Yves here. We are overdue on giving a full-bore treatment on Project 2025, but this post will hopefully serve as a starting point. Sadly, ambitious and well-organized right wing campaigns to greatly increase the acceptance of their social and policy agenda have proven to be extremely successful, witness the Powell Memo and the Project for the New American Century.
Trump is the explicit target of this Heritage Foundation scheme. Because the first Trump presidency was very much a “dog that caught the car” event, Trump had perilous little in the way of plans, and on top of that, weak cabinet members. For instance, Steve Mnuchin’s tax reform plan was an embarrassment, barely rising to the level of a napkin doddle. So after that misfire, the Administration took up the anti-tax lobby’s plan, include their off-the-shelf language. Trump might be a tad better prepared to be President if he wins again, but that does not make him any less receptive to pre-packaged programs from his fellow travelers. So this initiative very much bears watching.
By Diana Cariboni, who started writing for Tracking the Backlash in 2018 and is now openDemocracy’s Latin America editor. She was previously co-editor-in-chief of the IPS news agency and led its Latin America desk for more than ten years. She wrote the book ‘Guantánamo Entre Nosotros’ (2017) and won Uruguay’s national press award in 2018. Originally published at openDemocracy
Last month, populist leaders from around the world gathered for the Europa Viva 24 summit in Madrid. Headlines from the event were dominated by the big names in attendance – Argentinian president Javier Milei, France’s Marine Le Pen, Chile’s José Antonio Kast, and Italian and Hungarian prime ministers Giorgia Meloni and Viktor Orbán – and the fact it ended in a diplomatic row between Argentina and Spain.
But away from all of this noise and fury was a lesser-known speaker: Roger Severino, a former official in Donald Trump’s administration and the vice-president for domestic policy at influential US think tank The Heritage Foundation.
In a six-minute speech delivered in Spanish, Severino described Trump as a victim of lawfare launched by “the lefties” and said young people are subjected to a “culture and a medical system” that tells them to “explore all sexual appetites at age of 10” and that “abortion is not about destroying babies but about healthcare”.
Adding that young people are also taught “that if you are uncomfortable with your sex you were probably born in the wrong body, and surgeries can fix that mistake”, he said: “I’m here to tell you that God doesn’t make mistakes.
Severino is one of the architects of the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump term, named ‘Project 2025’. This aims to reshape the federal state in 180 days, fire tens of thousands of public servants and replace them with people loyal to the conservative cause, undermine the separation of powers, attack public education, and erase or restrict the rights of women, LGBTQ people, workers, migrants and Black people.
It also seeks to dismantle policies to tackle climate change and push for an energy agenda reliant on fossil fuels.
Its plan for doing so is set out in the ‘Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise’, an 887-page playbook published by the think tank, whose mission is “to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual liberty, traditional American values, and strong national defence”.
It is not absurd to say that some of the Heritage Foundation’s suggestions may well become law if Trump is elected in November. The politically well-connected organisation was founded in 1973 and published its first ‘Mandate for Leadership’ as Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 – later boasting that Reagan had enacted more than 60% of its policy recommendations.
Severino, who was Trump’s director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, wrote Project 25’s section on health. Of the 199 times the word ‘abortion’ is mentioned throughout the document, 149 are in this chapter, which urges the federal government to remove (or restrict as much as possible) any sexual and reproductive healthcare and rights whose oversight it has responsibility for.
Severino suggests eliminating the approval of abortion pills and banning their distribution by mail; barring the use of federal funds to transport people seeking an abortion in a state where it’s illegal to one where it isn’t; cutting federal funding to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers; and removing emergency contraception from workers’ health insurance coverage.
In contrast, it’s hard to find any proposals to tackle the US’s real public health crises: opioids, falling life expectancyand rising maternal and infant mortality rates. This is perhaps unsurprising; the Heritage Foundation sees the Supreme Court’s overturning of the 1973 Roe decision that protected abortion up to 23 weeks as a victory – but also as “just the beginning”.
In the two years since Roe’s repeal, 21 states have banned or drastically restricted abortion, and legislative and judicial battles are raging in others attempting to follow suit. But the number of abortions carried out annually has actually increased, according to multiple studies – and so grow the dystopian battleplans for the continued war on reproductive autonomy. Several US cities have made it illegal to use their roads to transport people seeking abortions from a state where abortion is prohibited to one where it is permitted.
