Project 2025 is Worth a Look
by Andy Caldwell
There has been a lot of bluster going around about a report called Project 2025. The left has demonized it, Trump has somewhat distanced himself from it, and Google has buried the official website of the project in its search engine.
So, what is Project 2025?
Project 2025 is the product of collaboration between 110 conservative organizations across America. The genesis of the project goes back to the 1980s when the Heritage Foundation began publishing its Mandate for Leadership, a guide to Constitutional and conservative governance. None of these publications, including Project 2025, have been generated at the behest of any presidential candidate. Additionally, this type of report is no different than what the left-of-center group Center for American Progress has published over the years for the consideration of liberal presidents such as Barack Obama.
The real policy recommendations of Project 2025 include securing the border, unleashing American energy, de-weaponizing the federal government, dismantling the deep state, and improving education, including eliminating the Federal Department of Education. It also includes recommendations on how to rein in inflation and how to deal with rampant crime, including promoting and expediting capital punishment.
Unfortunately, the same people that told you that Joe Biden was “as sharp as a tack” and that the Hunter Biden Laptop was Russian disinformation have gone out of their way to lie about the recommendations in the Project 2025 report. Some of the lies about the report are obvious lies. For instance, one media outlet reported that the policy recommendations included raising taxes for the working class. The opposite is true. The report calls for lower taxes for all Americans, as you would expect a conservative organization to recommend. There are many more misstatements coming from liberal politicians and media pundits including that these conservative organizations are recommending raising the retirement age and cutting Social Security.
I interview the Heritage Foundation weekly and have discussed Project 2025 several times with scholars at the foundation. Although the report is lengthy, some 900 pages long, they encourage you to read the recommendations in the report for yourself. With any report of this magnitude and with 110 “cooks in the kitchen,” don’t be surprised if you love some recommendations and don’t agree with others.
Google Works Against Republicans and Conservatives
Relatedly, I also have Media Research Center’s Newsbusters on my radio show regularly. The MRC followed up on President Biden’s directions to “Google Project 2025." When they tried to do that, they determined that Google omitted Project 2025's official website in 106 results they reviewed. Instead of leading the inquirer to Project 2025, the search engine instead placed Biden’s critique of Project 2025 at the top of the search results. The second and third results in the search were media sites that were critical of the report. For the record, the official website of Project 2025 is www.project2025.org.
In an interview with MRC on this subject, it was suggested that Google could be making an in-kind contribution to the Biden campaign. They wouldn’t be alone. Many people believe that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was similarly up to his eyeballs in illicit campaign donations when he pumped over $400 million into a sham “get-out-the-vote” campaign in 2020 that incidentally seemed to only motivate Democrat voters. As a result, several states, including Florida, have banned “Zuckerbucks” in the name of election reform and integrity.
Unfortunately, people don’t know what they don’t know, and biased search engines like Google (which dominates 94.9% of search engine activity on mobile phones), can ensure that they will never hear the other side of a story. The truth is out there if you know where to look and whom to believe. Sadly, that is too much work for too many people.
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Thank you, Andy. I had checked out Project 2025 some time ago because anytime anything gets demonized I look into it:-) DuckDuckGo, which I switched from Google to as soon as possible, made it easy then to find Project 2025. I just checked and DuckDuckGo still does place the PDF and the link you gave at the top of the search. DDG has become more Googlified but it's way preferable.
My own thoughts: Any president would be wise to get distance from any political think tank institute, no matter what the president's party, whether Brookings or Project 2025. Institutes are, as you wrote, made up of many people, and divergent ideas and they shift and grow more or less extreme. So I'm glad Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025. I say this with the experience of watching institutes. When I was a kid, my parents were friends with Hallock and Gene Hoffman (Hallock's brother was my godfather) who were two of the founders of the Fielding Institute. They were exceptional people, Quakers, and challenged the Loyalty Oath, which they were right to do. As much as I admired their anti-war activities, I don't think any president should have aligned with their institute. And many of you may remember the Center for Democratic Studies here, which became increasingly radical. Brookings Institute is a bloated, pompous blight at this point.
Back to Project 2025. The basic tenets listed on the website are not, to me, conservative. I agree with all of them and I'm not a conservative. Actually, the call to dismantle the Deep State is the kind of thing that got JFK assassinated, and he wasn't a conservative. I found the tenets just common sense. Honestly, if I could make this plea: they should lose the word “conservative” and replace it with “common sense.”
I didn't see anything about abortion, which made me sigh with relief. I am not pro-abortion, but it should not be the thing that stops all conversation and prevents us from going forward.
Thanks again for this column and for mentioning your interviews which I look forward to checking out.
Google is a confirmation bias facilitator for the left. For a conservative, the Google experience makes one feel weird for having such fringe beliefs. I am unimpressed with fact checks and links in support of much the left supports. Our most trusted institutions have lost credibility. The CDC reported if you get the shot you will not get covid, the FBI misrepresented the Hunter laptop. Information has been weaponized as a political tool. I get my bias confirmed here. I am thankful for this conservative platform in Santa Barbara.