Project 2025 October 9th Update

Project 2025 is a 920-page plan spearheaded by the powerful and extreme far-right Heritage Foundation. More than 100 organizations support this blueprint for autocracy. Their stated goal is to create an “ideal” America that would see women, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, people of color, and others deprived of their hard-won constitutional rights and the erosion of environmental and education protections. It also advocates for a frightening centralization of power in the executive branch. Rooted in hate and Christian Nationalism, the plan promises to “rescue the country.” Read GPAHE’s full analysis of Project 2025 and the groups behind it.

GPAHE tracks the activities of those behind Project 2025, and their plans for an authoritarian and Christian Nationalist America, no matter who is president, and the groups in this extremist movement are relentlessly implementing initiatives at local, state, and federal levels.

This week we look at a new Christian Nationalist community forming in Kentucky, the Heritage Foundation’s FOIA frenzy, how hurricane deaths could increase if Project 2025 is implemented, how Project 2025 is tanking in the polls, and the damage Project 2025 would inflict on the Black community.

Christian Nationalists Building Separate Communities for a Post-2025 America

In the rolling hills of Kentucky and Tennessee, a new kind of pioneer is staking their claim. These aren’t homesteaders seeking fertile soil, but Christian nationalists creating what they call “aligned communities” — insular enclaves designed to incubate their vision for America’s future. 

A key player in this renewed far-right back to the land movement is Kentucky RidgeRunner LLC, a property development company headed by Josh Abbotoy in partnership with his father. 

A 2023 Claremont Institute fellow, Abbotoy is deeply connected to the intellectual web behind Project 2025. The Claremont Institute is on Project 2025’s board of advisors, and Abbotoy reported participating in a Project 2025 “strategic planning session” hosted by the Heritage Foundation in July 2024.

As Kristen Thomason reports for Baptist News Global, Abbotoy’s Highland Rim Project offers parcels of land, including “premium holler farms,” to like-minded conservatives. The goal? To create a bastion of “shared values and the American way of life,” free from what Abbotoy sees as the corrupting influence of progressive ideologies, where schools can “trans” your children at will. 

It’s not a novel concept by any means for far-right groups to form insular enclaves. In 2011, far-right survivalist James Lesley Rawles pushed for like-minded Christians to move to Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and the Pacific Northwest in what he dubbed as the “American Redoubt.” Before him, neo-Nazi Harold Covington also advocated for a white ethnostate. These are only two among several others.

“The whole point of it is to plant a flag and say, this small town is where our people are gathering,” Appotoy says in an interview promoting the community.

The threads connecting Highland Rim to Project 2025 run deep, leading back to the Claremont Institute. This conservative think tank has become a powerhouse in right-wing intellectual circles, providing the ideological framework for both Trump’s presidency and the current push for Christian nationalist governance.

Abbotoy’s venture is backed by New Founding, a conservative venture capital firm with strong Claremont ties. New Founding’s co-founders, Nate Fischer and Matthew Peterson, both benefited from Claremont Institute fellowships and funding.

Aligned communities like the Highland Rim Project are seen as crucial building blocks for a new Christian nationalist order. They serve as incubators for the kind of society Claremont scholars envision, while also providing a base of operations for influencing local and state politics. “America is becoming more socially Darwinian. Collapsing fertility rates (aided by abortion and the abortion pill) mean fewer children. Those children who make it out of the womb face a world with loosened restrictions on weed use, online gambling, and porn,” Abbotoy warned in an October 8, 2024 essay. 

While these communities might seem like an attempt to withdraw from mainstream society, their architects have far more ambitious goals. They’re not running away; they’re digging in.

“The initial phase of reinforcement of the Evangelical position must be dedicated to antifragility, insulation, protection from external threats. Upgrade to a fortress. Solidify your position and, with time, you can launch from a place of strength. Again, the long-term goal is not monkish withdrawal but conquest,” the America Reformer, which Abbotoy and Fischer cofounded, wrote in March 2024. 

