Source: Probal Rashid / Getty
Past behavior is said to be the most reliable predictor of future performance, so it’s completely reliable to assume that Donald Trump will implement Project 2025 the way he did with Project 2017.
He followed that plan with fidelity as president but now Trump is falling over himself trying to pretend he has no idea what Project 2025 is about and no clue who wrote it. However, as I previously wrote, his running mate JD Vance is an obvious evangelist for the Trump Project 2025 plan.
Of course, we know that, like most of what comes out of his mouth, Trump’s claims are absolute nonsense. He has no interest in having a relationship with the truth. But you don’t have to take my word for it because this is just another case of history repeating itself. Before there was The Heritage Foundation, who wrote Trump’s Project 2025, they wrote Project 2017…and Trump was all in.
Don’t know what Project 2017 is? I’m glad you asked.
In July 2016, The Heritage Foundation, the group behind Project 2025, released its “Blueprint for Reform: A Comprehensive Policy Agenda for a New Administration in 2017,” which included a series of uber-conservative policy recommendations like:
● Implementing new tax cuts for the rich
● Repealing Obamacare and Wall Street reforms
● Leaving the Paris Climate Accord
● Eliminating net neutrality
● Cut the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Program
● Expand oil drilling offshore and on protected land
● Increase military spending
● Eliminate student debt forgiveness
● Dramatically cut infrastructure spending
● End Head Start
● Cut FEMA disaster relief funding
● Eliminate the Social Security Trust Fund
● Cut the VA and disability for veterans
Through Project 2017, The Heritage Foundation made 334 recommendations. Trump implemented 215 of them in his first year alone. Of course, this isn’t much of a surprise. Roughly 70 former Heritage Foundation employees worked for Trump either as part of his transition team or administration prompting them to brag that The Heritage Foundation is closer to Trump than any other administration since Ronald Reagan, and that relation gave them unprecedented influence.
In fact, the only real disagreement they had was that some Heritage Foundation leaders felt that Trump’s plan to repeal Obamacare didn’t go far enough.
Now, with Trump’s Project 2025, Trump and The Heritage Foundation are doubling down on that relationship with their Christian Nationalist agenda to gut civil rights, women’s rights, workers’ rights and overturn democracy itself.
Among other things, Trump’s Project 2025 has plans to restrict if not ban abortions nationwide, eliminate the Department of Education and the Department of Homeland Security, cancel every diversity, equity and inclusion program in the federal government and stack the FBI and Department of Justice with Trump loyalists.
They’re planning to invoke martial law with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts calling for a “second American Revolution.” You know who also said that? Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
Oh, and remember how we talked about the 70 former Heritage Foundation employees who worked for Trump either as part of his transition team or administration as he was implementing Project 2016? Well, at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration helped write Trump’s Project 2025.
That may be part of the reason Trump praised them and the Project 2025 proposals on Fox & Friends.
The simple fact is that Project 2017 and Trump’s Project 2025 are two verses of the same song. The only question is whether or not we’re going to give Trump a chance to sing it this time.
Trump and his buddies at The Heritage Foundation want to turn back the clock on American progress. But I’m with Vice President Kamala Harris. We know that progress is not permanent. This election is about protecting the progress we made, and we aren’t going back.
Antjuan Seawright (@antjuansea) is a Democratic political strategist, founder and CEO of Blueprint Strategy LLC and a senior visiting fellow at Third Way.
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