NASHVILLE – The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has become one of the biggest
talking points this presidential election cycle Alarms regarding the documents’ disturbing
proposals have been ringing among political commentators, academics and social media. Project 2025’s proposals include firing thousands of civil servants, expanding the president’s power, dismantling the Department of Education, halting abortion pill sales and altering the United States climate and environmental policies, among other steps. Many call Project 2025 extreme and a direct threat against minority communities and women and an assault on individual rights, civil liberties and the environment.
“When you think about who is going to be hit the hardest by pollution, whether it’s
conventional air, water and soil pollution or climate change, it is very often low-income
communities and communities of color,” said Rachel Cleetus in a recent Yale Climate
Connections article. Cleetus is the climate and energy program policy director for the nonprofit science advocacy organization, Union of Concerned Scientists.
“The undercutting of these kinds of protections is going to have a disproportionate impact
on these very same communities.”
CNN and USA Today have reported connections that many Project 2025 contributors
have with white supremacist organizations, figureheads and the Trump campaign. Trump has been trying to distance himself from Project 2025, claiming to “disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” He also posted on social media saying “I have no idea who is behind it.”
“Trump doesn’t get elected by people who are just outwardly racist,” said historian and
reporter Micheal Harriot, who has written in detail about Project 2025. “Being associated with Project 2025 would dismantle his plausible deniability, because it’s so blatantly racist.”
However, media outlets such as CNN have discovered at least 140 former Trump administration employees had a hand in Project 2025, including more than half of the credited authors, editors and contributors who published the plan “Mandate for Leadership,” detailing how they propose to overhaul the executive branch. Dozens of those currently holding positions with conservative groups advising Project 2025 were previously staffed within Trump’s government, including his former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. USA Today also found reports that at least 31 of the 38 authors and editors of Project 2025 have a connection with Trump including six of his former Cabinet secretaries and first deputy chief of staff who contributed to writing the 900-page playbook.
U.S. Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH), Trump’s vice presidential running mate, wrote a book
forward authored by a Project 2025 key architect, scheduled to be released later this year.
Trump-affiliated Project 2025 contributors. Further, Vance is reported as having a history with Richard Hanania, who before becoming a Project 2025 contributor, wrote racist essays for white supremacist publications under a pseudonym, until being exposed by the Huffington Post last year. At least five named contributors of Project 2025 have a history of racist or white supremacist activity, according to findings by USA Today, with at least three supporting the racist “Great Replacement Theory,” which accuses the American left of conspiring to shift the ethnic demographics of the United States by either supporting or ignoring illegal immigration.
