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--:-- Noel King: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Noel King. Today, we're talking about Project 2025, a massive effort by the conservative Heritage Foundation to prepare for a potential Trump presidency. I'm joined by Shelby Talcott, a reporter who's been covering this story for Semaphore. Shelby, thanks for being here.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: Thanks for having me, Noel.
--:-- Noel King: So, let's start with the basics. What is Project 2025?
--:-- Shelby Talcott: Project 2025 is essentially this massive, organized, multi-million dollar effort to establish an administration in waiting for Donald Trump. It's headed up by the Heritage Foundation, which is a conservative think tank that has been really instrumental in conservative policies throughout the years.
--:-- Noel King: When I talked to the project's head last year, he said that what fundamentally unites our coalition is deconstructing the administrative state. Our common theme is to take down the administrative state, the bureaucracy.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: That's right. And the way that they're trying to do this is through this multi-pronged, years-long initiative that involves vetting a number of staffers that theoretically could be in the next Trump administration. It involves making sure that those staffers know how government works, so training them.
--:-- Noel King: And then there's this massive 800-plus page policy book that essentially outlines the major conservative policies of today.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: That's right. And the last prong is, of course, diving into this 180-day playbook that Project 2025 is currently developing to hand Donald Trump, should he win in 2024, that he could implement initiatives, executive orders and policies in his first year in office.
--:-- Noel King: Who's in the coalition that you mentioned? You talked about Heritage. Who else?
--:-- Shelby Talcott: Yeah, there's over 100 coalition partners, and actually they reached that number at the beginning of this year. So SBA Pro-Life America has signed on, the Conservative Partnership Institute, Claremont Institute, TPUSA, which is Turning Point USA, which is focused a lot on younger voters.
--:-- Noel King: How unusual is it for the Heritage Foundation to have a thing like Project 2025? Is this unprecedented?
--:-- Shelby Talcott: It's not unusual for there to be some kind of organization. They usually have this mandate for leadership that they will give an upcoming conservative president. Heritage got on the marker as an organization by delivering the first mandate for leadership in 1980 to President-elect Reagan.
--:-- Noel King: But this scope and level of organization and the years that it has taken to plan and lay out this specific Project 2025 is really unique and really has never been done before.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: So in that sense, just the scale of this operation is unprecedented.
--:-- Noel King: Okay, but the mandate for leadership has been a thing in the past. Now, when Donald Trump was elected the first time, how much of their mandate for leadership did he take?
--:-- Shelby Talcott: He used a significant amount. So in early 2018, the Heritage Foundation came out with a press release saying that Donald Trump had, as of that moment, used over 60 percent of their policy proposals.
--:-- Noel King: Can we talk about the proposals? Absolutely. So, of course, if we wanted to get into the entire 800-plus book, we would be here for weeks, probably. There are a number of significant proposals.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: So one of them, they, of course, talk about abortion restrictions. They include in their policy book a reference to the Comstock Act, which is a long, inactive 19th century law that banned birth control and abortion pills by mail.
--:-- Noel King: Conservative groups are arguing that the Comstock Act makes it a crime to mail any abortion-related item.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: Broadly, a number of their policies are aimed at expanding presidential powers while shrinking the executive branch. So getting rid of the White House Gender Policy Council, domestic climate policy, getting rid of the clean energy demonstrations in the Energy Department.
--:-- Noel King: He also would refuse to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs he does not like. And he would remove officials he does not like from intelligence agencies.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: So all of these efforts at, as they said, deconstructing the administrative state, there's also a lot in there about immigration.
--:-- Noel King: They want much stricter immigration proposals. When Trump is president again as the 47th president of the United States, how do we deport 30 million people?
--:-- Shelby Talcott: They'd like to bring back a failed effort from Trump to implement a citizenship question on the census. They want to mandate that the DOJ start legal action against local officials who choose not to prosecute in part because of immigration status.
--:-- Noel King: And so there's all these sort of policy agendas that span across really every aspect of what conservatives are interested in.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: The radical plan calls for defunding the Department of Justice, dismantling the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services.
--:-- Noel King: It also aims to consolidate power by placing agencies like the Federal Communications Commission under direct presidential control.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: And the last part of this that I would pull out as notable is, of course, their social policies. They talk a lot about getting rid of DEI. They want to stamp it out.
--:-- Noel King: They talk a lot about anti-wokeness, critical race theory, gender ideologies in schools.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: On day one, I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto our children.
--:-- Noel King: Okay, so 800 pages of policy ideas, one American president that they want to carry them out. Who's helping? Who are the people that would be involved in implementing Project 2025?
--:-- Shelby Talcott: That is their second pillar, and that was sort of what they really first started working on was this LinkedIn for conservatives. But the goal is they'll have a number of 10,000 plus staffers that have been vetted by the Heritage Foundation, by Project 2025, that they can then hand to the Trump administration and say, these staffers are good to go if you want to hire any of them.
