Yves here. We are overdue on giving a full-bore treatment on Project 2025, but this post will hopefully serve as a starting point. Sadly, ambitious and well-organized right wing campaigns to greatly increase the acceptance of their social and policy agenda have proven to be extremely successful, witness the Powell Memo and the Project for the New American Century.<\/p>\n
Trump is the explicit target of this Heritage Foundation scheme. Because the first Trump presidency was very much a \u201cdog that caught the car\u201d event, Trump had perilous little in the way of plans, and on top of that, weak cabinet members. For instance, Steve Mnuchin\u2019s tax reform plan was an embarrassment, barely rising to the level of a napkin doddle. So after that misfire, the Administration took up the anti-tax lobby\u2019s plan, include their off-the-shelf language. Trump might be a tad better prepared to be President if he wins again, but that does not make him any less receptive to pre-packaged programs from his fellow travelers. So this initiative very much bears watching.<\/p>\n
By Diana Cariboni, who started writing for Tracking the Backlash in 2018 and is now openDemocracy\u2019s Latin America editor. She was previously co-editor-in-chief of the IPS news agency and led its Latin America desk for more than ten years. She wrote the book \u2018Guant\u00e1namo Entre Nosotros\u2019 (2017) and won Uruguay\u2019s national press award in 2018. Originally published at openDemocracy<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Last month, populist leaders from around the world gathered for the Europa Viva 24<\/a> summit in Madrid. Headlines from the event were dominated by the big names in attendance \u2013 Argentinian president Javier Milei, France\u2019s Marine Le Pen, Chile\u2019s Jos\u00e9 Antonio Kast, and Italian and Hungarian prime ministers Giorgia Meloni and Viktor Orb\u00e1n \u2013 and the fact it ended in a diplomatic row between Argentina and Spain<\/a>.<\/p>\n But away from all of this noise and fury was a lesser-known speaker: Roger Severino, a former official in Donald Trump\u2019s administration<\/a> and the vice-president for domestic policy at influential US think tank The Heritage Foundation.<\/p>\n In a six-minute speech delivered in Spanish, Severino described Trump<\/a> as a victim of lawfare launched by \u201cthe lefties\u201d and said young people are subjected to a \u201cculture and a medical system\u201d that tells them to \u201cexplore all sexual appetites at age of 10\u201d and that \u201cabortion is not about destroying babies but about healthcare\u201d.<\/p>\n Adding that young people are also taught \u201cthat if you are uncomfortable with your sex you were probably born in the wrong body, and surgeries can fix that mistake\u201d, he said: \u201cI\u2019m here to tell you that God doesn\u2019t make mistakes.<\/p>\n Severino is one of the architects of the Heritage Foundation\u2019s blueprint for a second Trump term, named \u2018Project 2025\u2019. This aims to reshape the federal state in 180 days, fire tens of thousands of public servants and replace them with people loyal to the conservative cause, undermine the separation of powers, attack public education<\/a>, and erase or restrict the rights of women<\/a>, LGBTQ people<\/a>, workers<\/a>, migrants<\/a> and Black people<\/a>.<\/p>\n It also seeks to dismantle policies<\/a> to tackle climate change and push for an energy agenda reliant on fossil fuels.<\/p>\n Its plan for doing so is set out in the \u2018Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise<\/a>\u2019, an 887-page playbook published by the think tank, whose mission is \u201cto formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual liberty, traditional American values, and strong national defence\u201d.<\/p>\n It is not absurd to say that some of the Heritage Foundation\u2019s suggestions may well become law if Trump is elected in November. The politically well-connected organisation was founded in 1973 and published its first \u2018Mandate for Leadership\u2019 as Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 \u2013 later boasting<\/a> that Reagan had enacted more than 60% of its policy recommendations<\/a>.<\/p>\n Severino, who was Trump\u2019s director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, wrote Project 25\u2019s section on health. Of the 199 times the word \u2018abortion\u2019 is mentioned throughout the document, 149 are in this chapter, which urges the federal government to remove (or restrict as much as possible) any sexual and reproductive healthcare and rights whose oversight it has responsibility for.<\/p>\n Severino suggests eliminating the approval of abortion pills and banning their distribution by mail; barring the use of federal funds to transport people seeking an abortion in a state where it\u2019s illegal to one where it isn\u2019t; cutting federal funding to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers; and removing emergency contraception from workers\u2019 health insurance coverage.