Project 2025 – Where Polarity Thrives
/I carefully studied Project 2025 simply because I wanted to understand what people were talking about; I had no idea what to expect. Halfway through the 920-page document, I realized how much I have to learn about the executive branch of our federal government, responsible for enforcing the laws of our country. By the time I came to the final page, though, I was crystal clear about one thing: Seething hatred and unbridled anger are lurking in those pages, suggesting an absolute dichotomy between “good” and “bad.” It seems I might have stumbled upon the nest where our nation’s bitter polarization thrives. Even worse, I couldn’t help but feel that all that anger and hatred was directed right at me.
Permit me to explain: Never before had I confronted such a barrage of accusations and denigration of liberals... progressives... “woke” people. In fact, I encountered that word “woke” more than two dozen times in this “mandate for leadership” – always proffered with a sneer, clearly meant to mock and scorn, and I asked myself: What does this angry discourse have to do with me? Finally I Googled the darned thing and learned that “woke” means, sensitive to social and political injustice; aware of inequalities like sexism, racism, and denial of LGBTQ+ rights. And I thought, well, doggone it – that’s me! I’m woke! This barrage is aimed at me!
Once I’d caught my breath, I realized what this diatribe meant: These are people who hate me for the values fundamental to my identity. Yes, I’m liberal and progressive and – I guess – woke. Here’s how I know:
I have three sisters: Two have husbands, and one has a wife. I love all my sisters and all of their spouses.
I have four nephews: Three have wives, and one has a husband. I love all my nephews and all of their spouses.
Two of my sisters are white, and one is Black – and I love all my sisters.
When I walk my little dog around the block and greet my neighbors, within the space of one block I say “Hello,” “Hola,” and “Salaam.” And I like it that way.
Within a stone’s throw of my home are neighbors from Mexico, Columbia, Afghanistan and Haiti – and I like it that way. My neighbors across the street are Hmong, and I love them. Some of my neighbors speak no English, but we’ve found a way to communicate and become friends.
Teaching citizenship classes for Somali immigrants was one of the greatest privileges of my life. Helping Afghan refugees get comfortable in Green Bay makes me happy!
Visiting with my neighbor’s grandchild, who was a girl when I met her but has now happily transitioned to the boy he always knew he was – with the open-minded, open-hearted support of his parents – brings me joy.
Yeah, I guess that’s “progressive.” I guess that’s “liberal.” So I guess I’m “woke.” And, sadly, sadly, I’m therefore hated. Now, having studied Project 2025 in its entirety, I must acknowledge the bitterness and contempt I found in that diatribe. I’m sorry. This is not what I intended when I started. I always planned, however, to reveal the major themes I found in the “mandate” and then take some time to summarize each section to the best of my ability. So let’s go ahead and start with the overriding themes, as rancorous as they are. Here’s what I found.
Anti-Left
Let’s start with the invective against “the Left” or “Leftists,” because I encountered it over and over again, no matter what the supposed focus of any particular section. In fact, the introduction to the manifesto includes this screed: “We can rescue our kids, reclaim our culture, revive our economy, and defeat the anti-American Left at home and abroad... Today the Left is threatening the tax-exempt status of churches and charities that reject woke progressivism... the woke Left seeks a world... in which they exercise dictatorial powers over all nations...” The author recommends we consider “the Left’s love affair with environmental extremism,” which he calls “a pseudo-religion meant to baptize liberals’ ruthless pursuit of absolute power in the holy water of environmental virtue.” Then he turns to morality: “When the founders spoke of ‘pursuit of Happiness’ ...they meant...‘pursuit of Blessedness,’” he explains. “Religious devotion and spirituality are the greatest sources of happiness around the world... To the Left, these... are just ...signs of our moral depravity and intellectual inferiority – proof that, in fact, we need a ruling elite making decisions for us.” He concludes that “ultimately the Left does not believe that everyone is created equal – they think they are special.”
Well, that’s a heck of a way to get started on a 900+ page document, don’t you think? I was rather shaken. But there’s more. In the introduction to Section One: Taking the Reins of Government, I encountered another jeremiad: “Whether it be... efforts to keep Americans from driving gas cars or using gas stoves, or efforts to defund the police, indoctrinate schoolchildren, alter beloved books, abridge free speech, undermine the colorblind ideal, or deny the biological reality that there are only two sexes, the Left’s steady stream of insanity appears to be never-ending.”
Am I to conclude this man considers me both insane and elitist? I’ve never suggested we should defund the police or alter books or teach children fake science – yet I can’t help but feel this is aimed at me. It’s hard not to feel outraged at this onslaught.