Project 2025 wants the Department of Health to go further still, urging it to “protect life, conscience and bodily integrity” and place “strong respect for the sacred rights of conscience” at the top of its agenda. Severino’s chapter calls for legislation requiring states to record data on abortions, including the number of terminations carried out, the reasons for them, the method used, the length of the pregnancy, and the state of residence of the person seeking an abortion.
It also suggests that scientific research conducted with public money should focus on “the risks and complications of abortion” and on “correcting and not promoting misinformation about the health and psychological benefits of giving birth compared to the health and psychological risks of intentionally taking a human life through abortion”.
But Project 2025’s focus isn’t only on reproductive health.
The president who takes office in 2025, the foreword says, must “remove from every existing rule, regulatory agency, contract, grant, regulation, and federal law the terms sexual orientation and gender identity, diversity, equity, and inclusion, gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of First Amendment rights” (which protects freedom of religion, freedom of speech and press, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances).
The future government must also “immediately cease the collection of data on gender identity, because it legitimises the unscientific notion that men can become women (and vice versa) and encourages the phenomenon of the constant multiplication of subjective identities”, Severino adds.
An Anti-Rights Past and Future
The Heritage Foundation is not the only highly influential institute involved in the writing of Project 25. Of the 100 organisations that sit on its advisory board or directly contribute to the playbook, several have been crucial to the advancement of extremist agenda in the US in recent decades and years.
In 2018, four years before Roe was overturned, Mississippi banned abortions after 15 weeks in the state – with legislation modelled on a bill conceived by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as an anti-LGBTQ hate group and which sits on the Project 25 advisory board. The law was challenged and stayed by two courts on the grounds that it was unconstitutional because it violated Roe.
The law’s promoters took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, aiming to challenge and ultimately overturn Roe. Their strategy relied on the court having a right-wing majority, which was ensured by Leonard Leo, a conservative lawyer and activist who has founded a network of groups and funding hubs. Leo, who had already been influential in the appointment of three other justices, successfully lobbied Trump to appoint three anti-abortion members to the court – achieving a conservative supermajority of six out of nine justices. Leo’s network of nonprofits has reportedly donated millions of dollars to organisations that sit on the Project 2025 advisory board since 2021.
The result has been that around a third of women of reproductive age in the US, as well as other people who do not identify as women but can get pregnant, now live in a state where abortion is banned or severely restricted, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
The Heritage Foundation, ADF and Leo didn’t answer our requests for comments.
Always good to get a state-of-play article on the “far-right” (male christian nationalist?). I’m thinking about this against a backdrop of perpetual climate disaster and once shiny, now broken institutions. Not sure these hard righties have thought out exactly what’s going to be left to govern, or if a federal government will have any relevancy whatsoever. Think local, I guess. Say hi to your neighbors and take interest in their kids and pets. I’m getting the feeling our worlds are about to get very small.
I guess people who detest government don’t want to govern? For people who don’t want to be controlled, they sure seem to be dedicated to controlling everyone who doesn’t think or choose to live just the way they do.
That’s exactly what the Republicans’ petty-bourgeois base wants. Small worlds where they hold absolute power.
Everybody’s pro-choice until the plebs can’t make babies anymore because of PFAS. Stay tuned for a soft u-turn on abortion once we have Japan’s demographic curve in 20 years…
I think having Japan’s demographic curve will be the least of our problems in 20 years.
If I recall correctly, the Heritage Foundation is also responsible for the scheme that mutated into Obamacare. But where a part of this scheme says that it wants to ‘fire tens of thousands of public servants and replace them with people loyal to the conservative cause’, I am pretty sure that those public servants could launch a massive lawsuit on the grounds of unfair dismissal. Actually, I have seen this movie before. After the Iraq invasion, the Republicans recruited all sorts of people to run Iraq in the Coalition Provisional Authority. If you spoke Arabic or knew about the country, you were thrown out straight away from consideration. One very young guy was put in charge of making the Iraq Stock Exchange with dodgy electricity supplies which I thought hilarious at the time. Candidates in their interview were asked about their views on abortion and I suspect that these new people would be just like them. Young, ignorant and fanatically conservative trying to pound round pegs into square holes.
