Fearmongering frenzy fuels hysteria over Project 2025

As the country reels from the attempt on Donald Trump’s life, and Joe Biden’s cognitive decline continues to cause fallout, the Democrats and the media have staked their hopes of salvaging the 2024 presidential election by branding the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 as a roadmap to “fascism” and a grave “threat to democracy.” This manufactured hysteria has succeeded in making the report radioactive, causing Republicans, conservatives, and even Trump himself to distance themselves from it.

The definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results,” something Republicans and conservatives are all too familiar with. They constantly allow their political opponents to control the narrative and fall into the same trap — issue a white paper, expect people to find, read, and understand it, and then let the left cherry-pick and distort its contents to fit their agenda, painting Republicans and conservatives as radical extremists. Instead of proactively marketing the conservative policy agenda to win over hearts and minds, they react defensively, often too late to counteract the damage done.

A failed education system has programmed too many Americans to think that the federal government is the solution rather than the problem.

Unfortunately, it seems the far-left fear campaign is working. According to a recent survey (albeit from a progressive research group), four in five respondents have never heard of Project 2025. Nevertheless, the survey found that 62% of respondents thought that the agenda would negatively impact their family and the country.

Since 1980, the Heritage Foundation has issued its “Mandate for Leadership” in nearly every presidential election cycle, presenting a conservative policy agenda for a potential Republican administration. Over 350 influential leaders and more than 50 of the nation’s leading conservative organizations collaborated to craft Project 2025, released in April 2023. Yet, over a year later, there has never been a robust PR campaign to familiarize Americans with its content.

If people understood Project 2025, they might realize it stands in stark contrast to the portrayals by the Democrats and the media. It serves as the antithesis of authoritarianism. Despite Biden’s propaganda — he called it “the biggest attack on our system of government, our personal freedoms, that has ever been proposed in the history of this country” — much of Project 2025 would empower Americans and restore our republic to its original intent. Most notably, it aims to restore individual liberties, reduce federal dependency and overreach, and limit government power to the confines laid out in our Constitution.

The federal bureaucracy has grown to unprecedented levels and often overshadows the authority of our elected officials in Congress and the presidency. No one can say with certainty how many duplicative offices and jobs exist at the federal level. Unelected bureaucrats wield significant power over our lives with little oversight. The administrative state is a cancer that uses its power to circumvent the Constitution.

From spying on and censoring Americans to targeting political opponents, parents, and Catholics, our institutions have forfeited America’s trust long ago. Project 2025 aims to rectify these abuses through a series of measures, including strengthened checks on agencies “that have recently pushed past legal boundaries” such as the FBI.

Project 2025’s left-wing critics disingenuously claim that it enhances the power of the executive branch. Not so. The document clearly lays out reforms that would reduce the size and scope of the federal government, diminishing executive authority. As power decentralizes, it returns to where it rightfully belongs under our system of federalism — the states, local governments, and the people.

The plan also calls for a comprehensive review of federal programs, which are rarely scrutinized for efficiency and effectiveness. That has led to rampant waste, fraud, and abuse, and added to the unsustainable national debt. A prime example is the number of drug abuse prevention and treatment programs at the federal level, where 76 programs exist, with 59 overlapping according to the Government Accountability Office. At the same time, drug use, addiction rates, and overdose deaths continue to rise, which demonstrates their inefficiency and ineffectiveness. Another example is the rampant fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, which the GAO estimates cost taxpayers more than $100 billion a year. Why should we tolerate these failures?

Another way to rein in the out-of-control bureaucracy is through the grant process. President Eisenhower warned Americans more than 60 years ago that as research and innovation become more formalized and costly, “A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government ... and is gravely to be regarded.” Project 2025 proposes to reform the grant system to reduce the ability of federal agencies to manipulate research priorities and outcomes.

A failed education system has programmed too many Americans to think that the federal government is the solution rather than the problem. Those who push for government control are the same ones who endlessly warn about “threats to democracy” yet believe the few should control the masses. Many on the left believe the bureaucracy should be the fourth branch of government, more powerful and independent than the other three branches.

The Democratic Party seeks greater centralized power and the undoing of our federalism and checks and balances system. Democrats want to eliminate an independent judiciary and pack the Supreme Court to make it a rubber stamp for their agenda. They want to reform the Senate to be a representative body and have expressed their desire to nuke the filibuster. They routinely call for abolishing the Electoral College. They want open borders and prioritize those here illegally to diminish the concept of citizenship. Some even state their desire to impose speech restrictions, calling the First Amendment a “design flaw” in the original Constitution, in their attempt to silence and censor millions of Americans.

While the Democrats and the entrenched bureaucratic class sound alarms about "threats to democracy" and Project 2025, their proposals seek to expand government control and diminish our God-given rights as individuals. They want to reimagine America — one where citizens are expected to obey without question, comply without protest, and accept only those liberties deemed permissible by those in power. This stands in stark contrast to Project 2025, which while not perfect, seeks to return to a system where power ultimately resides with the people and their states.