The plan for the Intelligence Community also attacks the Left: “Corporate America, technology companies, research institutions, and academia must... [avoid] the tendency to cave to the left-wing activists and investors who ignore the China threat and... dominate the corporate world...” Even the report on the Public Broadcasting System falls into the anti-Left trope: “...public broadcasting immediately became a liberal forum for public affairs and journalism... [According to Pew Research] 25 percent of PBS’s audience is ‘mostly liberal,’ and 35 percent is ‘consistently liberal’... NPR’s audience is even to the Left of that, with 67 percent liberal... compared with 12 percent conservative...”
So, my liberal friends are spending their time listening to National Public Radio – and that’s bad? Apparently so. This is not what I was expecting in a mandate for leadership.
I’m afraid the section on U.S. Agency for International Development quickly degenerates into a raw, nasty attack on the liberal Left: “USAID now aggressively promotes abortion on demand [as] ‘sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights,’ ‘gender equality,’ and ‘women’s empowerment’” The author actually asserts that the Left has “misused and altered the definition of what a ‘woman’ is.” He says women “have been erased globally along with the values and traditional structures that have supported them... The Left has commandeered the term ‘gender,’ which used to mean either ‘male’ or ‘female.’” We are told the Left is promoting “gender radicalism...”
Well, it rather takes my breath away. Here I was, hoping to understand a conservative perspective on our international aid program, and this is what I found. So all that scientific information I learned about sex and gender from the PhD biologist at the local university is just hogwash? Because...I’m a Lefty? I wonder what scientific data, if any, is being tapped here.
Following that, I wasn’t surprised, then, when even the Department of Education fell into the same pattern. The author calls the Department “a convenient one-stop shop for the woke education cartel.” She says the next president should “shutter it and return control of education to the states.” The author refers to a “left-wing social-engineering agenda—the most assertive in history,” claiming it “empowers race, gender, and climate-change activists at the expense of American workers.” She warns, “[Don’t] buttress a higher education establishment captured by woke ‘diversicrats’.”
Um – that’s about our Department of Education? It’s so Leftist we should “shutter it”? And all I wanted to understand was how these nice folks from the Heritage Foundation expect Donald Trump to run the government “starting on Day One.”
And then I read Jonathan Berry’s commentary on the Department of Labor, and what is the message there? Berry says “regulatory pressure and eager human resources offices ... [have made] labor and employment policy... institutionally oriented toward ‘woke’ goals.” He advises the next president to “replace ‘woke’ nonsense with a healthy vision of the role of labor policy in our society, starting with the American family.” As I read on, even the Department of Treasury was reflexively accused of “mission drift into a ‘woke’ agenda.”
Anti-Equity
I also noticed an interesting use of the word “equity.” In fact, it’s those quotation marks that caught my eye repeatedly. The word was regularly set off in quotation marks, as if equity isn’t a real thing. Know what I mean? For example, let’s say someone tells a really bad joke, and so you report that Gerald told a “joke” – suggesting, through use of quotation marks, that it was anything but a joke. Or how about this? You save five cents on a package of bratwurst, and you tell people it was a helluva “discount.” You know what I mean. And so I found it a bit unsettling that equity was so often written as “equity” – as if it’s not a real thing. And this concept was singled out for attention more than three dozen times.
Interestingly, Kevin D. Roberts, who wrote the introduction to Section One: Taking the Reins of Government, claims, “America is now divided between...woke revolutionaries and those who believe in the ideals of the American revolution,” and he also has a lot to say about equity and all the things it seems to suggest to him: “[We must delete] the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI), diversity, equity, and inclusion,” he advises, and reduce “taxpayer subsidization of leftist agendas’ gender, gender equality, gender equity.” He says those words and phrases must be taken out “of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.” Well, that’s pretty clear.
Christopher Miller, advising the next president about the Department of Defense, cautions the next administration to “eliminate Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs and abolish...diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff... [and the] politically driven top-down focus on ... climate change...” So, clearly, I’m not making this stuff up. These are recurring themes, right?
The introduction to Section Three: The General Welfare advises the next president to reverse “Biden’s focus on ‘LGBTQ+ equity’... encouraging marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood, and nuclear families.” Within the discussion of the National Institutes of Health is a subsection called “Woke Policies” that simply directs that the “NIH Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion... should be abolished.” Gene Hamilton, writing about the Department of Justice, asserts that President Biden “has enshrined affirmative discrimination in all aspects of its operations under the guise of ‘equity.” He advises: “reverse these trends.”
And on it goes. We’re talking about the future of Defense, Agriculture, and the National Institutes of Health here! And it’s all about the dangers of equity? Not what I expected in a mandate for leadership.