--:-- Noel King: In addition to this LinkedIn for conservatives, they're giving the approved staffers the option of either online training or if they're more advanced in-person training on everything from the basics of governments to teaching them how to make sure that they can get into office and implement the plans that conservatives want.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: What we're doing is systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army of aligned, trained and essentially weaponized conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state.
--:-- Noel King: When I talked to the leaders who are heading up this project, and when I spoke to Heritage Foundation on a number of occasions, they've always been quick to say, this is in part because we were unprepared after Trump's 2016 win.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: Conservatives did not expect him to win. The country really didn't expect him to win. And so Donald Trump came into office and there wasn't really any sort of platform to help him.
--:-- Noel King: President Trump was an outsider. This is a very insular city, so it's not going to be welcoming to outsiders. Outsiders have to come into this place prepared and know what the game is.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: And so they've essentially said that they've taken a playbook out of Democrats' past plans. We take a lot of exception with Joe Biden, but the one thing I do credit his team with was being prepared.
--:-- Noel King: So these are big policy proposals. How are they going to get done quickly?
--:-- Shelby Talcott: Of course, I think the plan is some of them are going to be executive orders that presumably the president could sign on day one, on the first week, on the first month.
--:-- Noel King: I love this guy. He says, you're not going to be a dictator, are you? I said, no, no, no, other than day one.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: But others are going to be guidance and regulations that presumably could be implemented within the first 180 days of Donald Trump's presidency.
--:-- Noel King: Is there any other kind of worldview behind this, underpinning this?
--:-- Shelby Talcott: You know, as I was reading through, one of the things that stood out to me was a sort of summary from the head of the Heritage Foundation.
--:-- Noel King: And he noted that the authors of this book have broad consensus over four sort of pillars.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: And the first is restoring, and I'm reading this as a quote, restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.
--:-- Noel King: The second is, as we've talked about, dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: The third, defend our nation's sovereignty, borders and bounty against global threats.
--:-- Noel King: And the fourth is to secure our God individual rights to live freely what our Constitution calls the blessings of liberty.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: I think if you read those four you get a sense of the sort of religious undertones that are also making up a lot of these policies in a lot of this book.
--:-- Noel King: I think of conservatives as focused on God, country, and family, not government, but progressives spend 24 hours a day redesigning government.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: Now we see that government is now directed against God, directed against family, directed against this country.
--:-- Noel King: So it's our charge now to get back and take over the government.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: You know, you said it's a multimillion dollar effort. Whose money is it?
--:-- Noel King: Well, two of the big people that are involved indirectly are Leonard Leo, who, of course, has been described as a puppet master pushing this conservative agenda for years.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: He notoriously gave Donald Trump a list of judges during his first administration.
--:-- Noel King: And then the Koch brothers, and they're not directly donating to Project 2025, but they've donated to those coalition partners that we talked about millions and millions of dollars.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: And so, of course, that tangibly ends up helping Project 2025.
--:-- Noel King: Okay, now it's worth noting that the Trump campaign could decide it doesn't want to do any of this, right? So there's nothing saying Donald Trump, if he were to be elected president, has got to carry out this plan.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: I think it depends on who you talk to, honestly.
--:-- Noel King: And what's notable is there was a slew of reports that came out earlier this year and towards the end of last year about, you know, Donald Trump's plans if he went into office again.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: And they used a lot of people from these groups and from Project 2025. And the campaign very quickly came out and issued a pretty strict statement saying, we're appreciative of everything that Project 2025 and these other groups are doing, but they don't speak for the campaign.
--:-- Noel King: Donald Trump and the campaign speak for us. And these initiatives, if they come from Project 2025, are not coming from Donald Trump.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: And so I think that's notable, but I also do think it's important to remember that there are a lot of former Trump officials involved in Heritage Foundation in general and in Project 2025.
--:-- Noel King: And last time around, Donald Trump used so much of their policy proposals.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: And a lot of these policy proposals that they're putting forth are pretty common policies and pretty popular within the conservative movement.
--:-- Noel King: So I would expect at the end of the day that Donald Trump uses this project in some form or another.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: Semaphore's Shelby Talcott coming up. Shelby's back to talk about how the Biden campaign was busy ignoring Project 2025 until TikTok started talking about it.
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--:-- Noel King: Support for Today Explained comes from Chime. Nobody likes fees and complicated banking, says Chime. And Chime gets that, says Chime. Chime is a financial technology company that says they understand that every dollar counts.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: So, Shelby, how and when did the Biden campaign start responding to the news about Project 2025?
--:-- Noel King: They really took notice of it just a few months ago and really in the last few weeks, I would argue.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: Remember, Project 2025 is this massive in-depth effort, right? It's 800-plus pages. is people who aren't involved in politics, and quite frankly even people who are most of them are not reading this book in full
--:-- Noel King: What the Biden campaign found though was online on TikTok and on these apps where younger voters are on there was this organic interest in Project 2025
--:-- Shelby Talcott: What's Project 2025? It's a nightmare. That's all I can say. It is an absolute nightmare.
