The Wrecking Crew

Project 2025 is a manual for destruction of the administrative state. For many conservatives, that's a good thing.

WHITE HOUSE — Should Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, return here in January as the 47th, a number of those accompanying him back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, will be carrying two Bibles — one, no doubt the King James Version or alternatively Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA Bible ($59.99). The other is decidedly a 922-page tome titled: Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise. It’s better known by its shorthand moniker: Project 2025.

Policy wonks will find it fascinating or horrifying, possibly both. Some — who voted for Trump once or twice and plan to a third and fourth time in 2024 and 2028, will certainly ascribe to its tenets. There’s a Talmud full of commentary about it out there already. Project 2025’s Wikipedia entry is a Gemara-length 18,000 words. (Perhaps I should use more Gentile analogies, as Project 2025 is infused with promotion of Christian Nationalism, rather than the more inclusive phraseology of Judeo-Christian values). One should not take every essay being written about Project 2025 at face value. No, the manifesto does not mandate issuing ‘period passports’ for menstruating women.

For weeks I’ve been dipping into the authentic manuscript, which is a “product of more than 400 scholars and policy experts from across the conservative movement and around the country,” according to its publisher, The Heritage Foundation. I attempted to convince some of its authors — any of its authors — to grant me an interview. They all seemed to become camera shy after the Biden campaign, highly distracted at present, by intra-party rumination, put Project 2025 front and center as the bogeyman, since the strategy of hoping enough voters in swing states would eschew preferring a convicted felon appears to be falling far short of expectations, if the latest polls are accurate. And then Trump himself suddenly disowned the voluminous oblation. Confused? That’s understandable.

Finally, after nearly a month of wrestling with the beast I made my best effort to synthesize it for our VOA overseas audiences. Give my piece a read and draw your own conclusions. If you need more visual stimulation to try to comprehend it, I also reported a version for television, which will take about three minutes of your time (a lengthy video story by today’s Tiktok standards).

In the interest of transparency, as I point out in the web and TV versions, Project 2025 also has criticism of and recommendations for my employer and its parent agency. That runs nearly 11 pages. There’s even a mention (although not by name) of a “VOA White House correspondent,” who is certainly me. It’s an inaccurate characterization. If you want my side of the story, it’s laid out in the latter chapters of my book published last month: Behind the White House Curtain: A Senior Journalist’s Story of Covering the President — and Why It Matters (Not $59.99). I can assure you, it’s a lot slimmer than 922 pages.