The hysteria over the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is predictable. Before explaining why it’s also dishonest and misinformed, let me first try to explain why I find the many hyperbolic screeds about this 900-page policy tome so unconvincing.
I recall lying in bed as a kid, listening as my mom and her feminist friends downstairs panicked about the madman seeking the White House who would do away with the Bill of Rights and turn the United States into a theocracy. That madman was Ronald Reagan, who easily won that election in 1980, the Cold War, and a 49-state reelection landslide in 1984—while democracy and the Bill of Rights remained unscathed.
In 1994, Republican House leader Newt Gingrich crafted his Contract with America, which called for abolishing several cabinet agencies and downsizing the federal government. Pundits and authorities freaked out and skewered his radical Contract on America. Gingrich’s victorious Republicans went on to work with President Bill Clinton to reform welfare and balance the federal budget for the first time in decades.
In 2000, George W. Bush was a dangerous “cowboy.” In 2008, John McCain, previously hailed as a straight-talking maverick was summarily recast as a warmongering, anti-Muslim “wingnut.” In 2012, mild-mannered Mitt Romney morphed into a misogynistic, dog-torturing robber baron who, according to then-Vice President Joe Biden, sought to put Black Americans “back in chains.” Later, once they were no longer seeking the presidency, the bombast subsided, and it became safe to acknowledge Bush’s decency, McCain’s heroic sacrifices, and Romney’s willingness to be the first senator in history to vote to impeach a president of his own party.
The dire warnings proved to be a big nothingburger.
Which brings us to Project 2025. First off, there’s nothing novel here. Heritage has long-published these hefty “Mandate for Leadership” volumes, hoping to shape Republican policy. Progressive think tanks do the same thing. These are wonky, wishful laundry lists that serve more as vision boards than checklists for governing. And it’s business as usual.
As for the specifics of Project 2025? There’s a good chance that it doesn’t say what you think it does. For instance, one graphic that’s been widely circulated (which The Dispatch reports has racked up millions of views across Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Reddit, and X) lists 31 policies supposedly found in Project 2025. These falsehoods include raising the retirement age, teaching Christian religious beliefs in public schools, banning books and curriculum about slavery, ending birthright citizenship, and eliminating the FDA and EPA. Project 2025 mentions none of these.
In fact, as Libby Stanford has capably reported for Education Week, most of what Project 2025 actually proposes for education is neither surprising nor all that new. The 44 pages devoted to the Department of Education call for shuttering the Department, block-granting Title I funding and then phasing it out, turning IDEA into a block grant, adopting a federal Parents’ Bill of Rights, spotlighting the extent of DEI efforts and then working to curtail them, requiring the office of civil rights to work through the courts rather than rely on “Dear Colleague” letters, and so forth. Anyone surprised by this kind of conservative wish list needs to get out more.
For what it’s worth, I mostly like what Project 2025 has to say on education. Block-granting is reasonable given the morass of regulation that’s made these programs intrusive and counterproductive. Curtailing the office of civil rights’ use of extrajudicial pressure tactics is overdue. Miguel Cardona’s politicized, legally dubious, inept tenure as secretary of education has powerfully made the case for dismantling the department. People of goodwill can disagree about all of this, but there’s nothing especially scary, theocratic, or fascist about it.
Project 2025 just isn’t likely to be all that useful as a road map for gauging what a second Trump administration would do on education.
Indeed, Project 2025 has been deemed “fascist” for suggesting that the president enjoy more authority over federal agencies and employees. I find that odd, since it strikes me that an insular bureaucracy too far removed from executive accountability is at odds with the basic precepts of democratic governance. In any event, this proposal isn’t an existential threat to democracy—it’s a continuation of a centuries-old debate about how to order the civil service. (Kudos if you thought, “Ah-ha! the Pendleton Act.”)
All that said, the bigger story may be that Project 2025 just isn’t likely to be all that useful as a road map for gauging what a second Trump administration would do on education.
For starters, Trump has never taken policy very seriously (just scan the GOP platform, which reads like a jumbled pastiche of Trump’s Truth Social posts). That’s why he’s probably telling the truth when he says that he has no investment in the contents of Project 2025. Trump is a performer who has always treated policy as a prop, something that he pays attention to only as long as it’s useful for entertainment value or as an opportunity to score points. (This is, after all, the guy who once explained that he prefers bullet points to 200-page reports.)
Second, much of the anxious commentary on Project 2025 implies that the wonks who drafted it will be driving Trump II. In truth, I’m sad to say, a second Trump administration is unlikely to feature a Betsy DeVos clone for secretary of education or powerful Reaganites focused on deregulation and small government. The ascendance of MAGA populism means it is more likely to feature national conservatives in the mold of VP pick JD Vance, who is just fine with big government and can seem positively enamored of Bernie Sanders. (Take a look at Vance’s RNC acceptance speech—it was an emphatic call for Washington to fight for Americans in need.) While a Vance-ish secretary of education would surely go hard after DEI, it’s not clear the same would be true with Title I, IDEA, school lunches, or Head Start.
Third, the freakout reflects an odd fatalism about the extent of presidential power. Admittedly, President Biden has repeatedly ignored constitutional strictures and federal law—his illegal eviction moratorium, vaccine mandate, and loan forgiveness scheme serve as unfortunate precedents. That said, the big stuff in Project 2025—from dismantling the Education Department to promoting school choice to block granting Title I or IDEA—would require legislation. And, even if Republicans hold their razor-thin House majority, they won’t have 60 votes in the Senate, which would be necessary to overcome the filibuster—an irony for Democrats who fought to overhaul it. That will sharply curtail what Republicans can accomplish, especially if a narrow Senate majority means that moderates like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski hold the balance of power.
Finally, those Democrats who’ve vilified the Supreme Court may soon be counting their lucky stars that six justices recently put an end to the imperial doctrine of Chevron deference. In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the court discarded the four-decade-old Chevron rule, which gave federal agencies astonishing leeway to alter and expand laws. Under Chevron, hard-charging Trump appointees could have done immense mischief without congressional action. Now, though, courts will no longer be obliged to defer to federal agencies where the law is ambiguous. This will make it far more difficult to change policy without first changing the law, constraining the power of Project 2025 diehards.
It’s funny. Today, Reagan, George W. Bush, McCain, and Romney are widely depicted as the “good” kind of pre-Trump Republican. It turns out those earlier freakouts were unfounded. The think-tank musings of Project 2025 will one day be an innocuous addition to that list. Meanwhile, I fear the more existential threat to liberty and civil society is the tendency to reflexively vilify those with whom we disagree. We can all do better on that count. And it’d be most fitting if educators led the way.