I think the “young and ignorant” part is a feature not as bug….as it is said.
filling a vast swath of government positions in every federal branch, every jurisdiction, state, municipalities and boards(no matter how small),…… with people who do not see “the handmaids tale” as the worst thing….
While walking around pondering the technicalities of the bible and the lives of “the saints”… and thinking about what they are going to ask Moses, when they see him…
People who really live in a fantasy world, at their core.
And then these core beliefs and superstitions, are molded by popular culture / propaganda / lack of a real education….just indoctrination( when it comes to history, and the meaning of history)….. and they fill the roles of our civil servants…..
I really do think this trend has a lot to do with the utter dysfunction of the US govt, and the world leadership class.
The real leaders, the political class, the oligarchs, have an agenda… they have a real education. They pay smart people to pull stuff off…. and one of the things needed to acquiesce what is for the “good of the people”. to the will of the monied class…. are ignorant middlemen.
Like my mind was blown the other day when I heard someone refer to a person I know ‘ as some kind of expert on china, now at the us embassy in beijing…… I would say if that were even in the direction of being true….. no wonder the us is clueless…. it is a club. a suicide club. hob nobbing with the dignitaries, twice a week…. clueless about anything important, and quite incapable of having an original thought.
we are screwed…
For what it’s worth Trump out on the campaign trail has said that Republicans should deemphasize the abortion issue. Meanwhile the Dems are going to try to make 2024 abortion abortion abortion.
On the ground in states like mine the abortion opponents have had mixed success since the SC ruling. Here’s suggesting the truth is what it has always been. Both parties use the issue for their political benefit but are largely secular in the true aims. Figures liked the divorced Reagan and Trump are hardly standard issue evangelicals. But that’s not going to stop their opponents from using shows like Handmaid’s Tale to fuel the rich PMC fantasy life. As for those secular goals, these days Repubs and Dems seem largely on the same page anyway. The extreme conservatism that Heritage has always represented seems more than a bit out of date.
I would say ALL of them: The D and R parties, Genocide Joe, The DT, HF, AEI etc are ALL firmly right-wing, pro-oligarchy, anti-labor, authoritarian imperialists. It’s the Washington Consensus/Bipartisan Consensus with different country-club factions arguing over superficial, emotional cultural/religious details.
The public have no say in the matter, they must do as they are told, believe the MassMedia nonsense and “vote” for whichever freak they choose for us. The public must also take part in the contrived spectacle and choose a “side” so they are divided, ruled and act like good little debt peons. And we are supposed to believe this is “freedom and democracy” in true Orwellian fashion.
Heh heh, sing it. Oh, it’s “vote harder”, like “I voted so hard I pulled my opinion!”.
Clinton had majorities in both houses 1992-1994, Obama 2008-2010. Did they use the opportunity to pass a law legalizing abortion at the federal level? Of course not, that would take away one of the fake “cultural” issues for the duopoly to fight over. Clinton was the one who fully brought in neoliberalism and free trade with China.
Trump is a classic NY liberal, but an outsider to the elite of the elite. His major mentor was Cohen, a homosexual (also a horrible person, nothing to do with his sexual orientation). He, and most of the “right wing” can always send their precious abroad for an abortion/vacation/study abroad so don’t care what they impose on the plebs. Dick Cheney is fully accepting of his lesbian daughter. Biden’s best congressional buddy was an utterly racist misogynist sexual assaulter (women tended to stay away from elevators he was in).
Its all smoke and mirrors. As Gramsci correctly noted when the manufacturing of consent fails (i.e. “democracy”) authoritarian and fascist policies follow. Obama continued on and extended the work that Bush/Cheney did and Biden has stayed on that journey. Undermining democracy is a bi-partisan policy, covered up with fake cultural disagreements.
Uniparty! Two sides of the one, alloy -laden- weighed- and- found- wanting coin.
My old poli sci prof called it Tweedle Dumb, and Tweedle Dumber.
Ah, Cohen. McCarthy’s henchman and also legal adviser to Rupert Murdoch. I think it was Murdoch who introduced Trump to Cohen, though it could have been the other way round. Birds of a feather.
