Project 2025 and Libraries (Part 2)
The Project 2025 mandate contains elements repeated in both the Trump Campaign’s Agenda 47 and the official Republican Platform.
The Heritage Foundation has long advocated for the termination of the only source of Federal funding for libraries, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The cuts to Federal funding and the changes to, and elimination of, Federal Agencies may be a way to do so. The EveryLibrary Institute has released a report, How Will Project 2025 Impact Libraries, that details these and other plans that will impact libraries and even jail library professionals. To understand Project 2025, it’s important to look at the history and why its connection to the Trump Campaign is going to be hard to deny.
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Day One Thinking — Starting with Heritage
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank founded in 1973, has released a “Mandate for Leadership” since 1981. The current version, “Mandate for Leadership: the Conservative Promise,” has come to be known as Project 2025. The mandate contains elements repeated in both the Trump Campaign’s Agenda 47 and the official Republican Platform. The mandate was announced in an April 21, 2023 press release which noted that the first Trump administration had “embraced nearly 64% of the 2016 edition’s policy solutions after one year.” The release also listed the former Trump officials who authored the mandate’s 30 chapters or are involved in the transition planning.
The Project 2025 website for “the 2025 Presidential Transition Project,” makes it clear that being ready to go on day one is an essential part of the plan:
“It is not enough for conservatives to win elections… we need a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day One of the next Conservative administration.”
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Four foundational pillars lay out the transition plan. The first pillar documents a litany of changes to how Federal agencies should be governed—the Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” itself. Pillar Two provides the incoming president with a Presidential Personnel Database of pre-vetted appointee candidates. The third pillar provides training for those GOP wannabes through the Heritage Foundation’s Presidential Administration Academy. From whom? A bevy of former Trump administration officials. The goal? “To be ready to go on Day One.” The final pillar creates transition plans and teams that are ready to go once the next Republican president takes the oath of office.
A “secret ‘180-Day Transition Playbook’ is being written by former Trump Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russ Vought to be ready Day One, Minute One. Vought has espoused a strategy of “radical constitutionalism” and his name has been floated as a potential Chief of Staff in a second Trump administration. He founded The Center for Renewing America after his service to the Trump Administration and serves as its president. The organization is listed as a member of a coalition of conservative organizations that are advocating “policy and personnel recommendations for the next conservative president.” Vought has been called a “chief architect of Project 2025” and he has referred to his policy proposals as ‘battle plans.” Vought recently served as policy director for the Republican National Committee and drafted the Republican platform. Vought was a member of the Trump transition team in 2016.
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More recently, Vought was caught on video discussing his “secret work preparing for a second Trump term,” including efforts to change the makeup and governance of Federal agencies, plan for large scale deportation and “get us off of multiculturalism.” In the secret video, he also defined the former president’s disavowals of Project 2025 and “distancing himself from the brand,” as “graduate-level politics.” He admitted to preparing executive orders, secretarial memos, and regulations for the Trump Administration which would not be made public and confirmed that there is an expectation that he will serve in a second administration.
The personnel get more personal in part three…
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In this series: