We started learning about Project 2025 a while ago. Folks at The Weekend, Red Wine & Blue, and others got the word out as early as they could, as loudly as they could. Constructed in 2023 after lots of earlier legwork, this call to mobilize activists willing to serve in government posts with their far far far right wing ideology flying higher on the pole than allegiance to democracy, is a powerful and detailed blueprint. The “project” has four core elements. The most well-known may be its ~922 page Mandate for Leadership (this iteration is actually a 9th edition), a policy book sometimes called a wish list for Conservatives. More accurately it’s a manifesto for Christian white nationalism. The .pdf is available for download free at Heritage Foundation’s site if you register your email with them. Or, it’s for sale there as a bound version priced at $125 as of March 2025. The Mandate document is also available as .pdf free from document cloud or archive.org; donations welcome there.

Additional elements of the “project” include a personnel database that’s been recruiting for several years (will this be where they draw from to replace DOGE-displaced workers?), on-demand training available through its Presidential Administration Academy whose self-described goal is to “turn future conservative political appointees into experts in governmental effectiveness,” and detailed implementation action plans for each agency in the form of Playbooks that translate broad policy goals from the Mandate into specific advocacy steps, executive orders, etc.

One of Project 2025’s architects is a former federal official, deeply familiar with the workings of the Office of Management & Budget (OMB) where he previously worked, and to which he’s now been re-appointed as Director, after his short stint in the same gig late in the 45 administration. Another architect of the plan spoke on MSNBC last summer, trying to sanewash it – even while the top of the Republican ticket tried pretending they didn’t know anything about it. Here’s that 14.5 min appearance from June 22, 2024. The plan’s contributors were indeed the de facto transition team in waiting. We watched, listened, and read. Volunteer phone calls in North Carolina over the late summer and fall last year for Harris’ campaign increasingly exposed a wide swath of voters both uncommitted about how they’d vote, and also fiesty with a defiant sense of leave-me-alone spiciness. Meantime, the other side offered a deceptive, simple vision: if you feel like your privilege is threatened, we’re gonna un-complicate the world for you again. You’re the best! You won’t have to think about or make room in your minds, hearts, schools or workplaces for any people that are different from you. You choose all the books. You get all the jobs. Won’t that be great? We’ll make it illegal for those pesky inclusion freaks to make you feel uncomfortable!

When I began reading Project 2025 (printed and started to parse it back when the election turned out like it did), I was initially almost relieved. While there were statements that offend and alarm, there was also a lot of the same old hypocritical jargon-filled arguments justifying massive interventions purporting to make government smaller… always a riddle they fail to recognize. My sense of almost-relief was that it wasn’t totally new, wasn’t coherent enough to feel like an effective blueprint, because it lacked intellectual through lines and consistency. Okay, I thought after reading intermittent excerpts in several areas, there are a lot of words here and cruel, awful plans, but they don’t really have their stuff together about this. Then I backed up and started from the beginning.

Even before the foreword, on page xiv in a small section called “A Note on Project 2025,” my blood ran cold. It flummoxed me and made pieces of my brain scatter into a whole new configuration. I think this new configuration is mandatory to understand and effectively oppose the radical threat posed by this movement and its authors & followers. Here’s the line: “The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass.” This sets the stage for the former Director to continue: “The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before. The task at hand to reverse this tide and restore our Republic to its original moorings….” blah, blah, blah, as he invokes a coalition to wage this battle. That’s the fulcrum mindset shift: it’s already a war to these people, and it’s a war they’ve told themselves is very nearly lost. Thus the fervor and fear and radicalization. We can’t engage these adherents in a thoughtful policy discussion anymore; they “believe” that Marxism has already saturated American culture and t.h.a.t.’s. what ails us. Their siege mentality makes for much more complicated negotiations. It’s the context for the cult where MAGA hears what they want to hear now, trusting their dear leader(s) will sometimes have to say things against their followers’ interest just to keep the movement moving forward. Autocrats thrive with a captive audience such as this.

Americans in the center and on the left, and the unbrainwashed on the right, are finally activating as though the threat is imminent. It’s already underway. Too many would-be democracy defenders – including too many Democratic politicians – are still acting like, talking like, and wishing that this watershed of anti-democracy destruction is on the horizon. It’s not; it’s here. The other side in this battle for our nation are reacting to their perception that America is already in tatters and in need of corrective surgery to save it. They don’t fear the knife because they think without it the patient is dead and gone. Cut into democracy, they cry out – having been convinced that civil rights, multiracial democracy, reproductive & sexual freedom, global trade, and more, have all somehow metastasized into a life threatening tumor their handlers tell them is called CRT, DEI, USAID, Head Start, Local Food Purchase Assistance payments to farmers, or the IRS – depending on the day and the target. It’s become an almost unfathomable amalgamation now also targeting our Post Offices, Medicaid, Social Security, and there’s no end in sight.

The cognitive dissonance required to follow along reveals a long march alright, but it’s been a long march of paranoid white supremacy grievance and malignant misinformation from houses of worship. Our job is to speak the truth and call out the lies. We won’t reach all our fellow citizens. Some of them are too far indoctrinated at the moment. We have to hold each other up and spotlight reality, we who see that our nation doesn’t need to go under the knife – we need to leave the operating room, the patient is being made much sicker by this alleged cure. Those who only want America safer and stronger for themselves are empowered right now, picking us off and hoping we’ll fight against each other or hide. They’ve poisoned the minds of a frighteningly large number of our fellow citizens, who will have to be deprogrammed before they can hear us. It’s not a fair fight, yet it’s the fight we face. Perhaps the deep and toxic harms being inflicted by the chainsaw wielding oligarch wannabes who are holding the knife, will become a tool we can use for healing and defending authentic liberty as we reawaken and reunite. All hands on deck.
Keep the Faith and Keep in Touch.