Will the radical vision of the ultra-reactionary Project 25 become reality?

Concocted by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation along with 110 other conservative think tanks, Project 25 has produced a raft of proposals designed to tear down the liberal US establishment and replace it with a reactionary model.

The vision is so radical that satirists have been lampooning it on social media with posts suggesting the policy plan proposes “women should be mandated to carry ‘period passports’ that track their menstrual cycles and must be kept up to date.”

Image: Screenshot of Halfway Post X account

The Heritage Foundation’s Communications Manager Ellen Keenan said in an email to Reuters that the claim that Project 2025 wishes to keep tabs on menstrual cycles is “false.”

The Handmaid’s tale narrative originated from political satirist Dash MacIntyre on his X account, The Halfway Post. “I don’t report the facts, I improve them,” he states on his account description.

While Project 25’s 900-page proposal does not touch on the menstrual cycle, it does specify restricting abortion rights and getting rid of terms such as “reproductive health” and “reproductive rights” from government documents.

The proposals also include a vast expansion of presidential powers, should Donald Trump win the November presidential race, and the dismantling of a number of federal agencies.

Besides dismantling the Department of Education, Project 25 believes the Justice Department should be brought under direct presidential control, enabling the President to more easily implement policies in various areas, according to the BBC.

It also wants to see an overhaul of the FBI, which it calls a “bloated, arrogant, increasingly lawless organization,” and the dismantling of the Department of Homeland Security.

Among the 900 pages, under The Family Agenda, Project 25 proposes that the Health and Human Services chief should “proudly state that men and women are biological realities.”

It also recommends promoting the message that “married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure because all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them.”

According to papers obtained by Politico, Russell Vought whose organization Center for Renewing America is involved in Project 25, is developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas into a Trump administration should the former president return to power.

Vought’s view on immigration is that permission to stay in the US should depend on whether that incomer “accept[ed] Israel’s God, laws and understanding of history.”

So, is Project 25 really a blueprint for a second Trump administration? And just how influential is the Heritage Foundation, a think tank which has orchestrated it so that their lobbying powers go beyond what is generally considered admissible, according to The Conversation?

The Heritage Foundation sponsored this year’s Republican National Convention, and 70 former and present-day members of the foundation’s staff were working for the Trump administration at least by 2017.

The director of Project 2025, also known as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, Paul Dans has just resigned to focus on getting Donald Trump back into office. During Trump’s first term, he was chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management.

In early July, Trump posted on his social media site Truth Social, “I know nothing about Project 2025.I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”

Clearly attempting to distance himself from the policy plan, Trump ended his message, saying, “Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

But Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, has just come out and praised the vision of Heritage Foundation President, Kevin Roberts in the foreword of Roberts’ forthcoming book, “Dawn’s Early Light.”

“Never before has a figure with Roberts’s depth and stature within the American Right tried to articulate a genuinely new future for conservatism,” writes Vance referring to Roberts’ view that it is time to pick apart America’s institutions and start afresh.

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