Nasty piece of work. Claimed to be the inventor of the ploy that, when you have caused someone injury, sue them.
Roy Cohn, not Cohen. sorry to be pedantic
David Koch may’ve lost in 1980 when he ran as VP on the libertarian ticket, but his platform didn’t. Granting capitalists unchecked power over these past 50 years is why everything has become so perilously out of kilter. Project 2025 is a declaration to hold the course, no matter how zombiesque neoliberalism has become. In fact, Biden could be the poster child of this discredited economic policy, still roaming the world.
How David Koch’s 1980 Fantasy Became America’s Current Reality
Power couples shouldn’t be the sole directors of huge swaths of natural monopolies:
Meet the uber-wealthy families who control much of the food system in the US and Australia
How This Billionaire Couple STOLE California’s Water Supply
John Oliver covered Project 2025 on Sunday’s episode of his show. Well worth your time.
Search Youtube: Trump’s Second Term: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
Oliver–slayer of sitting ducks.
He was good on the Daily Show.
What is Project 2025 urging Trump to do about the few parts of government that actually serve the needs of the people: the Post Office, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the FTC, the EPA, etc.? Is this going to be another slash and/or privatize feeding frenzy? I’m a lot more concerned about that than their desire to promote pseudo-Christian fundamentalist enclaves in the southern and midwestern/plains states without federal interference.
It is the Heritage Foundation; think Russia in the Nineties.
The plan is to get them declared unconstitutional by SCOTUS. The logic being its un-legislated taxation and spending.
I think if Democrats use abortion issue they will lose alot of older black voters what they take for granted, black older folks are very religious to the extreme that it surprise me that most of them dont vote republicans. I remember when i was in Florida and my preacher from jamaica the way he talked about LGBTQ people would make you sick. They are very conservative
I don’t care about any of this. Death to America. Just let the Global Cannibal eat its own citizens. Who cares. Go outside and appreciate a tree before they’re all turned to ash and swim in the lakes before they are so fulled with PFAS even your testicles complain.
Turned to ash – just like the ash trees.
The emerald ash borer has killed like 90%+ of all ash trees here in the Finger Lakes region. Sad. This time of year driving along any highway (especially the Thruway) you can see the ash trees all over- they are the leafless dead branches surrounded by living trees with leaves.
Here in Outer Pentagonia the doomed ashes put out one Last Hurrah of seeds. Their abundant progeny, now 10-15 years old, stand 10-25 feet high. Will the EAB return with a vengance before this current generation reaches arboreal puberty? It seems we’ll have to wait and see.
You have my vote.
The nasty neofeudal society that this 887 page Mandate for Leadership imagines will certainly kill what remains of imperium Americana. BRIC et al planners must observe with the same astonishment as when the US manufacturing base was handed over. And certainly are quietly saying, when the planetary sociopath is committing suicide, don’t interfere.
One of the three proverbial curses is: may you get what you want!
Would that it were so simple. Any right-wing agenda like this will also bleat that the US military is “weak” because (1) Democrats defunded Defense (hahaha) and (2) we need to kick out all the pansies and replace them with Manly Men.
But that’s just the BS used to sell their real plans. The Heritage Plan is explicit about promoting the NeoCon practice of “personnel is policy”, and they would undoubtedly apply that to the military services, too. I’d expect many officers promoted during the Biden (or Obama) Admin to get pushed out and replaced with more ideologically (and racially!) “pure” officers. Think Dick Cheney on steroids.
They *might* be a little more sensible than [NeoCon Lite] Biden about getting the US military into stupid wars in places they don’t care about (Ukraine?), but that does *not* mean a less belligerent Foreign Policy.
First, they will have no qualms about fully backing Israel against the Palestinians, Hezbollah, and ultimately Iran, regardless of the cost in lives (Arab, Persian, or American) or money (“real men go to Teheran”). Prediction: the sinking of a US Aircraft Carrier will be used to get public opinion behind a large-scale (possibly nuclear) missile attack on Iran.
