Whistling Past the Graveyard?

A Review of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership

Last year The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project released its Mandate for Leadership, a plan for the next “conservative Administration,” meaning the next Trump Administration. The plan has received a lot of attention.  Trump critics warn that it is a blueprint for authoritarianism devised by former Trump officials and advisors. It is indeed a strange document, as Carlos Lozada of the New York Times has explained in detail, but not for that reason. 

The introduction’s rhetoric suggests a radical restructuring of the federal government. But what does it propose? Nothing particularly new.  And what do the following chapters propose? Even less. This post describes the introduction.  Subsequent posts will discuss some of the most significant chapters, which address the Executive Office of the President and the White House, including the National Security Council and OMB, and federal departments and agencies. These are generally drafted by former Trump officials. 

The plan begins with an apocalyptic “Promise to America” from the Heritage Foundation’s director, “Kevin D. Roberts, PhD.” It attacks generations of liberal elites (using the term 17 times in 17 pages), who it says are part of a multi-decade conspiracy to harm America. It derides the “Great Awokening,” a term it invents but vaguely attributes to the left. It somehow equates communism, socialism, fascism, and progressivism as strains of the same dire threat to American family values, prosperity, and liberty.

The introduction begins by describing the American family in crisis. What does it propose? Unspecified changes in tax and welfare policy; vaguely worded language about eliminating abortion, avoiding mentioning an outright federal abortion ban; and eliminating certain triggering words from the federal government’s lexicon, such as “sexual orientation and gender identity,” “diversity, equity and inclusion,” “gender equality,” and so on. It objects to schools ignoring “parents’ rights” (as if all parents agree with each other). But regardless of what parents want, it proposes that the “noxious tenets” of “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” be “excised from all public schools.” And it proclaims that allowing parents or physicians to “reassign” the sex of a minor child “must end” (if that has happened). Beyond those problems, it declares that “[e]very threat to family stability must be confronted.” It concludes proposing a ban on children accessing social media, including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Next is its plan for dismantling the Administrative State. What does that involve?  Enhanced White House oversight of administrative agencies. Legislation to repeal existing laws that give agencies their authority, legislation that will never pass.  Reining in federal civil servants in unspecified ways. Ending alleged woke policies and trainings at various agencies, including the Department of Defense. And revoking a few unspecified Biden Administration executive orders. Its most pernicious suggestions, which become more apparent in later chapters, concern undermining norms of independence throughout the bureaucracy, including in troubling areas such as the enforcement of criminal law by the Department of Justice or scientific independence by technical experts.

The third topic is “defend[ing] our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.” It is a screed against all sorts of elites—corporations, policymakers, academics, and others. They apparently “do not believe in the ideals to which our nation is dedicated—self-governance, the rule of law, and ordered liberty.” It traces this “hubris” back over a century, to President Woodrow Wilson of all people. A curious choice for what purports to be a populist agenda. The progressives of the early twentieth century (Republicans and Democrats) advocated for things like child labor laws, women’s suffrage, unionization, public health services, civil rights, and economic regulation and taxes, to address a wealth gap where the 1% owned 90% (sounds familiar). The progressives also sought immigration restrictions. Though unexplained, the report seems to dislike Wilsonian intellectualism and the progressives’ focus on professionalizing the federal bureaucracy. Now, unfortunately, over a century later, “nearly every top-tier U.S. university president or Wall Street hedge fund manager has more in common with a socialist European head of state than with the parents at a high school football game in Waco, Texas.” 

And the solution? Ending “open borders” and cracking down on illegal immigration. It purports to care for those at the bottom of the economy who must compete with unskilled immigrants. Ending “environmental extremism,” characterized by “population control and economic regression.” Entering a cold war with China and cracking down on Chinese influence within the United States. And somehow “assert[ing]” U.S. energy interests “around the world.”

Finally, the “Promise to America” offers a defense of “the pursuit of Happiness,” as understood in the Declaration of Independence. It defines that in religious terms as the “pursuit of Blessedness,” or being “free to live as his Creator ordained”—the liberty “to do not what we want, but what we ought.” This is found “primarily in family—marriage, children, Thanksgiving dinners, and the like.” “It’s this radical equality,” the report says, that “the rich and powerful have hated about democracy in America since 1776” [sic], ignoring that our founders were rich and powerful. 

Predictably, this conception of freedom leads back to the usual place, despite the populist and anti-corporate rhetoric—less regulation of private companies and lower taxes for corporations. For private companies, presumably including those it derides as woke, it says “the customer is always right.” It isn’t clear whether it includes cable companies and insurers. It asserts that happiness is greatest in countries where economies are free. It doesn’t list where those are. But it fails to mention Norway, which usually wins the international happiness competition. As home to a “socialist European head of state,” it fails the report’s freedom test. The report contrasts its conception of economic freedom with the failed communist governments of decades past, as if this were the 1980s.

Strange, yes. A radical blueprint for authoritarianism? No. Original? Hardly. That it is heavy on resentment and light on policy should be unsurprising. Stoking resentment is the modern Republican approach to politics. 

As will be covered in future posts, the wonky chapters that follow are even more out of synch with the “Promise to America’s” apocalyptic tone. Skirting the editors, some even invoke efforts by Democratic administrations to solve some of the same problems. (Indeed, despite the army of contributors and editors listed up front, the inconsistent approaches, including inconsistent formatting, suggest the chapters were pasted behind the introduction without much oversight.) To be sure, there’s a lot to be concerned about—particularly how undocumented immigrants would be treated, about all the anti-LGBTQ and anti-woke rhetoric, even if those issues are primarily issues of state law, about climate and environmental policy, about foreign affairs, and about the independence of the Department of Justice and the civil service. But those MAGA proposals are hardly new. Many are common to conventional Republican platforms, just presented with more divisive spin. And as will be discussed, the most concerning proposals would face significant limitations under existing laws and policies, which even the most mendacious Administration under a competent leader would find trouble navigating.