THE MORE PEOPLE learn about it, the more unpopular and politically toxic Project 2025 has proven to be. This has led the Trump and Vance campaign to attempt to distance itself from the effort. Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller now says he had “zero involvement with Project 2025,” despite appearing in a promotional video. And just today, The Intercept discovered two more conservative groups that have quietly bowed out from the controversial 900-page manifesto — including a national anti-abortion organization.
Miller’s group, America First Legal Foundation, was one of the first organizations to jump ship from the Project 2025 advisory board. Last week, America First Legal asked to be removed from the Project 2025 advisory board webpage. The organization was part of Project 2025 since at least June 2022, when the Heritage Foundation first announced the advisory board’s formation.
America First Legal staff were deeply involved in writing and editing the Project 2025 playbook. Its vice president and general counsel, Gene Hamilton, drafted an entire chapter about the Justice Department, which proposes launching a “campaign” to criminalize mailing abortion pills. In a footnote, Hamilton thanked “the staff at America First Legal Foundation,” who he wrote deserved “special mention for their assistance while juggling other responsibilities.”
When conservatives show you who they are, believe them the first time.
Project 2025 Mandate For Leadership (direct PDF link) is a document with very conflicting policy objectives, yet it shows the detailed goals of the various arms of the party. In order to keep the coalition together, each conservative voter will have to accept that only one of the two terrible “rightwing” options will be implemented but will aim to get what they want elsewhere.
Examples: They could get extreme economic protectionism but don’t get to ban gay marriage. Or they could get free trade to the point of taxpayer funded corporate subsidies like the Foxconn boondoggle, but social conservatives are appeased in return, as they get to make female and trans lives miserable.
So this document is important for liberals, leftists and progressives to at least skim over, as even if each conservative will take issue on many of the stances contained, it is the charcuterie board of awful policies that conservatives and Republicans will be sampling if we allow them to take power.
As this Opinion writer for the American Prospect writes, and Cory Doctorow has discussed, this conservative playbook isn’t new but the latest revised edition (in a line of conservative policy documents spanning the years), and this document that on the surface appears like a manifesto of rightwing unity actually shows clearly where their divisions lie. Thus it is important for the left to acknowledge, understand it and use this Mandate for Leadership to our advantage to strike right where conservatives think other conservatives are crazy.