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More than three dozen House Democrats on Monday called on the right-wing Heritage Foundation to release the secret part of its controversial “Project 2025,” a blueprint for turning the US into a conservative utopia if Donald Trump were to get elected.
Noting that this plan would impact all of their districts, the lawmakers invited leaders of the Heritage Foundation to talk about Project 2025 with them, including the parts that they have kept hidden so far.
“[The 920 pages released to far] have been illuminating as we seek to understand the scope and implications of this sweeping policy and personnel plan,” the lawmakers said in a letter to the organization.
Illuminating indeed.
The more Americans have learned about this radical plan, the less they like it.
A recent survey shows that six times as many Americans have a strongly unfavorable opinion of Project 2025 than a strongly favorable one.
And that’s only the part they know about.
However, there is even more to Project 2025 than the public is aware of.
The lawmakers pointed out that while the people behind the blueprint promised to be transparent, this apparently does not apply to one section of the plan.
“[T]he entire ‘Fourth Pillar,’ the ‘180-Day Playbook’ which you describe as a roadmap of comprehensive, concrete, early actions for each federal agency, remains shrouded in secrecy,” they write, and they called on the Heritage Foundation to disclose these parts of the document.
“You have conspicuously declined to publish or disclose any of the prioritized early actions that we believe would obviously be the most important parts of Project 2025,” they write.
This includes the executive orders, presidential directives, and other actions that would drastically remake the federal government and the US as a whole.
“[We] believe it is overwhelmingly in the public interest for you to actually keep your ‘open book’ promise by disclosing the ‘Fourth Pillar’ of Project 2025, and we hope you’ll consider explaining why, unlike the first three pillars, you have been keeping it secret for so long,” they add.
They should not hold their breath.
Project 2025 is such a loser that Trump has tried to distance himself from the document, although his denials ring hollow in light of evidence indicating he knew about it and the fact that more than 100 people from his orbit contributed to it.
Heritage Foundation officials have openly talked about a “second revolution” and that they want to “weaponize conservatives.”
The lawmakers point out that this has worried their constituents, who believe Project 2025 “poses an unprecedented threat to our democracy, reproductive freedoms, public education, LGBTQIA+ rights, our economy, environment, public health and more.”
So why is the Heritage Foundation keeping one part a secret? The lawmakers believe it is simply too radical.
“With all due respect, if the published part of your ‘second American revolution’ is so extreme that it has alarmed millions of Americans, including many conservatives, what additional controversy are you worried about?” they note. “Your secrecy invites, and perhaps concedes, the worst negative inferences.”
They raise some possibilities of what is in the hidden sections, such as plans to deploy the military or federalize the National Guard to stifle protests, or to curb the reproductive rights of Americans.
“Does your secret 180-day plan include specific early policy actions to criminalize reproductive healthcare, ban medication abortion, restrict access to contraception, and prohibit certain fertility treatments, as called for in the published portion of Project 2025?” they ask. “Again, your refusal to disclose your 180-day action plan invites Americans to presume the worst.”
One of the most unpopular aspects of the known parts of the blueprint is that it calls for the abolishment of the Department of Education.
This, however, would cause “unprecedented harm” to students and “destabilize our entire public education infrastructure.”
Because of these potential sweeping changes, Americans deserve to know the extent of Project 2025.
“It is time to stop hiding the ball on what we are concerned could very well be the most radical, extreme, and dangerous parts of Project 2025,” they write. “If we are wrong about that — if your secret “Fourth Pillar” of Project 2025 is actually a defensible, responsible, and constitutional action plan for the first days of a second Trump presidency — then we hope you will publish it, without edits or redaction.”
While they give the Heritage Foundation an August 16 deadline to respond, it seems likely that they should not be waiting by their mailboxes. Because if the hidden part of the document is even more controversial than the sections that have been made public, they would create an even bigger headache for Trump and the GOP.
