Yves here. We’re overdue in giving a full treatment to Project 2025, but this post will hopefully serve as a starting point. Sadly, the right wing’s ambitious and well-planned campaigns to greatly increase acceptance of their social and policy agenda have proven to be very successful, as evidenced by the Powell Memo and the Project for a New American Century.
Trump is the clear target of this initiative of the Heritage Foundation. Because Trump’s first presidency was a “dog-in-car” event, Trump had little strategic risk, and moreover, weak cabinet members. For example, Steve Mnuchin’s tax reform plan was a scandal, not rising to the level of a napkin doddle. So after that disastrous blow, the administration took a plan for an anti-tax entry point, including their off-the-shelf language. Trump may be better prepared to be President if he wins again, but that doesn’t make him less receptive to pre-packaged plans from his running mates. So this move is being watched a lot.
By Diana Cariboni, who began writing Tracking the Backlash in 2018 and is now openDemocracy’s Latin America editor. He was previously editor-in-chief of the IPS news agency and led its Latin American desk for more than ten years. He wrote the book ‘Guantánamo Entre Nosotros’ (2017) and won the national press prize of Uruguay in 2018. Originally published on openDemocracy.
Last month, populist leaders from around the world gathered at the Europa Viva 24 conference in Madrid. The headlines at the event were filled with big names in attendance – Argentina’s president Javier Milei, France’s Marine Le Pen, Chile’s José Antonio Kast, and Italy’s and Hungary’s prime ministers Giorgio Meloni and Viktor Orbán – and the truth ended with the debate between. Argentina and Spain.
But far from all the sound and fury was a lesser-known speaker: Roger Severino, a former administration official in Donald Trump and vice president for domestic policy at the influential US think tank The Heritage Foundation.
In a six-minute speech delivered in Spanish, Severino described Trump as a victim of a law introduced by the “left” and said that young people are subject to a “culture and a medical system” that tells them to “test all sexual desires at the age of 10” and that “abortion is not about destroying children but about care in health”.
Adding that young people are also taught “that if you are not comfortable with your sexuality, you were probably born in the wrong body, and surgery can correct that mistake”, he said: “I am here to tell you that God does not create.” errors.
Severino is one of the architects of the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for Trump’s second term, named ‘Project 2025’. This aims to reshape the federal government in 180 days, fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with people loyal to the strong nation, undermine the separation of powers, attack public education, and erase or limit the rights of women, LGBTQ people. , workers, immigrants and Black people.
It also wants to dismantle policies to tackle climate change and push an energy agenda dependent on fossil fuels.
Its plan to do so is laid out in ‘Leadership Authority: The Pledge of Conservation’, an 887-page playbook published by the think tank, whose mission is “to establish and promote consistent public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual liberty, traditional American values, and strong protectionism.” of the country”.
It’s no secret that some of the Heritage Foundation’s proposals could become law if Trump is elected in November. The politically well-connected organization was founded in 1973 and published the first ‘Leadership Mandate’ as Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 – later boasting that Reagan made more than 60% of policy recommendations.
Severino, Trump’s former director of the Office of Human Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, wrote Project 25’s section on health. Of the 199 times the word ‘abortion’ is mentioned throughout the document, 149 are in this chapter, which urges the federal government to eliminate (or limit as much as possible) any sexual and reproductive health care and rights it has oversight of.
Severino proposes ending the legalization of abortion pills and banning their distribution by mail; prohibiting the use of public funds to transport people seeking abortions to a state where it is illegal to do so; reduce federal funding to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers; and removal of emergency contraception from employee health insurance.
In contrast, it is hard to find any proposals to address the real public health problems of the US: opioids, declining life expectancy and rising maternal and infant mortality rates. This is perhaps not surprising; The Heritage Foundation sees the Supreme Court’s overturning of the 1973 Roe decision that protected abortion at 23 weeks as a victory – but also as “just the beginning”.
In the two years since Roe was overturned, 21 states have banned or greatly restricted abortion, and legal and judicial battles are raging for others trying to follow suit. But the number of abortions performed every year has actually increased, according to many studies – so raise the dystopian war tactics of the ongoing battle for reproductive autonomy. Several American cities have made it illegal to use their streets to transport people seeking abortions from a state where abortion is prohibited to one where it is.
Project 2025 wants the Ministry of Health to go further, urging it to “protect health, conscience and physical integrity” and put “robust respect for the sacred rights of conscience” at the top of its agenda. Severino’s chapter calls for legislation requiring states to record information on abortions, including the number of abortions, the reasons for them, the method used, the length of the pregnancy, and the state of residence of the person seeking the abortion.
It also suggests that publicly funded scientific research should focus on the “risks and problems of abortion” and “correct and discourage misinformation about the health and psychological benefits of childbirth versus the health and psychological risks of intentional pregnancy.” health by abortion”.
But the focus of Project 2025 is not just on reproductive health.
The president who takes office in 2025, the preamble states, must “remove from all existing laws, regulatory agencies, contracts, grants, regulations, and federal law the terms gender and gender identity, diversity, equity, and inclusion, gender, sexuality. equality, gender equality, sexuality, gender sensitivity, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, or any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights” (protecting freedom of religion, freedom of speech and press, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances).
The future government should also “immediately stop the collection of data on gender identity, because it confirms the non-scientific idea that men can be women (and vice versa) and promotes the phenomenon of constant repetition of subjective identity”, Severino adds.
Anti-Rights Past and Future
The Heritage Foundation is not the only institution with a major influence on the drafting of Project 25. Of the 100 organizations that sit on its advisory board or contribute directly to the playbook, several have been central to the development of the extremist agenda in the US recently. decades and years.
In 2018, four years before Roe was overturned, Mississippi banned abortions after 15 weeks in the state — with a bill backed by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as an anti-LGBTQ hate group. and sits on the advisory board of Project 25. This law was challenged and stopped by two courts because it was unconstitutional because it violated Roe.
Proponents of the law took the case to the Supreme Court, aiming to challenge and ultimately overturn Roe. Their strategy depended on the court having a majority against it, confirmed by Leonard Leo, a vigilante lawyer and activist who has established a network of groups and fundraisers. Leo, who was already influencing the appointment of three other justices, successfully persuaded Trump to appoint three anti-abortion members to the court – securing a majority of six of the nine justices. Leo’s network of non-profit organizations has reportedly donated millions of dollars to organizations that sit on the advisory board of Project 2025 starting in 2021.
The result is that nearly a third of women of reproductive age in the US, as well as other people who do not identify as women but cannot get pregnant, now live in a state where abortion is prohibited or severely restricted, according to Guttmacher. Institution.
The Heritage Foundation, ADF and Leo did not respond to our requests for comment.
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