Jonathan Berry’s treatise on the Department of Labor includes this nugget: “Biden ...has pushed ‘racial equity’ in every area of our national life,” as if that’s something bad! Even a discussion of the Federal Highway Administration refers to Biden’s “focus on ‘equity.’” The Department of the Treasury authors get downright serious, calling for “Reversal of the racist ‘equity’ agenda of the Biden Administration.” They recommend that “the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion should be closed... expose and eradicate the practice of critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) throughout the Treasury Department...”
Critical Race Theory???
You’ve likely noticed that “critical race theory” and “CRT” also find their way into those sermons. That’s another of the major themes I discovered. Now, I know a thing or two about Critical Race Theory because I took it upon myself to learn about it a couple years ago. Again, I wanted to know what people were talking about – talking without knowing, themselves, what they were talking about, it seemed. You can read my work on CRT right here in the Speakeasy, but let me share just a few plum declarations I found about that topic here in this Mandate for Leadership.
Roger Severino, writing about the Office for Civil Rights within the Department of Health and Human Services, urges the next president to “pursue race discrimination claims against entities that adopt or impose... critical race theory...” Lindsey M. Burke, in her advice regarding the Department of Education, claims that “educators at Department of Defense schools ... world[wide] are using radical gender theory and critical race theory in ... lessons” which, she says, “discards biology [for] political indoctrination...applies [CRT’s] core tenets advocating for more racial discrimination... indoctrinate[s] students with radical ideas about race and the ambiguous concept of ‘gender.’...”
And Gender – Oh, my!
That “gender” thing is a big deal too. I’ll offer just a few examples. Apparently the Executive Office of the President includes an Office of Science and Technology and a Gender Policy Council. The incoming president is advised to “immediately revoke Executive Order 1402041 and every policy... related to the ... Gender Policy Council and its subsidiary issues. [That] would eliminate central promotion of abortion (‘health services’); comprehensive sexuality education (‘education’); and the new woke gender ideology [including] ‘gender affirming care’ and ‘sex-change’ surgeries on minors.”
In discussing the Department of Defense, Miller advises: “those with gender dysphoria should be expelled from military service.” He advises the next administration to “reverse policies that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military.” He calls it “incompatible with the demands of military service,” saying “use of public monies for transgender surgeries or... abortion for servicemembers should be ended.”
Mike Primorac, discussing the Agency for International Development, warns that “USAID often ties DEI to ‘gender and climate equity,’ corrupting every aspect of the agency’s overseas work.” His suggestion? “Rename the USAID Office of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE) as the USAID Office of Women, Children, and Families” and, he says, “redesignate the Senior Gender Coordinator as an unapologetically pro-life... Senior Coordinator of the Office of Women, Children, and Families.”
He further advises the new president to “...rescind... Biden’s 2022 Gender Policy and refocus it on Women, Children, and Families.” He wants to remove all references to “‘gender,’ ‘gender equality,’ ‘gender equity,’ ‘gender diverse individuals,’ ‘gender aware,’ ‘gender sensitive,’ etc...” After warning about “controversial sexual education materials,” Primorac continues: “The Left has commandeered the term ‘gender,’ which used to mean either ‘male’ or ‘female,’ to include a spectrum of others who are seeking to alter biological and societal sexual norms... [promoting] gender radicalism.” He claims this “produces unnecessary consternation and confusion among and even outright bias against men.” Oh, my!
And there’s more, folks.
And now I’ve heard it all. Surely I have – except that other recurring themes plague this manifesto, and I can’t expect you to endure examples of every one of them. So let me just mention a few and assure you that more articles on the Mandate for Leadership will be coming, and you’ll probably see some of these themes front and center in that work. They include:
Climate change and climate change conspiracy
Progressive and progressives
Fossil fuels, EV (electric vehicles), and Leftist energy policy (including those “eye sore” windmills)
Faith, religion, Christianity, and faith-based groups
China. China. China – on just about every page: China!
Where is the well-reasoned analysis?
But now I will let you go, with at least an introduction to the shocking themes I found, the negative strands running through this document that so disappointed me. I launched this project intending to grow in understanding of the conservative perspective, believing I would surely find well-reasoned analysis and at least a measure of objectivity. I expected cautions about spending money needlessly, making changes without forethought, getting carried away by good intentions, straying from the straight and narrow... What I have found, I fear, is a den of hostility where antipathy blooms. I am so sad.
So, what’s next? I have curated a 200-page abstract of Project 2025 and have sent it to several willing readers. Their task is to read and respond to any section that speaks to their interests or expertise and tell me what they think. My plan is to reveal to you, the Speakeasy reader, a summary of the different sections of this Mandate for Leadership, including the commentary offered by my collaborators. Perhaps we can manage to publish one each week? We’ll see. Keep checking back at the Speakeasy, but know that I am deeply troubled at this point to have already stumbled into what appears to be a hotbed of hatred.