Second, the US military will be used a *lot* in Latin America. A “DMZ” (De-Migrantized Zone) could be set up on [the Mexican side of] our Southern border. And they have already talked about using US troops against Mexican Drug Cartels, so how about a reboot of the Pancho Villa Expedition? Then it shouldn’t be too hard to get Guyana or Colombia to ask for some help against Venezuela. And what the heck, let’s take [back?] Cuba. (bonus prediction: cooperative locals will be able to earn US citizenship after 4-6 years of US military service…)
Third, a compliant Supreme Court will find ways around the Posse Comitatus problem, so the US military can “protect” us from threats like BLM and Antifa…
Sure, in the long run, these things will only worsen the economic and social decline of the USA. But in the short/medium run (a couple decades?) we are likely to be more willing to use military power against weak neighbors (of the US and Israel).
So, yeah, be careful what you wish for…
The empire will never recover from this collapse. Basically, the only way for the US to recover its industrial power, and therefore its military, is via some form of socialism. These people will never accede to that. If we ever do end up with some form of socialism, people like this will be nowhere near the levers of power.
The USA has long had a covert “form of socialism”, but only for people in (or honorably discharged from) the Military. VA hospitals are the most obvious example, but there are many others. US military bases have (relatively?) cheap housing, and PX’s where most goods are sold below public costs (I think?). Bases have sports fields, swimming pools, etc for military families; there’s even a golf course near my house run by (and for) the US Navy.
I don’t begrudge veterans (and active-duty personnel) those benefits (though the golf course does seem like a waste of my tax dollars). But we should admit that we have “Socialism” for Veterans… only. That’s something of a refinement of Bismarck’s original formula, with some big advantages (for the rich): lower taxes and lower wages.
And yeah, the Big War Machine needs lotsa manufactured parts, which useta mean big factories, which meant Unions, but now there are other options. I expect to see a lot of investment in heavily automated manufacturing in the USA, *and* a revival of the Maquiladora program in Latin American countries – after US military “advisors” eliminate any “socialist” opposition there.
And again, of course, that won’t work for the long run, but it would work fine (for our Oligarchs) for 2-3 decades…
I was starting to be convinced that Project 2025 was a serious threat until I got to the end and found this –
“…other people who do not identify as women but can get pregnant…”
Now I’m not sure which side is more hysterical. That kind of linguistic butchery is not helpful to any cause.
I like the phrase “pregnancy outcomes” – as used in the abortion debate. Doesn’t carry the same connotation.
Well, it has to come out, one way or another.
I think what they meant is women who transform to men but still can have a child if they want. I think i saw a document about this 2000
Exactly! Beat me to it.
Trans is the wedge issue – on both sides – but if you look at the quote higher up in the article it seems the 2025 people wants to use that wedge issue to go after sexuality and gender equality.
Which probably means it was never about trans people at all.
Abortion? That would be that right that the Supreme Court jeopardized by reversing Roe, but that the Democrats did nothing about despite controlling both houses of Congress and the Presidency for a good 8 months or so after the fact, right? Sounds more like a Democratic failure of political will than a “Project 2025” issue.
Then again, nothing in this piece dissuades me from the suspicion that “Project 2025” is more Democratic fearmongering.
I believe there is something much more profound happening in a portion of the right populist base as well as an even smaller portion of the left populist base then the potential future implementation of some (what I would call) the old-style think-tank agenda now being advocated by the traditionally uni-party right usual suspects.
It is a sentiment that is built around the question of how far do each of us have to walk away from the now totally fake political, cultural and economic world all of us presently inhabit. (see the writings and reflections of Paul Kingsnorth).
Could you elaborate or provide a more direct source from Kingsnorth? I’m familiar with Kingsnorth although recently the discussions I read/hear with him center more around his switch to religion. I’ve made some passing (and sad) notes of some of these older environmentalists coming to grips with the reality that the “environmental movement” was defeated by Rush Limbaugh and some of the ways in which they have reoriented their mindset. I’m curious about the sentiment you are mentioning and the details, etc. Thanks.
Taibbi and Kirn, public excerpt:
America This Week, June 14, 2024: “Elections and Dragons”
https://www.racket.news/p/america-this-week-june-14-2024-elections
But, what is actually the project of this abnormal people? They are looking exactly for what? Are they trying that a massive escape from US to anywhere takes place? I don’t understand the point of all this insanity.
