2024-08-19 04:50:00
They are against pornography and contraception – and extremely unpopular with voters. Nevertheless, the extremists of Project 2025 could shape a second Trump term.
The most important things at a glance
“Seriously extreme”: This is what Donald Trump publicly calls what a number of his confidants and former employees have published under the name Project 2025 – a plan to restructure the US government according to their right-wing extremist ideas and give the president almost unlimited power.
Trump’s distancing himself comes after a series of media reports that have brought Project 2025 into the public eye. Almost 80 percent of voters are now familiar with the plan. Almost 50 percent believe that Project 2025 describes exactly what Trump wants to achieve. This is a big problem for him: Project 2025 is massively unpopular with voters.
Project 2025 is a plan devised by the conservative Heritage Foundation, a think tank that once saw itself in the tradition of Presidents Bush and Ronald Reagan. Today it stands for the most extremist part of the Trump coalition: religious hardliners. These are their plans – and their contacts, which extend to Trump himself:
The end of the nationwide right to abortion in June 2022 – largely due to judges appointed by Trump – does not go far enough for the authors of Project 2025. For example, they want to ban the “morning-after pill” and actively prevent women from traveling to another state where the procedure is still permitted for an abortion. But that’s not all: Project 2025 wants to ban stem cell research, which would hinder artificial insemination and probably make it impossible in the medium term.
Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, also wants to take action against pornography: “Pornography should be banned,” Roberts writes in an introduction. “Its producers and sellers should be locked up. Teachers who talk about it should be classified as sex offenders.” For Roberts, education about transgender issues or homosexuality also falls under the term pornography – so would be banned in his worldview.
Not officially part of the plan is the end of the so-called “no-fault divorce” system – that is, the right of a person to get divorced without having to give a specific reason. However, a whole series of organizations and consultants from the group’s environment have spoken out in favor of allowing divorce only in extreme cases and at the discretion of a court. This would disadvantage women in particular.
If divorce remains legal, “criminal orphans” will soon be looting America’s cities, writes the American Principles Project, which is close to the Heritage Foundation. The Republican youth organization Turning Point calls divorce “a trigger for degenerate behavior. It has ruined everything.”
Last week, the ProPublica portal published a series of training videos that were actually intended for internal use only. They show how far Project 2025 wants to go. The videos are aimed at employees in the government of “the next conservative president” – Trump’s name is not mentioned.
A number of his former employees have spoken out in support of this. One of them is calling for “drastic changes”. Anyone who is not willing to do this “can stay at home”. Katie Sullivan, who worked in the Justice Department under Trump, calls in the internal videos for a “complete overhaul of the language” regarding gender equality.
Bethany Kozma, who coordinated development aid for Trump, explains in one of the leaked videos: “The administration under a conservative president must erase all references to the word ‘climate change,’ absolutely everywhere.”
Trump himself publicly wants nothing to do with the Heritage Foundation, calling the plans “extreme.” And yet they appear unconcerned: Trump may be publicly distancing himself, but ultimately he is implementing the goals of his group, said one of the heads of the Heritage Foundation, Russell Vought, in another recently surfaced video. Trump even “blessed” the organization.