This position closely echoes that of the Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR), a secretive organization with close ties to Claremont and New Founding, and of which Fischer is a member. SACR’s mission, according to leaked internal documents, is to cultivate a network of “unhyphenated Americans” ready to “act decisively to secure political and social dominance” for their particular brand of Christianity.

This strategy aligns perfectly with the goals of Project 2025. While the project focuses on preparing for federal power, groups like SACR and New Founding are laying the groundwork at the local and state levels. The aligned communities serve as footholds in this larger campaign.

For those behind these initiatives, 2025 isn’t an end point — it’s just the beginning. Abbotoy has stated that his Highland Rim Project is a blueprint they hope to replicate across multiple states within the next two decades.

This patient approach reflects a key tenet of Claremont and the far-right movement thought: that reshaping America will require a generational effort. The aligned communities are seen as nurseries for raising the next wave of conservative leaders, thinkers and activists.

As the architects of Project 2025 prepare for potential power, these aligned communities bear watching. They represent a concrete manifestation of a political philosophy that could have profound implications for the future of American democracy. Whether they become thriving “cities on a hill” or cautionary tales remains to be seen.

Project 2025: Heritage’s FOIA Frenzy Paves the Way for a Civil Service Purge

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative powerhouse in Washington and the architect of Project 2025, has unleashed a tsunami of information requests on federal agencies, signaling a coordinated effort to reshape the government from within. 

Under the guise of transparency, the foundation’s Oversight Project, led by Mike Howell, has inundated agencies with over 50,000 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in the past two years, ProPublica reports. This deluge is not a random fishing expedition but a calculated move to identify and potentially purge civil servants who don’t align with conservative ideology.

At the heart of this operation lies Project 2025, Heritage’s blueprint for a conservative takeover of the federal government. It aims to fundamentally alter the composition of the federal workforce, replacing career officials with ideological allies. The FOIA requests serve as a crucial tool in this endeavor, seeking to unearth communications and personnel information that could be used to target employees for removal in a future conservative administration.

The scope of the Oversight Project’s information gathering is staggering. Requests have flooded agencies ranging from the Department of the Interior to NASA, Reuters revealed, probing for discussions on hot-button issues like climate change, diversity initiatives, and voting rights. The project has even requested organizational charts and lists of political appointees, effectively mapping out the structure and key personnel of federal agencies.

Particularly telling are the requests targeting NASA, which seek information about employees’ internal discussions regarding Elon Musk and former President Donald Trump. This focus on NASA aligns with a broader conservative narrative that government agencies are inefficient and distracted by social issues. Howell himself has framed the project’s interest in NASA in these terms, contrasting what he calls the agency’s focus on “woke stuff” with the innovative potential of private sector space companies like SpaceX.

The connection between these information requests and potential future personnel actions becomes clear when considering the context of “Schedule F,” an executive order issued by Trump near the end of his presidency. This order, later rescinded by President Biden, would have stripped job protections from thousands of career civil servants, making them easier to fire. Project 2025 advocates for the reinstatement of such measures, paving the way for a massive overhaul of the federal workforce.

The sheer volume of FOIA requests is overwhelming some federal agencies, potentially impeding their regular functions. This flood of inquiries could be seen as a form of bureaucratic sabotage, slowing down government operations under the pretext of transparency. The strain on resources is significant, with some agency workers reporting that processing Heritage’s requests now consumes a substantial portion of their work time.

While Howell portrays the Oversight Project as “the most prestigious international investigative operation in the world,” the targeted nature of many requests betrays a more partisan agenda. The focus on terms associated with progressive causes suggests a concerted effort to identify employees who might be out of step with conservative ideology. This approach raises serious concerns about the politicization of the civil service and the potential for ideological purges in a future conservative administration.

