Justienna Tong-On
Associate Director of Heritage’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project, Spencer Chretien, converses with a young child at a Project 2025 information booth. Source: AP Politics
With November here, Democrats and Republicans have raced against time to muster votes and blinding support for their presidential candidates, both of which were operating and promoting their respective party platforms—the usual modus operandi. The only thing that separated this year’s presidential race from the past is that the very internal safety and security of the United States is on the line. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has faced scrutiny, criticism, and outcry from the public as leaks—stemming from earlier this year—revealed that his presidency has connections with American conservative think-tank, the Heritage Foundation, and consequently their ultra-conservative manifesto called “Project 2025.” While this may sound like any other agenda policy, its contents and visions are a terrifying flashback to conditions last seen in the early 1900s. The masterminds and followers of such a scripture are nothing short of right-wing extremists who have a history of threatening national sovereignty. Allowing Trump to win the nation’s highest office has opened their door to rewriting reality, posing the domestic security threat of the century. While Democrats can only draft counter-policies, it is up to citizens to stay informed and advocate against this threat.
To reiterate, the Mandate For Leadership: The Conservative Promise, better known as “Project 2025,” is an approximately 900-page ‘presidential transition project’ that details how a conservative president can reshape the United States into a right-wing nation. In other words, it is a manifesto filled with goals to attack and erode the very basis of democracy, vowing to strip away various rights and undo all the protections installed for Americans over the century. This policy wish list is exhaustive, as it demands: bans or the defunding of children’s educational programs such as Sesame Street and PBS Kids, elimination of the Department of Education and all federal educational standards that come with it, extreme restriction on reproductive rights and access to safe, sufficient medical care for women and transgender people—thus violating privacy and bodily autonomy—the discontinuation of environmental initiatives and minimization of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) power to regulate toxins, and a mass layoff of civil servants in favor of Republican loyalists. As Project 2025 calls to dismantle every current policy deemed “liberal” or “woke,” it is a giant leap backwards in the battle for progression and equality that an unsettling number of people support wholeheartedly.
While the content of Project 2025 does not pose a security threat to the United States in the sense that there is no foreign uprising or contamination, it is the believers of the Project—including the authors, contributors, and followers—that have the very real potential to be the menaces they describe. With such an extreme stance on conservatism, it is only natural that the Project’s supporters are extremists as well, and they are those who threaten the safety of Americans.
Conservative extremists consistently perform acts of violence throughout American history. Their protests are often unpeaceful, as seen with the storming of the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, in retaliation for election results. Such actions can be considered domestic terrorism, but they have avoided such labels miraculously. They also practice hate speech that should not be protected by the Constitution, such as Proud Boys marching with confederate flags and KKK symbolism or posting Tweets calling for the return of lynching African-Americans, maltreatment of women, normalization of brutality against Asian-Americans, and alienation of queer people. Such volatile individuals stir insecurity and a sense of precariousness in American society, allowing injustice and disorder to erupt stateside. No amount of foreign enemies can shake a nation if the nation is crumbling from within already.
By planting a president such as Trump—who has direct ties to Project 2025 and its follower base—into office, it is a guarantee that its agenda will be expeditiously implemented, and these extremists will run free under the notion that their behavior has presidential commendation. Despite Trump and various conservative news outlets such as Fox News condemning and denying his connection to it, that is simply false. At least 140 people from his administration played a hand, and leaked footage of Project 2025’s training initiative for prospective political appointees, the ‘Presidential Administration Academy,’ revealed that 29 of 36 speakers were Trump administration officials. The Heritage Foundation head, Kevin Roberts, has even admitted to discussing their work with Trump himself. As pointed out by political scientists like Dr. Delton Daigle, an associate professor at George Mason University concentrating on research and political psychology, partisan news outlets “systematically make claims that they are more accurate than they really are.”
Trump is no exception, as he habitually lies, pulling statistics out of thin air during debates, falsifying claims against individuals, and denying financial transparency, federal convictions, and assault allegations. His actions are unbecoming of a presidential candidate and only stand to encourage further instability brought on by followers of Project 2025, as he takes security extremely lightly. When claiming, “Get out and vote just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years it will be fixed,” it is uncertain if he was hinting at turning the government into an autocracy. Such obscurity leaves room for dangerous right-wing extremists to thrive and weaken national security as they see their dream candidate make no move to stop their violence, being the same candidate who encouraged the January 6th Capitol insurrection.
The creation of this Project alone is the start of a dangerous and dark path that a horrifyingly large number of Americans do not realize. Having it successfully executed would endanger democracy and allow riots and bigotry-driven violence to rampage. Its policy shift to construct a conservative America would have devastating domestic and societal impacts, erasing centuries of work to make the nation safer and equal, as it projects the dissolution of individual autonomy. These threats are the most dangerous to national security as they emerge from within and are threats people cannot physically see. It is up to citizens to continue fighting—whether lobbying or advocating—as they face this risk for what it is as the beginning of the end of American liberty, justice, and freedom for all.
Opmerkingen