This project has gained plenty of steam - and notoriety - in the past few months. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’ll be taking a deep dive into the political story that has everybody talking: Project 2025.
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00:00Project 2025. It is a blueprint you've been reading up.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we'll be taking a deep dive into the political story that has
00:12everybody talking. Project 2025. What is it? Who's behind it? And should we be worried?
00:20We are in the process of the second American revolution,
00:23which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.
00:26Before we talk about what Project 2025 entails, we need to know who published it. That honor goes
00:33to the Heritage Foundation, a very influential conservative think tank in the United States.
00:38Heritage has been trying to guide U.S. policy via the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan's
00:44landslide election victory in 1980, publishing its first mandate for leadership, of which Project
00:512025 is part, in 1981. Several people who were part of Trump's administration, part of his
00:57campaign in 2016 and 2020, who have shifted over and played a role in Project 2025.
01:04As the year would suggest, the Project 2025 mandate is a massive document full of policy
01:10and governmental proposals outlining what initiatives an incoming Republican government
01:16should take, in Heritage's view, if the party wins the 2024 election.
01:21It's a blueprint for a radical far-right takeover of everything in the U.S. government.
01:25The entire idea for 2025 began back in 2022, ahead of the next election campaign. But if a
01:32mandate for leadership has been published by Heritage every election cycle for over 40 years,
01:38what's so special about this iteration? Well, to put it bluntly, Project 2025 lays out some
01:44unprecedented changes to the American government, akin to rebuilding it from the inside out.
01:502025 would roll back our fundamental freedoms, undermine our democracy, and gut checks and
01:56balances. It started making headlines in July 2024, though some outlets were reporting on it
02:02in June, only a few months before the election and during a turbulent time for both campaigns,
02:08with an assassination attempt on Trump and Biden pulling out of the race in the same month.
02:13Project 2025 is designed as a government-in-waiting if Trump or any conservative president returns to
02:20office. The thing that initially started attracting attention to this year's mandate was its language,
02:25frequently using terms like woke and radical, and suggesting that the U.S. government has been
02:30infiltrated by liberal ideas at the top level. This feeds into the ongoing culture war debates,
02:36which are affecting the entire world as well as the U.S., but it suggests extreme measures to
02:42tackle social issues. Of the other controversial positions in this document, banning abortion drugs
02:47by male, barring transgender people from military service. This includes the increasing criminalization
02:53of some forms of contraception and abortion, getting rid of Medicare, mass deportations,
02:58no longer protecting LGBTQ plus people from discrimination, abolishing affirmative action,
03:04and making adult films, videos, and other X-rated material illegal. Proposals include higher taxes
03:10on lower income Americans, increased student loan payments, and major cuts to Medicaid. It also wants
03:18to roll back measures to limit climate change, going as far as to advocate for the abolition of
03:23NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for weather
03:28forecasts and ocean exploration. If you earn $400,000 a year, you would get a tax cut of about
03:35$14,000. Despite the project basing itself largely on the belief that Trump will be re-elected in 2024,
03:42and he is now the Republican nominee, since this has come out, Trump himself has disavowed it,
03:48writing online that he has, quote, no idea who is behind it, and that, quote, I disagree with
03:54some of the things they're saying, and some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous
04:00and abysmal. However, media outlets have claimed that between half to two-thirds of the authors and
04:06editors are former Trump administration officials, and as a group of hackers discovered when they
04:11broke into the Heritage Foundation on July 10th, many of the people funding the Heritage Foundation
04:17had senior jobs under Trump during his administration. The disavowal is also despite
04:22Heritage itself alleging that much of its 2015 mandate guided Trump's policymaking throughout
04:28his four years in office. Project 2025 was created by some of Donald Trump's most important advisors
04:35as a blueprint for what he could do if he gets back into the White House again. And this is
04:41despite Heritage itself alleging that much of its 2015 mandate guided Trump's policymaking throughout
04:47his four years in office. But while culture wars and social issues remain hotly debated throughout
04:53America, there are other parts of 2025 that have been derided not only by Trump, but by many senior
04:59politicians in both parties. These include the total abolition of the Department for Education
05:04and defunding the Department of Justice. The playbook also outlines a plan to bring many
05:09federal agencies, like the Department of Justice, under more direct presidential control. This latter
05:15policy perpetuates the idea that the 2020 election was unlawful and rigged against Trump. The same
05:21sentiment that led to the January 6th insurrection in 2021. People have also expressed concern about
05:28the way Project 2025 wants to restructure the FBI, making the FBI director personally accountable to
05:35the president. Many have said that this is an attempt to bring the FBI under the total control
05:40of the president, with other parts of Project 2025 also serving to bolster the president's position.