--:-- Noel King: Anytime someone posts a video about Biden potentially losing in 2024, the top comment is always about Project 2025.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: Welcome to part two of our series, Project 2025, How Democracy Dies.
--:-- Noel King: They started seeing videos coming out about the project and denouncing the project. And so they saw that and thought, well, this is perfect.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: And that's when they started putting out their own videos, going after the project, highlighting the project.
--:-- Noel King: It's all a part of their Project 2025 agenda, which is a set of extreme policy plans that they have for a second Trump term.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: Things like banning the distribution of abortion medication, declaring that marriage doesn't apply to same-sex couples, and undoing the historic progress that President Biden has done fighting climate change and forgiving student debt.
--:-- Noel King: And it's interesting. There's TikTok sort of doing explainers. They have TikTok where AOC is speaking about Project 2025.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: This is exactly what Republicans have been going for. You have the Heritage Foundation. You have lots of folks who are on record.
--:-- Noel King: Of course, that's notable because AOC is one of the younger lawmakers who often appeals to younger voters.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: And she has also been critical of Joe Biden in the past.
--:-- Noel King: Not only do they want to go after abortion, not only do they want to go after reproductive freedom, they're going after IVF. They're going after contraception.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: And so having her come out and talk about it and putting that video up on TikTok is notable.
--:-- Noel King: And I'm told that those TikToks are some of their best performing videos as well.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: So it is resonating with that sect of voters that, quite frankly, they've been struggling with in the polls.
--:-- Noel King: OK, so the Heritage Foundation, this is not unprecedented. They ordinarily do have some sort of guidelines, things the Heritage Foundation would like you to do if you're elected president. Are you surprised this election cycle that this is getting so much attention?
--:-- Shelby Talcott: I think I am a little bit surprised just because, again, it's such a dense D.C. type thing, 800 plus pages.
--:-- Noel King: But for whatever reason, I think in part because of the drastic changes that this project is hoping to implement, it has really resonated with a group of voters that in a way I'm not sure it would have in years past.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: Let me ask you about something that occurs to me as as I skim these 800 plus pages.
--:-- Noel King: Donald Trump, during his first term, used to talk a lot about the deep state. Unelected deep state operatives who defy the voters to push their own secret agendas are truly a threat to democracy itself.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: And people say, well, the deep state is just experts who are already in D.C. and they know what they're doing.
--:-- Noel King: I gather that the Heritage Foundation probably doesn't call it the deep state.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: But does this 800-page book seem to speak at all to Donald Trump's idea that government itself is the problem?
--:-- Noel King: Absolutely.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: And I think that goes back to that comment from Paul Dans when I interviewed him a year and a half ago or so, where he said what fundamentally unites our coalition is deconstructing the administrative state.
--:-- Noel King: And I think that goes back to Donald Trump's sort of one of his ultimate goals that he never really could fully do during his first term.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: So let's say Donald Trump is elected and he decides that he wants to take Project 2025 on full bore, right? He's going to go in on it.
--:-- Noel King: How much of this could a Trump White House actually execute, given that we have a Congress that could be split, that could be fully Democratic? given that we have a Supreme Court?
--:-- Shelby Talcott: I think this should be taken really seriously, just in part because it is such a big effort that has been going on for so many years and because we've seen Donald Trump use Heritage Foundation in the past and because there's so many former Trump officials involved in this who still remain close to the former president.
--:-- Noel King: Now, the question of how much could actually be implemented, I think really depends on what they're trying to implement.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: I do think that they anticipate that some of this will receive pushback, and they are also preparing for that.
--:-- Noel King: They're preparing for, you know, sort of potential legal issues and potential legal pushback.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: They're prepping for a long fight to get what they want done in government.
--:-- Noel King: Democrats, at least some of them, are freaking out about this on TikTok and elsewhere, in opinion pages, etc.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: But of course, for Republican voters, this could be very appealing.
--:-- Noel King: Hey, we've got a plan. And when we get into office, if you vote us into office, we're going to execute that plan.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: Absolutely.
--:-- Noel King: And that's really the ultimate hitch when this whole thing started. We're ready. We have the money. Get on board. Help us figure all of these policy plans out so that we are never unprepared again as we were in 2016.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: And these are conservative policies that a lot of conservatives agree on.
--:-- Noel King: And of course, on the flip side, Democrats are going to be wildly upset about this.
--:-- Shelby Talcott: You know, these are policies that they don't agree on.
--:-- Noel King: And so we can expect that should Donald Trump take office again and tap Project 2025, that Democrats are going to fight with whatever means that they can to try to make it more difficult for these sorts of policies to be implemented.
--:-- Noel King: Shelby Talcott, you can read her election coverage at semaphore.com.
--:-- Noel King: Today's episode was produced by Avishai Artsy and edited by Matthew Collette.
--:-- Noel King: Laura Bullard is our fact checker and David Herman is our engineer.
--:-- Noel King: I'm Noel King. It's Today Explained. Thank you.