The implications of this massive information-gathering operation are profound. If successful in identifying and targeting career civil servants based on their perceived political leanings, the project could have a chilling effect on government employees’ willingness to engage in frank internal discussions or to pursue initiatives that might be seen as politically contentious. The potential for using this information to guide future hiring and firing decisions threatens the very foundation of the civil service system, which was designed to ensure continuity and expertise across administrations.

The scale of this operation represents a significant escalation in the ongoing battle over the role and composition of the federal bureaucracy. By seeking to identify and potentially remove employees who don’t align with their ideological vision, Heritage and its allies are attempting to reshape the government from within, potentially for generations to come.

The unprecedented scale and focus of Heritage’s information-gathering operation signal a dangerous escalation in the politicization of the federal bureaucracy. By seeking to identify and potentially remove employees based on their perceived ideological leanings, this initiative threatens the very foundations of a professional, non-partisan civil service. As the debate over the proper role and composition of the federal workforce continues, the activities of the Heritage Foundation and its affiliates stand as a stark warning of the potential for ideological purges and the erosion of government expertise and continuity.

Project 2025 Could Lead to More Hurricane Deaths, Experts Warn

As Hurricane Milton approaches Florida in the wake of the devastating Hurricane Helene, experts are sounding the alarm about Project 2025. This plan, if enacted, could significantly increase the number of deaths during future hurricanes, according to emergency management professionals and former government officials.

Project 2025 calls for drastic cuts to federal weather forecasting capabilities and disaster aid. The proposal suggests “breaking up and downsizing” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which it labels a primary component “of the climate change alarm industry.” It also advocates for the National Weather Service to “fully commercialize its forecasting operations.”

As The Guardian reports, Andrew Rosenberg, a former NOAA official now at the University of New Hampshire, called these proposals “ridiculous.” He expressed concern about introducing profit motives into severe weather forecasting: “The primary motivation of a business is profit, and do you really want to have things like severe weather forecasts for things like a massive storm be driven by a profit?”

The potential consequences of these changes could be dire. Samantha Montano, an expert in emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, warned that the proposed alterations would “result in greater suffering, more complicated responses and greater risks across the country.”

Perhaps most alarming is the assessment from Florida Representative Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat and former Florida emergency management director. He stated unequivocally to The Guardian that Project 2025 “leads to more people dying from a hurricane.”

The National Weather Service (NWS) plays a crucial role in hurricane preparedness. Before Hurricane Helene, the agency sent urgent warnings across the southeastern United States. Emergency responders use these warnings and forecasts, comparing them to floodplains and maps “to determine how people should prepare,” according to Moskowitz.

Marjorie McGuirk, an Asheville-based meteorologist who worked for NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, emphasized the importance of historical climate data in making accurate forecasts. “When the forecast for Helene says words like unprecedented, extremely rare and catastrophic, those words are based on the very real climatology records,” she explained. Project 2025, she warned, “destroys the integrity of forecasts.”

The proposal also targets the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), calling for a significant reduction in its role and funding. Under Project 2025, the federal government would cover just 25% of disaster costs in most cases, up to 75% for “truly catastrophic events.” This is a stark contrast to the current system, where FEMA covers at least 75% of disaster costs and up to 100% at a president’s discretion.

Craig Fugate, former administrator of FEMA, highlighted the financial impossibility of states shouldering such costs. He pointed out that just removing downed trees and debris after Hurricane Michael in 2018 cost five times more than the entire annual budget of the badly-hit city of Mexico Beach, Florida. “States don’t usually have a lot of spare money floating around,” Fugate noted, “so they would have to decide whether to raise taxes or cut programs to make up the funding.”

The long-term implications of reduced federal involvement in disaster recovery are equally concerning. Anne Bink, who headed FEMA’s response and recovery operation until May 2024, stressed the increasing importance of the agency in the face of more frequent disasters. “We are facing unprecedented times, we are getting these disaster declarations every other day this year,” she said. “FEMA is needed more than ever by state and local governments because of the increased pace in disasters.”

