This is Yves. We are late to give a full treatment of Project 2025, but we hope this article will serve as a starting point. Unfortunately, the right’s ambitious and well-organized campaigns to dramatically increase acceptance of their social and political agenda have proven extremely successful, as evidenced by the Powell Memo and the Blueprint for the New American Century.
Trump is the explicit target of this Heritage Foundation project. Because Trump’s first presidency was largely a “dog caught the car” event, Trump had few perilous plans and, on top of that, weak cabinet members. For example, Steve Mnuchin’s tax reform plan was embarrassing, barely rising to the level of child’s play. So, after these failures, the administration adopted the plan of the anti-tax lobby, including its standard language. Trump may be a little better prepared to become president if he wins again, but that doesn’t make him any less receptive to the prepackaged agendas of his fellow travelers. This initiative therefore deserves to be monitored.
By Diana Cariboni, who started writing for Tracking the Backlash in 2018 and is now openDemocracy’s Latin America editor. She was previously co-editor-in-chief of the IPS news agency and headed the Latin America desk for more than a decade. She wrote the book “Guantánamo Entre Nosotros” (2017) and won the Uruguayan National Press Prize in 2018. Originally published on Open democracy
Last month, populist leaders from around the world gathered for the Europe Viva 24 summit in Madrid. The headlines from the event were dominated by the big names in attendance – Argentine President Javier Milei, France’s Marine Le Pen, Chile’s José Antonio Kast and Italian and Hungarian Prime Ministers Giorgia Meloni and Viktor Orbán – and the fact that the event ended with a diplomatic conflict between Argentina and Spain.
But far from all the sound and fury was a lesser-known speaker: Roger Severino, a former Donald Trump administration official and vice president for domestic policy at the influential American think tank The Heritage Foundation.
In a six-minute speech delivered in Spanish, Severino described Asset as a victim of the legal war launched by “the leftists” and declared that young people are subjected to a “culture and a medical system” which tells them to “explore all sexual appetites by the age of 10” and that “abortion is not about destroying babies but about health care”.
Adding that young people are also taught “that if you’re not comfortable with your gender, you were probably born in the wrong body, and surgeries can fix that,” he said: “I am here to tell you that God makes no mistakes.
Severino is one of the architects of the Heritage Foundation’s plan for a second Trump term, called “Project 2025.” This aims to reshape the federal state in 180 days, to fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with people loyal to the conservative cause, to undermine the separation of powers, to attack public educationand erase or restrict the rights of women, LGBTQ people, workers, migrants And Black people.
He also seeks to dismantle policies fight climate change and push for an energy agenda dependent on fossil fuels.
His plan for doing this is set out in the ‘Leadership mandate: the Conservative promise‘, an 887-page manual published by the think tank, whose mission is to “formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual liberty, traditional American values and defense strong national”.
It’s not absurd to say that some of the Heritage Foundation’s suggestions may well become law if Trump is elected in November. The politically well-connected organization was founded in 1973 and issued its first “Leadership Mandate” when Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 – later. to boast that Reagan had adopted more than 60% of its policy recommendations.
Severino, who was director of the Office for Civil Rights in Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services, wrote the health section of Project 25. Of the 199 times the word “abortion” is mentioned in the document, 149 are in this chapter, which urges the federal government to suppress (or restrict as much as possible) the health care and sexual and reproductive rights it is responsible for overseeing.
Severino suggests removing approval of abortion pills and banning their distribution by mail; prohibiting the use of federal funds to transport people seeking abortions in a state where it is illegal to a state where it is not; cut federal funding for Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers; and removing emergency contraception from workers’ health insurance coverage.
On the other hand, it is difficult to find proposals to deal with real public health crises in the United States: opioids, decreasing life expectancyand rising maternal And infant mortality rates. This is perhaps not surprising; the Heritage Foundation sees the Supreme Court overturning the 1973 Roe decision which protected abortion up to 23 weeks as a victory – but also as “just the beginning“.
In the two years since Roe was repealed, 21 states have banned or significantly restricted abortion, and legislative and legal battles rage among others who try to follow suit. But the number of abortions performed each year has actually increased, according to has several studies – and so the dystopian battle plans for the continuing war against reproductive autonomy develop. Several American cities have do it is illegal to use their roads to transport people seeking abortions from a state where abortion is banned to another where it is permitted.
The 2025 Project wants the Ministry of Health to go even further, urging it to “protect life, conscience and bodily integrity” and to place “strong respect for the sacred rights of conscience” at the top of its agenda. agenda. Severino’s chapter calls for legislation requiring states to record data on abortions, including the number of abortions performed, their reasons, the method used, the length of the pregnancy and the state of residence of the person seeking to abort.
It also suggests that scientific research conducted with public money should focus on “the risks and complications of abortion” and on “correcting, not promoting, false information about the health and psychological benefits of childbirth.” in relation to the health and psychological risks linked to the intentional taking of a human being. life through abortion.”
But Project 2025 does not only focus on reproductive health.
The president who takes office in 2025, the foreword states, must “remove from all existing rules, regulatory agencies, contracts, grants, regulations, and federal laws the terms sexual orientation and gender identity, diversity, equity and inclusion, gender, gender. equality, gender equity, gender, gender sensitivity, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights” (which protects freedom of religion, freedom of speech and press, and the right to petition). government for redressal of grievances).
The future government must also “immediately cease the collection of data on gender identity, as this legitimizes the unscientific idea that men can become women (and vice versa) and encourages the phenomenon of constant multiplication of subjective identities », Adds Severino.
An anti-rights past and future
The Heritage Foundation is not the only highly influential institute involved in the drafting of Project 25. 100 organizations who serve on its advisory board or contribute directly to the strategy playbook, several have played crucial roles in advancing the extremist agenda in the United States over the past decades and years.
In 2018, four years before Roe was overturned, Mississippi banned abortions after 15 weeks in the state – with legislation modeled on an invoice conceived by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as an anti-LGBTQ hate group and which serves on the Project 25 advisory board. The law was challenged and suspended by two courts on the grounds that it was unconstitutional because it violated Roe.
The law’s proponents took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, aiming to challenge and ultimately overturn Roe. Their strategy relied on a right-wing majority on the court, secured by Leonard Leo, a lawyer and conservative activist who founded a network of groups and fundraising centers. Leo, who had already been instrumental in the appointment of three other judges, successfully pressured Trump to appoint three anti-abortion members to the court – thereby securing a conservative supermajority of six out of nine justices. Leo’s network of non-profit associations has reportedly donated millions of dollars to organizations that have served on the Project 2025 advisory board since 2021.
The result is that about a third of women of childbearing age in the United States, as well as others who do not identify as women but can get pregnant, now live in a state where abortion is banned or severely restricted, depending on the Guttmacher Institute.
The Heritage Foundation, ADF and Léo did not respond to our requests for comment.
