Actress Taraji P. Henson kicked up a conversation with her comments at the BET Awards on Sunday, June 30. So, what is Project 2025?
“The Project 2025 plan is not a game, look it up. Look it up,” Henson said.
Project 2025 is a 900-page document from the conservative Heritage Foundation. The document calls for changes to the United States government if a Republican wins the 2024 presidential election.
The Heritage Foundation was founded in 1973 and became influential during former President Ronald Reagan’s time in office with its “Mandate for Leadership,” a blueprint on “detailed policy prescriptions on everything from taxes and regulation and trade and national defense.”
The organization claims Reagan’s administration adopted or attempted to adopt nearly two-thirds of the blueprint’s policies. Project 2025 is now being compared to the “Mandate for Leadership” of the 1980s.
“If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration,” the project’s website states.
Project 2025 looks to dismantle federal agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Education, fire tens of thousands of unelected federal workers, deport thousands of undocumented immigrants, impose tariffs on imported goods, and privatize Social Security and Medicare, among other priorities.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts appeared on MSNBC to talk about Project 2025.
“We want to look at it from the standpoint from the everyday American and say it’s time that they are put in the driver’s seat, rather than unelected bureaucrats,” Roberts said.
Democrats and left-wing activists say Project 2025 is extremist and dangerous. They contend that the plan’s language is misleading and warn that a Republican president with a Republican majority in Congress would lead to an overhaul and concentration of executive powers.
Critics also say there is a prominent Christian nationalist agenda within the pages of the Project 2025 plan, tackling topics like pornography, marriage and abortion.
Democrats have created the Stop Project 2025 Task Force to “protect democracy as we know it.”
A group of Democratic Congress members said the task force aims to bring awareness to Project 2025’s extreme ideologies, calling it a “radical, extreme, pro-authoritarianism plan pushed by conservatives who are desperate to take our country backwards” under a Trump presidency.
Former President Trump has neither endorsed Project 2025 nor called for its implementation.