<\/p>\n In contrast, it\u2019s hard to find any proposals to tackle the US\u2019s real public health crises: opioids<\/a>, falling life expectancy<\/a>and rising maternal<\/a> and infant<\/a> mortality rates. This is perhaps unsurprising; the Heritage Foundation sees the Supreme Court\u2019s overturning of the 1973 Roe decision<\/a> that protected abortion up to 23 weeks as a victory \u2013 but also as \u201cjust the beginning<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n In the two years since Roe\u2019s repeal, 21 states<\/a> have banned or drastically restricted abortion, and legislative and judicial battles<\/a> are raging in others attempting to follow suit. But the number of abortions carried out annually has actually increased, according<\/a> to multiple studies<\/a> \u2013 and so grow the dystopian battleplans for the continued war on reproductive autonomy. Several US cities have made<\/a> it illegal to use their roads to transport people seeking abortions from a state where abortion is prohibited to one where it is permitted.<\/p>\n Project 2025 wants the Department of Health to go further still, urging it to \u201cprotect life, conscience and bodily integrity\u201d and place \u201cstrong respect for the sacred rights of conscience\u201d at the top of its agenda. Severino\u2019s chapter calls for legislation requiring states to record data on abortions, including the number of terminations carried out, the reasons for them, the method used, the length of the pregnancy, and the state of residence of the person seeking an abortion.<\/p>\n It also suggests that scientific research conducted with public money should focus on \u201cthe risks and complications of abortion\u201d and on \u201ccorrecting and not promoting misinformation about the health and psychological benefits of giving birth compared to the health and psychological risks of intentionally taking a human life through abortion\u201d.<\/p>\n But Project 2025\u2019s focus isn\u2019t only on reproductive health.<\/p>\n The president who takes office in 2025, the foreword says, must \u201cremove from every existing rule, regulatory agency, contract, grant, regulation, and federal law the terms sexual orientation and gender identity, diversity, equity, and inclusion, gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of First Amendment rights\u201d (which protects freedom of religion, freedom of speech and press, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances).<\/p>\n The future government must also \u201cimmediately cease the collection of data on gender identity, because it legitimises the unscientific notion that men can become women (and vice versa) and encourages the phenomenon of the constant multiplication of subjective identities\u201d, Severino adds.<\/p>\n An Anti-Rights Past and Future<\/b><\/p>\n The Heritage Foundation is not the only highly influential institute involved in the writing of Project 25. Of the 100 organisations<\/a> that sit on its advisory board or directly contribute to the playbook, several have been crucial to the advancement of extremist agenda in the US in recent decades and years.<\/p>\n In 2018, four years before Roe was overturned, Mississippi banned abortions after 15 weeks in the state \u2013 with legislation modelled on a bill<\/a> conceived<\/a> by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as an anti-LGBTQ hate group and which sits on the Project 25 advisory board. The law was challenged and stayed by two courts on the grounds that it was unconstitutional because it violated Roe.<\/p>\n The law\u2019s promoters took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, aiming to challenge and ultimately overturn Roe. Their strategy relied on the court having a right-wing majority, which was ensured by Leonard Leo, a conservative lawyer and activist who has founded a network of groups and funding hubs. Leo, who had already been influential in the appointment of three other justices, successfully lobbied Trump<\/a> to appoint three anti-abortion members to the court \u2013 achieving a conservative supermajority of six out of nine justices. Leo\u2019s network of nonprofits<\/a> has reportedly donated millions of dollars<\/a> to organisations that sit on the Project 2025 advisory board since 2021.<\/p>\n The result has been that around a third of women of reproductive age in the US, as well as other people who do not identify as women but can get pregnant, now live in a state where abortion is banned or severely restricted, according to the Guttmacher Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Heritage Foundation, ADF and Leo didn\u2019t answer our requests for comments.<\/p>\n
![\"Print](\"https:\/\/cdn.printfriendly.com\/buttons\/print-button-gray.png\")
<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n