The figures (of their own, I mean, Western ones) does not make sense nor match, in China were sold 26 million cars, vs the 15.5 in the US last year, and China made 30 million cars vs ~11 million the US. In China were sold 434 million smartphones vs 144 in the US. China consumes twice meat and eight times more fish than US, luxury articles sold twice in value in China, China produced twice the electricity of the US, 12 times steel and 22 times concrete. Chinese shipyards made half the world ships.
Maybe you can think it is not surprising since China has 1.4 billion people and the US .37, but these figures make clear that China is far ahead of the US, you can take any field you want, simply the official figures were China is merely a 25% ahead the US in GDP PPP cannot match with these facts.
So what do they want? That everybody emigrates to China? It is happen now, and it will happen more and more in the future, and the people who will escape from the US will be precisely the richer, the most qualified and capacited. They are working to achieve exactly the absolutely contrary they say the want.
If anyone can explain…
The description of the article mentioned changes to Draft policy, which I assumed meant The Draft for military service.
But I didn’t see it mentioned in the article anywhere. Am I missing something?
“This aims to reshape the federal state in 180 days, fire tens of thousands of public servants and replace them with people loyal to the conservative cause,”
You say this as if it was a bad thing. Don”t worry. After that, civil servants will go from 95% liberal to 93% liberal. I think it is too many conservatives for you, but relax.
“Project 2025: The US Far-Right Plan to Undermine Democracy and Rights Globally”
This is what US has been doing for decades
“as well as other people who do not identify as women but can get pregnant,”. There is no such thing and deep down you know it. This is why you don’t say “men”, but use the weasel expression “do not identify as women”, because you know that they are deluded women.
Next time you can deny the law of gravity as sexist and say things fall up or “they fall towards a direction that they do not identify as down”
It must be tiring to always be brainwashing oneself to deny science, reality and one’s eyes to believe some absurdities, only because you feel like a good person for claiming 2+2 =5.
I think I understand your point of view. Where I disagree is if thousands are fired, you said, “After that, civil servants will go from 95% liberal to 93% liberal.”
The government departments like the EPA, FDA, NHS, IRS, FAA, SSA, SEC, and many others, are filled with professionals who are well educated and often trained as scientists, engineers, researchers, and financial experts. Most of these people are dedicated to helping their fellow Americans, and I would add relatively apolitical.
We can all argue about who was appointed to head an agency, like Dr. Fauci for example, but the career scientists at the NHS often perform a valuable service. We should better appreciate what they do.
What the right wing calls freedom, means nobody has a right to challenge the business class which government experts are easily capable of doing.
I hope to see more about Project 2025. There’s a bit much here on abortion and LGBQ issues. The pro-life crowd believes life begins at conception. The pro-choice crowd can’t make a rational argument to prove it’s false and the pro-life crowd can’t make a rational argument to prove it’s true. Compromise is supposedly the political solution to intractable problems; not easy when both sides are dug in.
It’s my understanding, the SCt didn’t ban abortion, it said the Constitution doesn’t give the right to it. The June 2022 decision found the Dems in control of both houses of congress and Biden as President. Yet, the Dems did not codify abortion because they lacked the will and votes.
Furthermore, if some swinging dick wants to use the woman’s bathroom or shower and join their swim team because he was born in the wrong body, is that a top priority for the left?
There’s more to Project 2025 and smaller government. The real unsung heroes are the career bureaucrats who fill the different departments. The head of the EPA, for example, is appointed by the president, but like other agencies, it’s run by experts who have often devoted their lives to the agency. By removing thousands of people from government, they will make government powerless against the business class.
Moreover, I expect the P25 bunch will trash the filibuster and ignore the Senate Parliamentarian to get what they want.
Lastly, stop dignifying these people as conservatives. Real conservatives prioritise individual responsibility over rights. However, any group that wants to restore traditional American values is not conservative, they are reactionaries. Besides, the original Constitution was notably anti-democratic.
The Heritage Foundation don’t seem to understand their own ‘Mission Statement’ – particularly the bit about ‘individual freedom’ – given this Project’s stated aims of erasing or restricting “the rights of women, LGBTQ* people, workers, migrants and Black people.”
