The Paranoid and Unhinged Rhetoric of Project 2025

“Most alarming of all, the very moral foundations of our society are in peril.” Project 2025, page 1.

Fliers posted around Milwaukee by the Democratic National Committee highlight some of the consequences of a second Donald Trump presidency as the GOP prepare to hold the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 13, 2024. (Bill Clark / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Project 2025 is a wishlist of rightwing policy goals for the next conservative president. Authored by the Heritage Foundation with the support from over 100 far-right organizations, Project 2025’s 887-page policy plan is a roadmap to guide what they describe as “the next conservative President’s last opportunity to save our republic.” 

The paranoid rhetoric of Project 2025 is stunning. I took a dive into the Project 2025 cesspool and fished out some of the choicest morsels, which I’ve organized into several categories: rebuilding the patriarchal family; ending sex discrimination … against men; reproductive rights and wrongs; demonizing our enemies; oil and gas will save the country; and eliminating government as we know it. Enjoy!

Rebuilding the Patriarchal Family

On “natural” families:

“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.”

—p. 489

The next [Health and Human Services] secretary should reverse the Biden Administration’s focus on ‘LGBTQ+ equity,’ subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work and penalizing marriage, replacing such policies with those encouraging marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood and nuclear families.

Project 2025, p. 316

Ending support for single mothers:

“The next [Health and Human Services] secretary should reverse the Biden Administration’s focus on ‘LGBTQ+ equity,’ subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work and penalizing marriage, replacing such policies with those encouraging marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood and nuclear families.”

—p. 316

On gender roles in parenting:

“For the sake of child well-being, programs should affirm that children require and deserve both the love and nurturing of a mother and the play and protection of a father.”

—p. 481

On funding patriarchal marriage:

“Protect faith-based grant recipients from religious liberty violations and maintain a biblically based, social science–reinforced definition of marriage and family.”

—p. 481

With parental consent and proper training, certain young adults should be allowed to learn and work in more dangerous occupations.

Project 2025, p. 595

On the harms of childcare:

“Children who spend significant time in day care experience higher rates of anxiety, depression and neglect as well as poor educational and developmental outcomes. Instead of providing universal day care, funding should go to parents either to offset the cost of staying home with a child or to pay for familial, in-home childcare.”

—p. 486

On child labor:

“With parental consent and proper training, certain young adults should be allowed to learn and work in more dangerous occupations.”

—p. 595

Ending Sex Discrimination … Against Men

On eliminating gender equality:

“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation and piece of legislation that exists.”

—p. 4

On sex discrimination against men:

“Under Francis Collins, NIH became so focused on the #MeToo movement that it refused to sponsor scientific conferences unless there were a certain number of women panelists, which violates federal civil rights law against sex discrimination. This quota practice should be ended, and the NIH Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, which pushes such unlawful actions, should be abolished.”

—p. 462

On bias against men:

“The promotion of gender radicalism is anathema to the traditional norms of many societies where USAID works, causes resentment by tying lifesaving assistance to rejecting the aid recipient’s own firmly held fundamental values regarding sexuality, and produces unnecessary consternation and confusion among and even outright bias against men.”

—p. 259

Reproductive Rights and Wrongs

On forcing traumatized minors to give birth:

“Pregnant, unaccompanied girls in ORR [Office of Refugee Resettlement] custody should be treated with dignity, not trafficked across state lines to be victimized by the abortion industry. ORR should withdraw its policy of allowing elective abortions for children in ORR care and issue a new policy of instructing care providers not to allow girls to be transported for elective abortions.”

—p. 478

On the rhythm method:

“CDC should update its public messaging about the unsurpassed effectiveness of modern fertility awareness–based methods (FABMs) of family planning and stop publishing communications that conflate such methods with the long-eclipsed ‘rhythm’ or ‘calendar’ methods. CDC should fund studies exploring the evidence-based methods used in cutting-edge fertility awareness.”

—p. 455

On abortion surveillance:

“Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism, HHS should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method.”

—p. 455

On “ideological distractions” at the Veterans Administration:

“For the first time, the VA is allowing access to abortion services, a medical procedure unrelated to military service that the VA lacks the legal authority and clinical proficiency to perform. In addition to continuing the grotesque culture of violence against the child in the womb, these sociopolitical initiatives and ideological indoctrinations distract from the department’s core missions.”

—p. 643

On promoting junk science:

“HHS should create and promote a research agenda that supports pro-life policies and explores the harms, both mental and physical, that abortion has wrought on women and girls.”

—p. 461

“NIH… should fund studies into the short-term and long-term negative effects of cross-sex interventions, including ‘affirmation,’ puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries, and the likelihood of desistence if young people are given counseling that does not include medical or social interventions.”

—p. 462

“[The CDC] should fund studies into the risks and complications of abortion and ensure that it corrects and does not promote misinformation regarding the comparative health and psychological benefits of childbirth versus the health and psychological risks of intentionally taking a human life through abortion.”

—p. 455

On locking up librarians and banning porn:

“Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”

—p. 6

Oil and Gas Will Save the Country!

What environmental problem?

“America’s vast reserves of oil and natural gas are not an environmental problem; they are the lifeblood of economic growth.”

—p. 13

Ending climate-change research:

“Downsize the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. OAR provides theoretical science, as opposed to the applied science of the National Hurricane Center. OAR is, however, the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism. The preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded.”

—p. 676

Climate change policy as “anti-human”:

“At its very heart, environmental extremism is decidedly anti-human. Stewardship and conservation are supplanted by population control and economic regression. Environmental ideologues would ban the fuels that run almost all of the world’s cars, planes, factories, farms, and electricity grids. Abandoning confidence in human resilience and creativity in responding to the challenges of the future would raise impediments to the most meaningful human activities. They would stand human affairs on their head, regarding human activity itself as fundamentally a threat to be sacrificed to the god of nature.”

