Project 2025 Explained

WatchMojo

This project has gained plenty of steam - and notoriety - in the past few months. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’ll be taking a deep dive into the political story that has everybody talking: Project 2025.

Transcript

00:00Project 2025. It is a blueprint you've been reading up.

00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we'll be taking a deep dive into the political story that has

00:12everybody talking. Project 2025. What is it? Who's behind it? And should we be worried?

00:20We are in the process of the second American revolution,

00:23which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.

00:26Before we talk about what Project 2025 entails, we need to know who published it. That honor goes

00:33to the Heritage Foundation, a very influential conservative think tank in the United States.

00:38Heritage has been trying to guide U.S. policy via the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan's

00:44landslide election victory in 1980, publishing its first mandate for leadership, of which Project

00:512025 is part, in 1981. Several people who were part of Trump's administration, part of his

00:57campaign in 2016 and 2020, who have shifted over and played a role in Project 2025.

01:04As the year would suggest, the Project 2025 mandate is a massive document full of policy

01:10and governmental proposals outlining what initiatives an incoming Republican government

01:16should take, in Heritage's view, if the party wins the 2024 election.

01:21It's a blueprint for a radical far-right takeover of everything in the U.S. government.

01:25The entire idea for 2025 began back in 2022, ahead of the next election campaign. But if a

01:32mandate for leadership has been published by Heritage every election cycle for over 40 years,

01:38what's so special about this iteration? Well, to put it bluntly, Project 2025 lays out some

01:44unprecedented changes to the American government, akin to rebuilding it from the inside out.

01:502025 would roll back our fundamental freedoms, undermine our democracy, and gut checks and

01:56balances. It started making headlines in July 2024, though some outlets were reporting on it

02:02in June, only a few months before the election and during a turbulent time for both campaigns,

02:08with an assassination attempt on Trump and Biden pulling out of the race in the same month.

02:13Project 2025 is designed as a government-in-waiting if Trump or any conservative president returns to

02:20office. The thing that initially started attracting attention to this year's mandate was its language,

02:25frequently using terms like woke and radical, and suggesting that the U.S. government has been

02:30infiltrated by liberal ideas at the top level. This feeds into the ongoing culture war debates,

02:36which are affecting the entire world as well as the U.S., but it suggests extreme measures to

02:42tackle social issues. Of the other controversial positions in this document, banning abortion drugs

02:47by male, barring transgender people from military service. This includes the increasing criminalization

02:53of some forms of contraception and abortion, getting rid of Medicare, mass deportations,

02:58no longer protecting LGBTQ plus people from discrimination, abolishing affirmative action,

03:04and making adult films, videos, and other X-rated material illegal. Proposals include higher taxes

03:10on lower income Americans, increased student loan payments, and major cuts to Medicaid. It also wants

03:18to roll back measures to limit climate change, going as far as to advocate for the abolition of

03:23NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for weather

03:28forecasts and ocean exploration. If you earn $400,000 a year, you would get a tax cut of about

03:35$14,000. Despite the project basing itself largely on the belief that Trump will be re-elected in 2024,

03:42and he is now the Republican nominee, since this has come out, Trump himself has disavowed it,

03:48writing online that he has, quote, no idea who is behind it, and that, quote, I disagree with

03:54some of the things they're saying, and some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous

04:00and abysmal. However, media outlets have claimed that between half to two-thirds of the authors and

04:06editors are former Trump administration officials, and as a group of hackers discovered when they

04:11broke into the Heritage Foundation on July 10th, many of the people funding the Heritage Foundation

04:17had senior jobs under Trump during his administration. The disavowal is also despite

04:22Heritage itself alleging that much of its 2015 mandate guided Trump's policymaking throughout

04:28his four years in office. Project 2025 was created by some of Donald Trump's most important advisors

04:35as a blueprint for what he could do if he gets back into the White House again. And this is

04:41despite Heritage itself alleging that much of its 2015 mandate guided Trump's policymaking throughout

04:47his four years in office. But while culture wars and social issues remain hotly debated throughout

04:53America, there are other parts of 2025 that have been derided not only by Trump, but by many senior

04:59politicians in both parties. These include the total abolition of the Department for Education

05:04and defunding the Department of Justice. The playbook also outlines a plan to bring many

05:09federal agencies, like the Department of Justice, under more direct presidential control. This latter

05:15policy perpetuates the idea that the 2020 election was unlawful and rigged against Trump. The same

05:21sentiment that led to the January 6th insurrection in 2021. People have also expressed concern about

05:28the way Project 2025 wants to restructure the FBI, making the FBI director personally accountable to

05:35the president. Many have said that this is an attempt to bring the FBI under the total control

05:40of the president, with other parts of Project 2025 also serving to bolster the president's position.

