Steve Corbin is emeritus professor of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa and a freelance writer who receives no remuneration, funding, or endorsement from any for-profit business, nonprofit organization, political action committee, or political party. 

It’s becoming clear the closer we get to the November 5 presidential election, voters need to seriously check out the radical government reformation policies contained within Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Here’s why.

The right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation has written not one, not two, but nine “Mandate for Leadership” documents for Republican presidential candidates, with their first playbook published in 1981. The Heritage Foundation spent $22 million—serious money—to create Project 2025 for Donald Trump to implement.

Trump’s claim he knows nothing about Project 2025 is not plausible. The Heritage Foundation’s website boasted in early 2018 that the Trump administration had “fully embraced” 64 percent of their 334 policy reform recommendations during his 2017-2021 presidency.

Before the 2016 election, the Heritage Foundation compiled a database of Republicans Trump could hire, 66 of who later served in his presidential administration. Five key Trump acolytes from that database included Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt, White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Trump asked the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society to compile a list of 21 potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees. John Malcolm prepared the list for the Heritage Foundation. When Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch for the high court in January 2017, Politico referred to Malcolm as “the man who picked the next Supreme Court justice.”

In Heather Cox Richardson’s September 7 newsletter, the Boston College history professor revealed that at a September 5 event with Sean Hannity of Fox News, Trump “embraced the key element of Project 2025 that calls for a dictatorial leader to take over the U.S. That document maintains that ‘personnel is policy’ and that the way to achieve all that the Christian nationalists want is to fire the nonpartisan civil servants currently in place and put their own people into office.”

Last month, ProPublica published 23 videos that were prepared to coach future Trump administration appointees on how to implement Project 2025. Of the 36 people who spoke in the videos, 29 previously worked for Trump or vice presidential nominee JD Vance.

CNN reported in July that at least 140 people who worked in Trump’s 2017-2021 administration were involved in writing Project 2025.

CBS News identified 270 of Project 2025’s policy proposals that matched Trump’s past political or current campaign rhetoric.

Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter noted that at a September 7 rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin, Trump publicly embraced Project 2025’s promise to eliminate the Department of Education.  

Evidence is replete the Heritage Foundation and the Trump-Vance ticket are joined at the hip and, therefore, Project 2025’s extremist policies are implicitly on the November 5 ballot.

Most Americans oppose various proposals in Project 2025. Likewise, none of former GOP presidents or vice-presidents has endorsed Trump.

Voters need to find out—on their own accord—what outlandish policies the Heritage Foundation wants Trump-Vance to implement. One highly credible and factual reporting news agency, The Fulcrum, has published more 30 op-eds devoted to analyzing Project 2025’s content. All are accessible for free at this link.

The Fulcrum op-ed writers who delve into the nitty-gritty details of Project 2025 policies are cross-partisan and are not associated with the Democratic ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

Here’s a partial list of Project 2025 policy topics that have been thoroughly examined, individually, in The Fulcrum:

• Department of Education
• Christian nationalism
• Department of Defense
• Federal Reserve
• Department of Energy
• Parents Bill of Rights
• Department of Veteran Affairs
• Education Savings Accounts
• Department of Homeland Security
• Voting Rights Act
• Department of Labor
• Christo-fascist manifesto
• Department of Health and Human Services
• Environmental Protection Agency
• Department of State
• Federal Communications Commission
• Department of Justice and Schedule F (firing civil servants)
• threat to democracy.

Given that Trump implemented 64 percent of the Heritage Foundation’s manifesto during his presidency, and is not a policy wonk, odds are great that if re-elected, he will embrace Project 2025 lock, stock and barrel. Remember, past actions are the best predictor of future behavior.

Let’s agree that the soul of America is democracy. In the November election, will you embrace Project 2025’s extremist-oriented policies that threaten our form of government, or support well-reasoned policies that protect and preserve our constitutional rights?

Top image: Toronto, Canada – August 10 2024 Project 2025, is a political initiative published by the Heritage Foundation that aims to promote conservative and right-wing policies to reshape the United States. Photo by bella1105, available via Shutterstock.