in schools, diversity training in federal agencies and organizations, California’s recent ethnic studies model curriculum, the free-speech debate on college campuses, and alternatives to exclusionary discipline—such as the Promise program in Broward County, Fla., that some parents blame for the Parkland school shootings.” This is nonsense.
          • Here’s a great resource on it! “The Color of Law – A forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America”
      • Where do parental rights end?: “Allowing parents or physicians to “reassign” the sex of a minor is child abuse and must end.” Ok, so right there.
    • (Pg. 6) Control women’s bodies: Following the defeat of Roe v. Wade, these ardent forced-birthers will expect that “the next conservative President should work with Congress to enact the most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support while deploying existing federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously complying with statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion (Comstock)….while “recognizing the many women who find themselves in immensely difficult and often tragic situations and the heroism of every choice to become a mother.” Too bad if their “choice” is to opt out!
  2. Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.
    • ” (Pg. 7) This is revisionist Originalism: “…reduce its size and scope back to something resembling the original constitutional intent.” Would they actually do this? No. The Heritage Foundation recommends reshaping federal agencies, reducing their independence, and the allocation of more power to the president. Their policy recommendations reinvent modern conservative priorities, favoring a strategy that aims to shrink the government by expanding the executive. It autocratically concentrates presidential powers while dismantling traditional checks and balances.
    • Reordering the budget process: Lots of sad talk about the huge scope of budget process. However, we know that the sheer size of these bills allows them to sneak in partisan policy mandates – such as prohibitions on drag queen shoes, restriction on mail-order abortion medication, removal of CRT discussions from federal agencies, etc.. And who could forget the $90 BILLION tax cut they snuck into COVID relief legislation to “reward ultra-rich beneficiaries” like “Trump’s family.” The larger the better to hide their grift!
    • (Pg. 8) These agencies, who actually do stuff, make them sad too:
      • The Environmental Protection Agency “strangles domestic energy production through difficult-to-understand rulemaking processes.” Surely, regular Americans can protect their own land, water, and air against the predations of multi-national multi-billion dollar corporations without the aid of restrictive regulations! Project 2025 includes the repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act, the roll-back of Biden’s climate corps, and stopping America’s pending transition to clean energy.
      • The Department of Homeland Security allows immigrants to “illegally enter the country.”
      • The Department of Education “inject[s] racist, anti-American, ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms;”
      • The Department of Justice forces school districts to allow trangender students to exist humanely, peeing and playing sports like regular Christian kids.
      • The Pentagon forces troops to understand “white privilege”
      • The State Department gets all woke about U.S. foreign aid programs with “intersectionality” and abortion.
    • Remove merit-based civil service: All departments are to be filled with Schedule F political lickspittles.
      • It has started!: Project 2025 is already hiring to replace our non-partisan, merit-based civil service with a black hole of partisan fanatics, reinventing the federal workforce as a loyal extension of the executive branch. Replacing the core of our federal bureaucracy beholden to the constitution with like-minded, radical right-wing individuals eager to approve a presidential request at any moment’s notice would make successful, expertise-driven civil service government a thing of the past.
      • Banana Republic Vibes: “Discrediting public faith in the competence and honesty of federal employees is a powerful tool of conservatives,” says Landon Storrs, Ph.D., a historian at the University of Iowa and author of “The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left.” Project 2025 is merely the most recent vehicle conservatives have used to accomplish their anti-statist doctrine.” Trump already embarrassed us by hiring his unqualified kids, like any 3rd world dictator would do.
      • NO GUARDRAILS!: Schedule F would delete virtually all safety stops for an effective, accountable Republican administration and destroy years of experience in the federal workforce. Legislation to protect a non-partisan workforce didn’t pass the Senate. Biden’s strengthening of rules would only slow Trump down, if he consented to follow the rules. This removes the guardrails of precedence and law from an authoritarian/fascist president, along with institutional knowledge and continuity.
      • What will happen – Part 1 – Dysfunction: Transitions will be chaotic, as new secretaries must wait for Senate confirmation. Meanwhile, the government continues to run because senior staff positions are NOT appointed, and thus carry over from one administration to the next. If appointed positions reach more deeply into the chain of command, it will mean that the agency has even less ability to function during transition from one Presidential administration to the next. We would have to wait for a person to be nominated and confirmed to Secretary, and then for that person to appoint their team, who then need to be briefed. In the context of DHS, this added delay could be devastating, as key threats to our nation’s safety could be missed due to lack of clear leadership.