—p. 12

On opposing common sense climate policy in the name of the “aged, poor, and vulnerable”:

“‘Cheap grace’ aptly describes the Left’s love affair with environmental extremism. Those who suffer most from the policies environmentalism would have us enact are the aged, poor, and vulnerable. It is not a political cause, but a pseudo-religion meant to baptize liberals’ ruthless pursuit of absolute power in the holy water of environmental virtue.”

—p. 11

Demonizing Our Enemies

On the left:

“The Left does not believe that all men are created equal—they think they are special. They certainly don’t think all people have an unalienable right to pursue the good life. They think only they themselves have such a right along with a moral responsibility to make decisions for everyone else. They don’t think any citizen, state, business, church or charity should be allowed any freedom until they first bend the knee.”

—p. 16

On university presidents and Wall Street hedge fund managers:

“Today, nearly every top-tier U.S. university president or Wall Street hedge fund manager has more in common with a socialist, European head of state than with the parents at a high school football game in Waco, Texas. Many elites’ entire identity, it seems, is wrapped up in their sense of superiority over those people. But under our Constitution, they are the mere equals of the workers who shower after work instead of before.”

—p. 10

On progressive elites:

“Progressive elites speak in lofty terms of openness, progress, expertise, cooperation and globalization. But too often, these terms are just rhetorical Trojan horses concealing their true intention—stripping ‘we the people’ of our constitutional authority over our country’s future. America’s corporate and political elites do not believe in the ideals to which our nation is dedicated—self-governance, the rule of law and ordered liberty. They certainly do not trust the American people, and they disdain the Constitution’s restrictions on their ambitions.”

—p. 10

On power-hungry socialists:

“For socialists, who are almost always well-to-do, socialism is not a means of equalizing outcomes, but a means of accumulating power. They never get around to helping anyone else.”

—p. 15

On the higher education establishment:

“Rather than continuing to buttress a higher education establishment captured by woke ‘diversicrats’ and a de facto monopoly enforced by the federal accreditation cartel, federal postsecondary education policy should prepare students for jobs in the dynamic economy, nurture institutional diversity, and expose schools to greater market forces.”

—p. 320

On pro-open borders elites:

“The only direct impact of open borders on pro-open borders elites is that the constant flow of illegal immigration suppresses the wages of their housekeepers, landscapers and busboys.”

—p. 11

Inflation is ravaging family budgets, drug overdose deaths continue to escalate, and children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries.

Project 2025, p.1

On the “Great Awokening”:

“Unaccountable federal spending is the secret lifeblood of the Great Awokening. Nearly every power center held by the Left is funded or supported, one way or another, through the bureaucracy by Congress.”

—p. 9

On cultural elites:

“Look at America under the ruling and cultural elite today: Inflation is ravaging family budgets, drug overdose deaths continue to escalate, and children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries.”

—p. 1

On enemies “at home and abroad”:

“Every hour the Left directs federal policy and elite institutions, our sovereignty, our Constitution, our families, and our freedom are a step closer to disappearing. Conservatives have just two years and one shot to get this right. With enemies at home and abroad, there is no margin for error. Time is running short. If we fail, the fight for the very idea of America may be lost.”

—p. 16

Ending Government as We Know It

On federal employees:

They boast about “how to fire supposedly ‘un-fireable’ federal bureaucrats; how to shutter wasteful and corrupt bureaus and offices; how to muzzle woke propaganda at every level of Government.”

—p. 9

On the executive branch of the federal government:

“The solution to all of the above problems is not to tinker with this or that government program, to replace this or that bureaucrat. These are problems not of technocratic efficiency but of national sovereignty and constitutional governance. We solve them not by trimming and reshaping the leaves but by ripping out the trees—root and branch.”

—p. 12

On flags:

“Divisive symbols such as the rainbow flag or the Black Lives Matter flag have no place next to the Stars and Stripes at our embassies.”

—p. 89

On socialist governments:

“In socialist nation after socialist nation, the only way the government could keep its disgruntled people in line was to surveil and terrorize them. By contrast, in countries with a high degree of economic freedom, elites are not in charge because everyone is in charge.”

—p. 15

On liberty and Thanksgiving dinners:

“An individual must be free to live as his Creator ordained—to flourish. Our Constitution grants each of us the liberty to do not what we want, but what we ought. This pursuit of the good life is found primarily in family—marriage, children, Thanksgiving dinners, and the like.”

—p. 14

“Handcuff the bureaucracy” and “defang and defund the woke cultural warriors.”

“As monolithic as the Left’s institutional power appears to be, it originates with appropriations from Congress and is made complete by a feckless President. … there are many executive tools a courageous conservative President can use to handcuff the bureaucracy, … bring the Administrative State to heel, and in the process defang and defund the woke culture warriors who have infiltrated every last institution in America. The Conservative Promise lays out how to use many of these tools including: how to fire supposedly ‘un-fireable’ federal bureaucrats; how to shutter wasteful and corrupt bureaus and offices; how to muzzle woke propaganda at every level of government; how to restore the American people’s constitutional authority over the Administrative State; and how to save untold taxpayer dollars in the process.”

—p. 9

For more information, go to Expose Project 2025.

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About

Carrie N. Baker, J.D., Ph.D., is the Sylvia Dlugasch Bauman professor of American Studies and the chair of the Program for the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College. She is a contributing editor at Ms. magazine. Read her latest book at Abortion Pills: U.S. History and Politics (Amherst College Press, December 2024). You can contact Dr. Baker at cbaker@msmagazine.com or follow her on Bluesky @carrienbaker.bsky.social.