In both a theoretical and practical sense there can be no purer form of individual freedom than self-identification. A right wing libertarian concept based on Anarcho-Capitalism which deifies the ideology of the sovereign individual in a way that those such as Ayan Rand and ‘no such thing as society’ Margaret Thatcher could only dream about. Particularly when gullible UI who only self-identify as being of the ‘left’ are doing all the heavy lifting in undermining and atomising class politics for this extreme right wing individualist and reductionist concept.
Indeed, the concept of this supposed ‘individual freedom’ set out in the Heritage Foundation mission statement is expanded by other extremist right thinkers pushing the ideology of the Sovereign Individual like Reese-Mogg and Davison in their book of the same name.
It seems at least counter intuitive for powerful and influential groups like the Heritage Foundation to be targeting for effective elimination ideas and groups which epitomise the very essence of their own extremist right wing philosophy. Particularly when those ideas and the groups pushing them provide themselves as willing lucrative cash cows to predatory Big Pharma interests – via the drugs and butchery of the Conversion Therapy targeting of vulnerable young same sex attracted children – as well as those Big Tech Corporations pushing the anti-human Transhumanism Cult.
But I guess the political right can be just as confused, contradictory and clueless about the basic systemic concepts they claim as exclusive to themselves as those overly vociferous virtue signalers pretending to be on the political left who are in reality blithely pushing such right wing ideas and concepts such as self-id.
*Lumping diverse groups with very different aims and interests under a single label merely serves to bury some very problematic realities. The BAME label fell into this trap and has, for those reasons, been adapted. The same process is presently underway with many from the LGB community seeking divorce from the TQ.
Whenever I hear someone promoting a ‘return to traditional American values,’ I think: what, like killing off the inhabitants of vast swathes of land so that your ‘American’ group can move in and live there?
Or, buying and selling humans with a different skin color to work your agricultural plantations (see paragraph above)?
Or encouraging large numbers of people from other countries to move to ‘America’ so that you can then use their labor (at a cheap rate) to: cut down immense forests, dam rivers, build and work in gigantic factories, blast out great holes in the earth to extract coal? And then call out armed militias to shoot them when they attempt to organize and demand better working condition? And, if that doesn’t work, close the factories, fire all the workers, send the jobs to China, and sell the desperate people drugs to alleviate their misery.
OK, it’s also the America that prioritized free education through college, built clean water and sewage systems in our cities, and established Public Health agencies. Oh, wait ……!
At least the Republican right has the good manners to publicly disclose their agenda, while the Democrat right (no such thing as a Democrat left) cloaks their destructive agenda in pinkwashing and cultural appropriation, sold by the appropriate front person.
Witness the role of Karine Jean-Pierre (black [x] female [x] lesbian [x]) acting as spokesperson for Genocide Joe.
Hey Karine, there IS NO PRIDE IN GENOCIDE.
Before castigating the “far right”, keep in mind the Democrat right’s essential role in passing 1993 NAFTA, the 1994 Crime Act, the 1996 “Welfare Reform” act, 1996 Telecommunications “Reform” act, and the 1999 Clinton declaration that the Glass-Steal act regulating banks was dead, and of course the failure of Democrats over decades to protect reproductive rights when they had the chance.
IMO, it’s unfortunate that the OP focuses so much on the Culture War aspects of the Heritage plan. The GOP *always* uses those issues to get votes, then enacts the changes it really cares about (mostly eliminating taxes and regulations).
I’m far more scared by the prospect of the GOP taking direct control over our Military and National Security bureaucracies. The thing about replacing thousands of Federal bureaucrats with hand-picked ideologues comes straight from the NeoCon playbook (“personnel is policy”); think Dick Cheney on steroids.
Under the Heritage plan, I expect far more direct action from the US military, but focused more tightly on (1) the Middle East and (2) Latin America. There will be plenty of bluster about ChinaChinaChina, but the only action in that theatre will be covert political and kinetic action against the Eurasian infrastructure China is trying to build. The real action will be against Iran, Mexico, Venezuela, and Cuba, and it won’t be covert.
Most of us here don’t like the NeoCon Lite policies of the Biden Admin, but that’s just child’s play compared to what the Heritage plan would entail.
I also expect a pliant Supreme Court to undermine Posse Comitatus, so we will see US troops patrolling US streets – especially on election days…