The Heritage Foundation lays out the details of Project 2025 in their Mandate for Leadership, a 922-page fascist manifesto that provides a roadmap to the end of American Democracy. This document explains how conservatives plan to oust anyone who opposes authoritarian rule within the United States.
Conservative leadership is so proud of their totalitarian plot to destroy the U.S. government that they state it up front in the introduction of their Mandate. The Foreward of the document makes a four-part “Conservative Promise” to Americans, with the second promise being a pledge to “dismantle the administrative state.” [Page 6]
According to the Mandate, “there are many executive tools a courageous conservative President can use to handcuff the bureaucracy” and “bring the Administrative State to heel.” [Page 9] These “tools” would allow the President to “fire supposedly ‘un-fireable’ federal bureaucrats” and replace them with loyalists willing to do his bidding without question.
For example, The Heritage Foundation wants to reinstate President Trump’s Executive Order 13957 (Schedule F). This would make it easier to fire “career professionals in positions that are not normally subject to change as a result of a presidential transition.” [Page 81] This is just one of the “tools” mentioned in the Mandate to eliminate political opposition within Washington.
Project 2025 also directs the president to “shutter wasteful and corrupt bureaus and offices.” [Page 9] Naturally, you might wonder what offices they would do away with. Here are just a few that are named specifically in the mandate [Pages 283-287]:
- Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
- Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
- National Institutes of Health (NIH)
- Department of Justice (DOJ)
- Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
- Department of Education
- Department of Energy
- Department of Agriculture
- Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
- Department of Transporation (DOT)
Project 2025 also places a target directly on the Intelligence Community. Some of the most alarming statements include calls to “remove IC employees who have abused their positions of trust” and “immediately revoke the security clearances” of high-ranking officials within the Intelligence Community. [Page 213]
They also refer to the FBI as “a bloated, arrogant, increasingly lawless organization.” For this reason, “[t]he next conservative Administration should eliminate any offices within the FBI that it has the power to eliminate without any action from Congress.” [Page 285]
According to the Mandate, if conservatives win the White House in November, they will begin implementing Project 2025 on Day One. Within six months they intend to transform the American government completely by removing anyone who doesn’t fall in line with their authoritarian schemes, eradicating entire departments if necessary. In their own words [Page xiv]:
Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State.
If the American people don’t come together to stop Project 2025 before it begins, our country will be forever changed. This great nation will no longer be a democracy. Instead, the U.S. will be an autocracy under the control of a fascist regime whose only loyalty is to a totalitarian dictator.