You may hear Project 2025 at the debate tonight. What is that? | CBC News

As two U.S. presidents, one current and one former, face off tonight in the first debate of the 2024 election campaign, they’ll be selling their own — and dissecting each other’s — visions for the next four years. And that’s how you’re likely to hear about something referred to as Project 2025. 

Project 2025: A Presidential Transition Project is a conservative vision and policy plan to dramatically reshape the U.S. government starting Jan. 20, 2025, inauguration day, assuming a conservative wins the White House in November.

Former president Donald Trump is set to become the official nominee at the Republican National Convention next month. 

The Heritage Foundation, the influential group behind Project 2025, has laid out sweeping reforms of virtually every aspect of government, including a plan that critics warn will line the public service with employees loyal to a Republican commander-in-chief, as well as providing an ultra-conservative framework for policies. 

Its stated goal is to undo most everything implemented in the previous four years of U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration.

“The actions of liberal politicians in Washington have created a desperate need and unique opportunity for conservatives to start undoing the damage the Left has wrought and build a better country for all Americans in 2025,” the authors of its 920-page Mandate for Leadership document argue. 

Trump hasn’t officially adopted the blueprint and promotes his own Agenda47 platform (because he would become the 47th president if re-elected). But Biden is seizing on concerns that Project 2025 is a recipe for authoritarianism and inextricable from his Republican rival’s plan for power.  

In the hours ahead of the debate, the Biden campaign launched a website claiming that Project 2025 is a “plan by Donald Trump’s MAGA Republican allies to give Trump more power over your daily life, gut democratic checks and balances, and consolidate power in the Oval Office if he wins.”  

Here’s what you need to know about Project 2025 and who’s behind it. 

What is the Heritage Foundation? 

The Heritage Foundation is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that formulates and champions conservative policy proposals. 

It has a long and proven history of shaping Republican policymaking dating back to the era of President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. 

In his first year in office, Reagan implemented 60 per cent of the 2,000 proposals the Heritage Foundation published in its 1981 manifesto, also called Mandate for Leadership. 

Its influence persisted, though not to the same extent, after the Reagan years. 

The Heritage Foundation claims to have influenced policy under the administrations of President George H.W. Bush, Reagan’s vice president, and President George W. Bush, as well as swaying House and Senate Republicans during Democratic administrations.

The Heritage Foundation wasn’t initially in Trump’s corner when he announced his candidacy to be president in 2015, but, according to Politico, it eventually became key to his transition team and claimed to have significantly influenced policy and appointments during his presidency. 

The Heritage Foundation established the Project 2025 agenda in 2022, a year after Trump left office and Biden took the White House, and released the Mandate on Leadership the following year. 

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What are some of the key goals of Project 2025? 

Project 2025 proposes a drastic overhaul of the U.S. government.  

It calls for Congress to shutter the federal Dept. of Education and the “top-to-bottom overhaul” of the Department of Justice, particularly curbing its independence and ending FBI efforts to combat the spread of misinformation. Many other government agencies would also see their independence subverted. 

But it’s not just about departmental reforms. 

Project 2025, critics say, aims to root out thousands of federal government employees who aren’t loyal to the president by reinstituting a Trump executive order from 2020 that would allow for the reclassification of many public service workers and strip them of job protections.

The Associated Press reported this week The Heritage Foundation provided a $100,000 US grant to a group called the American Accountability Foundation that is investigating the backgrounds and social media posts of federal employees suspected of being hostile to Trump policies. 

The policy playbook also promotes a raft of measures to combat what the authors describe as “wokeism” in the federal government, with the intent of eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and guidance. 

2SLGBTQ+ rights would be in a Republican-led administration’s sights, if the Heritage Foundation has its way, as would restrictions on the medications used for abortions. 

The document also suggests outlawing pornography and imprisoning anyone who produces or distributes it.    

Climate change policies enacted under the Biden administration could also be reversed, according to the manifesto, with funding for efforts to develop renewable energy eliminated and fossil fuel production increased.

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What do critics say about Project 2025? 

There has been growing attention and scrutiny on Project 2025’s ambitions as the election looms. 

A recent segment on John Oliver’s HBO show Last Week Tonight has accrued more than five million views on YouTube since it was posted on June 20 and Google searches for Project 2025 spiked earlier this month. 

But critics have been sounding the alarm about Project 2025 — even if it’s only a proposal from a lobby group and not yet a doctrine or party policy. 

Democratic House Representative Jared Huffman told The Guardian Project 2025 would be a “wrecking ball” for democracy. 

The Centre for American Progress, which describes itself as a nonpartisan policy institute, describes it as “an authoritarian playbook” and a “far-right assault on America.”

“[It] would destroy our system of checks and balances and give far-right politicians, judges, and corporations more control over Americans’ lives,” the organization said on its website. 

The Heritage Foundation has dismissed such claims as “the Left’s extreme fearmongering.” 

In a recent interview on MSNBC, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts insisted his organization was non-partisan and claimed the Biden campaign declined a briefing on Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership. 

But he also said the Heritage Foundation aims to “institutionalize Trumpism” which it views as the “new version of conservatism.”