05:47The authors of Project 2025 want Trump to issue an executive order that makes it easier to fire

05:52government workers than replace them with what the project calls an army of loyal conservatives.

06:00It also wants to fire most, if not all, current State Department employees and change the rules

06:06so that new employees don't need to be approved by the Senate, meaning the president can appoint

06:10whoever they want in high-level jobs. For Project 2025, dismantling the administrative state means

06:17purging the civil workforce of tens of thousands of federal employees and replacing them with

06:22conservative pre-vetted picks. It wants to end the current rules that federal jobs should be

06:27appointed based on merit and allow political appointments of people loyal to the president

06:32and the party. Where you fill out a form that essentially indicates if you are loyal to President

06:37Trump or not. Even more concerning, there are measures outlined that would give potential

06:42employees questionnaires to find out their views on certain issues and policies, which many have

06:48presumed would mean that people who don't agree with the president wouldn't be able to get

06:52government jobs. In 2020, he ran an effort to purge people from the Trump administration

06:58considered not loyal enough to Donald Trump. Many more policies and ideas are outlined too

07:04in this extraordinarily long document. We're talking about higher student loans, we're talking

07:10about higher taxes for working-class Americans. While the Heritage Foundation led the effort, more

07:15than a hundred different conservative organizations contributed to it, though some have since also

07:20distanced themselves from the project. The Heritage Foundation's current president is Kevin Roberts,

07:26and he's said a lot of similarly controversial things to the press while defending Project 2025.

07:31We do have to initiate the largest mass deportation project in the history of this country.

07:37Specifically, people have picked up on his interpretations of the U.S. Constitution,

07:42as he said that the Constitution doesn't say that Americans are free to do what they want,

07:47but free to do what they ought. And what they ought to do, in his view, aligns with the Bible's

07:52teachings. Project 2025 also plans to maintain a biblically-based definition of marriage and family.

07:59Yes. 2025 has now been latched onto by the Democratic campaign, with Biden and Kamala

08:05Harris making posts across social media saying that Project 2025 is essentially a roadmap for

08:12what the Republican Party wants to do should Trump get re-elected. Folks, Project 2025 is the biggest

08:19attack on our system of government. Our personal freedom has never been proposed in the history of

08:24this country. They and many other pundits have cast doubt on whether Trump is being honest about

08:29his lack of involvement in 2025, given the close ties many of its authors and contributing

08:35organizations have to his previous administration and his current campaign. But it's crucial to

08:40note that there's no evidence that Trump himself does support 2025. Donald Trump has picked his

08:46new running mate, J.D. Vance, and if elected, he will help implement the extreme Project 2025 plan.

08:53Trump's running mate, J.D. Vance, has also tried to distance himself from it,

08:57though continues to support some of its ideas, namely the ones about restructuring the government.

09:02There's some good ideas in there, Rob. There's some things that I disagree with, but most importantly,

09:06it has no affiliation with the Trump campaign. Other politicians and political analysts have

09:12pointed out that these overhauls to the government may not be possible with executive orders alone

09:17and rely on the Republicans controlling the House of Representatives and the Senate.

09:22As of 2024, Republicans have a narrow majority in the House of Representatives,

09:26while the Democrats have a similarly narrow majority in the Senate.

09:30So you cannot eliminate an agency without Congress agreeing to that.

09:36Congress has the power to create agencies and to eliminate agencies.

09:40Ultimately, Project 2025 is one in a long line of plans for government,

09:45published by right-wing think tanks, to try and steer Republican presidents in the direction they

09:50want.

09:50He's gonna fill all these positions with his cronies. So get ready for FBI Director

09:56Lee Greenwood, God bless the USA Bible, for only $59.99.

10:00The Heritage Foundation itself says it's seen a lot of success with the implementation of its

10:05mandates, including by Reagan and Trump, though many of the ideas it presents aren't new. But

10:11it's been described by many leading scholars and political scientists as, quote, authoritarian.

10:17With many concerned that the reforms are attempts to destroy

10:20the governmental system America has been building for over 200 years.

10:25There's something like 90 million people on Medicaid in America,

10:2838 million children. So you're right. It is not just some urban program for a few poor people.

10:33At the same time, these policies don't have the broad support of American politicians

10:38or the American public. More than half of Americans in recent polls support

10:42women's reproductive rights, believe in human-driven climate change,

10:46and support laws to protect LGBTQ plus people from discrimination.

10:50It's up to you to decide what you think of this contentious issue,

10:54and whether it truly has no ties to the Trump campaign, as he and his team are saying,

10:59or whether he's more involved, as the Democrats are saying.

11:03And that was Project 2025 explained.

11:06Project 2025 will destroy America. Look it up.

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