      • What will happen – Part 2 – Placement of “Actings”: (p.136) Ken Cucinelli, himself a former acting director at DHS, advised appointing “Actings,” to avoid delays from confirmation. We got a preview of “Acting Secretary shenanigans under Trump (notably Chad Wolf) whose policies were later discarded as he lacked the authority to make policy, as he was not Senate confirmed. This created greater chaos, as policies rapidly were instituted and then overturned.
        • Creates uncertainty, chaos, delay, inefficiency, clogs the Court system as folks challenge directives from non-Senate confirmed leaders. Cucinelli seeks to avoid this by proposing (necessary) legislation which would cut career civil servants from lines of succession, leap-frogging instead to the next available political appointee.
        • Further, he envisions legislation which would grant Acting Secretary the authority to finalize decisions, obviating the Chad Wolf problem. Such moves would indeed require legislation (at least), as the requirements of Senate confirmation are in the Constitution, and civil service rules have deep roots in federal legislation. Query whether it is worth dignifying these ideas with discussion, the mere discussion of them as possibilities moves the Overton Window.
  3. “Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.”
    • Threats identified:
      • (Pg. 10) Corporations who profess “woke” values: “Those who run our so-called American corporations have bent to the will of the woke agenda and care more for their foreign investors and organizations than their American workers and customers.” Actually, the “not-caring” for their American workers and customers is why we have the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and unions, both items Project 2025 wants to eliminate.
      • People who shower in the morning: This essay disses “elites” (GOP code for “socialists,” “communists” and “woke”) and reminds us that under the Constitution, all these reprehensible creatures “… are the mere equals of the workers who shower after work instead of before.”
        • Seriously!: This is hilarious, as the GOP hates unions, filled as they are with sweaty, pay-raise-demanding, after-work shower-taking workers who may not have gone to nice colleges or have Phd’s behind their name like the author of this nonsense. We’d bet $5 that Dr. Roberts, Phd normally showers in the morning. 
      • “Open borders”: A. Since we don’t have open borders, and B. since the GOP has actively interfered with Biden’s original plans for improvements, we can mark ourselve “safe” from this section. However, this sentence made us think he was alluding to Trump’s golf club employees – “Indeed, the only direct impact of open borders on pro-open borders elites is that the constant flow of illegal immigration suppresses the wages of their housekeepers, landscapers, and busboys.”
      • “Environmental Extremism”: The increasing costs of global warming, great enough to destabilize the insurance industry, eliminates any need to parse Dr. Robert’s climate-change denialism.
      • (Pg. 12)”China, China, China!”: Dr. Roberts does his very best to demonize China as our enemy. However, the American Chamber of Commerce (a very conservative supporter of the GOP) released its latest business climate survey – 19% of member companies surveyed in 2023 said their earnings margins, before interest and taxes, were higher in China than they were globally. None of our oligarchs in favor of installing Project 2025 are leaving China. Cutting off Tiktok is just a distraction.
      • “Millions of jobs”: “America’s vast reserves of oil and natural gas are not an environmental problem; they are the lifeblood of economic growth….unleashing domestic energy production would create millions of [jobs]. Dr. Roberts is lying. “The oil and gas industry routinely claims that it employs millions of Americans as a way to perpetually delay action on climate change. New research shows it’s a total lie.“
      • “Higher wages”: He employs some magical thinking regarding this unleashing of fossil fuels: “It’s not just about higher wages for workers who didn’t go to college, though they would receive the raises they have missed out on for two generations.” Hmmm…oil has been flowing at full blast for the last two generations – why did workers miss out? Maybe because the GOP has refused to raise minimum wages, has actively tried to destroy unions, and corporations are generally recirculating their profits into CEO salaries and stock buybacks.
      • Dangerous regimes? Trump’s biggest supporters?: “energy dominance would…rebalance power away from dangerous regimes in Russia and the Middle East.”
        • The Energy Information Administration’s latest report shows “The U.S. power grid nearly doubles in capacity from 2022 to 2050 to meet increasing demand for electric power, and most newly built capacity will be from renewable energy technologies, according to most cases in our Annual Energy Outlook 2023 (AEO2023). Declining capital costs for solar panels, wind turbines, and battery storage, as well as government subsidies such as those included in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), result in renewables becoming increasingly cost effective compared with the alternatives when building new power capacity. Economic growth, paired with rising electrification in end-use sectors, results in stable growth in U.S. electric power demand through 2050.” Unless Project 2025 screws it up.
  4. “Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls ‘the Blessings of Liberty.’”