The Birth of a Nation: America & Project 2025
Photos by Deva Williamson and Tim Mossholder. Montage by AHUS, Sugar is poison.
Project 2025, advanced by the Heritage Foundation, is a proposed rubric for the “hopeful” incoming Republican President; essentially Trump. This so-called extreme right-winged manuscript outlines four pillars: policy, personnel, training, and playbook. These pillars will help the President not only in his transition into office but also serve as a guidebook to “take down the Deep State and return the government to the people.” And with “courtesy,” Project 2025 identifies on their website these issues being the primary focus of the next Republican President:
Secure the border, finish building the wall, and deport illegal aliens
De-weaponize the Federal Government by increasing accountability and oversight of the FBI and DOJ
Unleash American energy production to reduce energy prices
Cut the growth of government spending to reduce inflation
Make federal bureaucrats more accountable to the democratically elected President and Congress
Improve education by moving control and funding of education from DC bureaucrats directly to parents and state and local government.
Project 2025 has also been considered a “Christo-Fascist” manifesto as language about “natural” vs. “unnatural” in American families, the banning of abortions, the emphasis on women primarily being wives and mothers, while single motherhood is seen as destruction to families, and fatherlessness being a root to evil. This plan is a form of Christian nationalism that will do nothing but exploit and cause harm for LGBTQIA folks, women, and anyone who doesn’t fit within the heteronormative fold.
Trump has remained consistent in standing far away from Project 2025, claiming that he doesn’t even know who’s responsible for it, yet doesn’t dismiss it.
And why would he dismiss it? Why would any American politician dismiss something like Project 2025 when our nation has been built on oppression initiated by heterosexual, mediocre, white men? Somewhere along the amnesia trip, we began to accept the narrative that “we, the people,” actually meant us; regular people, and our progress and our journey to self-determination. But America has never actually been “for the people.”
Project 2025 has been one of the leading reasons politicians and influencers have preached against a second Trump presidency aside from many other grounds. Indeed, a felon and insurrectionist instigator is certainly enough to question the moral standing of someone running for President, let alone a sitting president. However, a blatant and oppressive plan to transition an already corrupt person like Trump into office is dangerous. But that’s American politics, and Project 2025 is its offspring. American politics is like knowing you’re already fucked, but putting your trust in someone that you hope won’t fuck you too much while being grateful for the heads-up of the person you’re not voting for’s step-by-step plan on how they intend to fuck you.
I'm less concerned with the logic of, "Well, we have to vote blue because Trump will enforce Project 2025 if he becomes elected!" I'm more concerned that such a thing as Project 2025 could be thought of, planned, and be in a position in our so-called "democracy" to be in a position for it to take form. If indeed, Project 2025, as aggressive as it is, can exist on one side of the aisle, such a thing could exist on the other. We’re in desperate times; when genocide is taking place, yet it’s a minor issue in a major election. We’re in desperate times when humanity and dignity are more taboo than an open-textbook definition of Christian nationalism as a hopeful piece of legislation. Whereas the premise that such things can exist is scary, what’s even more frightening is that it will gradually worsen.