05:47The authors of Project 2025 want Trump to issue an executive order that makes it easier to fire
05:52government workers than replace them with what the project calls an army of loyal conservatives.
06:00It also wants to fire most, if not all, current State Department employees and change the rules
06:06so that new employees don't need to be approved by the Senate, meaning the president can appoint
06:10whoever they want in high-level jobs. For Project 2025, dismantling the administrative state means
06:17purging the civil workforce of tens of thousands of federal employees and replacing them with
06:22conservative pre-vetted picks. It wants to end the current rules that federal jobs should be
06:27appointed based on merit and allow political appointments of people loyal to the president
06:32and the party. Where you fill out a form that essentially indicates if you are loyal to President
06:37Trump or not. Even more concerning, there are measures outlined that would give potential
06:42employees questionnaires to find out their views on certain issues and policies, which many have
06:48presumed would mean that people who don't agree with the president wouldn't be able to get
06:52government jobs. In 2020, he ran an effort to purge people from the Trump administration
06:58considered not loyal enough to Donald Trump. Many more policies and ideas are outlined too
07:04in this extraordinarily long document. We're talking about higher student loans, we're talking
07:10about higher taxes for working-class Americans. While the Heritage Foundation led the effort, more
07:15than a hundred different conservative organizations contributed to it, though some have since also
07:20distanced themselves from the project. The Heritage Foundation's current president is Kevin Roberts,
07:26and he's said a lot of similarly controversial things to the press while defending Project 2025.
07:31We do have to initiate the largest mass deportation project in the history of this country.
07:37Specifically, people have picked up on his interpretations of the U.S. Constitution,
07:42as he said that the Constitution doesn't say that Americans are free to do what they want,
07:47but free to do what they ought. And what they ought to do, in his view, aligns with the Bible's
07:52teachings. Project 2025 also plans to maintain a biblically-based definition of marriage and family.
07:59Yes. 2025 has now been latched onto by the Democratic campaign, with Biden and Kamala
08:05Harris making posts across social media saying that Project 2025 is essentially a roadmap for
08:12what the Republican Party wants to do should Trump get re-elected. Folks, Project 2025 is the biggest
08:19attack on our system of government. Our personal freedom has never been proposed in the history of
08:24this country. They and many other pundits have cast doubt on whether Trump is being honest about
08:29his lack of involvement in 2025, given the close ties many of its authors and contributing
08:35organizations have to his previous administration and his current campaign. But it's crucial to
08:40note that there's no evidence that Trump himself does support 2025. Donald Trump has picked his
08:46new running mate, J.D. Vance, and if elected, he will help implement the extreme Project 2025 plan.
08:53Trump's running mate, J.D. Vance, has also tried to distance himself from it,
08:57though continues to support some of its ideas, namely the ones about restructuring the government.
09:02There's some good ideas in there, Rob. There's some things that I disagree with, but most importantly,
09:06it has no affiliation with the Trump campaign. Other politicians and political analysts have
09:12pointed out that these overhauls to the government may not be possible with executive orders alone
09:17and rely on the Republicans controlling the House of Representatives and the Senate.
09:22As of 2024, Republicans have a narrow majority in the House of Representatives,
09:26while the Democrats have a similarly narrow majority in the Senate.
09:30So you cannot eliminate an agency without Congress agreeing to that.
09:36Congress has the power to create agencies and to eliminate agencies.
09:40Ultimately, Project 2025 is one in a long line of plans for government,
09:45published by right-wing think tanks, to try and steer Republican presidents in the direction they
09:50want.
09:50He's gonna fill all these positions with his cronies. So get ready for FBI Director
09:56Lee Greenwood, God bless the USA Bible, for only $59.99.
10:00The Heritage Foundation itself says it's seen a lot of success with the implementation of its
10:05mandates, including by Reagan and Trump, though many of the ideas it presents aren't new. But
10:11it's been described by many leading scholars and political scientists as, quote, authoritarian.
10:17With many concerned that the reforms are attempts to destroy
10:20the governmental system America has been building for over 200 years.
10:25There's something like 90 million people on Medicaid in America,
10:2838 million children. So you're right. It is not just some urban program for a few poor people.
10:33At the same time, these policies don't have the broad support of American politicians
10:38or the American public. More than half of Americans in recent polls support
10:42women's reproductive rights, believe in human-driven climate change,
10:46and support laws to protect LGBTQ plus people from discrimination.
10:50It's up to you to decide what you think of this contentious issue,
10:54and whether it truly has no ties to the Trump campaign, as he and his team are saying,
10:59or whether he's more involved, as the Democrats are saying.
11:03And that was Project 2025 explained.
11:06Project 2025 will destroy America. Look it up.
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