As communities brace for Hurricane Milton and continue to recover from Helene, the debate over Project 2025 underscores the critical role that federal agencies play in protecting lives during natural disasters. The experts’ warnings paint a grim picture of a future where reduced forecasting capabilities and limited disaster aid could lead to increased loss of life during hurricanes.

Democracy on Edge: New Poll Reveals Voters Reject Project 2025’s Agenda

As the 2024 presidential election looms, a new poll commissioned by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights paints a picture of an electorate deeply worried about the state of American democracy, yet fiercely determined to make their voices heard at the ballot box.

The poll surveyed 1,000 likely voters on key civil rights issues. The results, released on October 7, 2024, offer a snapshot of a nation grappling with threats to its democratic foundations while still holding firm to core civil rights values.

Perhaps most striking is the overwhelming concern about the health of American democracy. A staggering 81% of voters believe democracy is under threat, while 73% worry about potential political violence in the wake of November’s election. This anxiety crosses ideological lines, with 92% of liberals, 68% of moderates, and 63% of conservatives expressing concern about post-election unrest.

Despite these fears — or perhaps because of them  — voter motivation has reached fever pitch. An astounding 93% of respondents report being “extremely motivated” to vote this November, up seven points from last year. Maya Wiley, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference, sees this as a positive sign: “Voters know what’s at stake in this election… This most recent poll shows that voters want to vote more than ever despite, or perhaps because, our democracy is threatened.”

While the economy and immigration top the list of voter concerns (at 42% and 33% respectively), protecting democracy and freedoms remains a key priority for 22% of respondents. This focus on safeguarding rights is reflected in other poll findings:

• 79% believe America’s diversity makes the country stronger
• 77% agree that marriage equality should be legally protected
• 64% support legal protection for abortion access
• 69% say the government must do more to protect civil and human rights for people of color

The poll also reveals ongoing concerns about racial inequity. A plurality (44%) of voters feel race relations are worsening, with Black and Hispanic voters even more likely to hold this view. Alarmingly, 36% of Black respondents report experiencing racism in their daily lives.

A new addition to this year’s poll was an examination of voter awareness and attitudes toward Project 2025. The survey found that 70% of voters are familiar with Project 2025, with a majority (54%) viewing it unfavorably.

When presented with specific components of the Project 2025 agenda, voters expressed strong opposition to nearly all proposals. The most unpopular measures included:

• Cuts to overtime pay (91% opposed)
• Cuts to Social Security (86% opposed)
• Government monitoring of pregnancies (85% opposed)

Of the 19 Project 2025 agenda items tested, only four failed to garner strong opposition from a majority of voters. This widespread rejection suggests that while voters may be divided on some issues, there’s a clear consensus against what many view as extreme policy proposals.

The poll’s findings underscore the complex landscape facing civil rights advocates and voters alike in 2024. While core civil rights values remain broadly popular, there’s a palpable anxiety about the erosion of democratic norms and the potential for political instability.

Project 2025: A Blueprint for Eroding Black Rights, New Report Finds

In a report released on October 4, 2024, the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund (LDF) has sounded the alarm on Project 2025, which threatens to dismantle decades of civil rights progress for Black Americans. The report, titled “Attack on Our Power and Dignity: What Project 2025 Means for Black Communities,” meticulously examines seven key areas where the proposed policies could have devastating consequences: civil rights, education, political participation, criminal justice, housing, reproductive rights, and environmental justice.

At its core, Project 2025 seeks to dramatically expand executive power while weakening vital democratic checks and balances. For Black Americans, the consequences could be dire across multiple facets of life. In education, the plan proposes abolishing the Department of Education and eliminating federal oversight of civil rights in schools. This move would likely exacerbate racial disparities in discipline and resource allocation. The plan also advocates defunding public schools in favor of private school vouchers and “school choice” programs, which research shows often increase segregation. Early childhood programs like Head Start, which disproportionately serve Black children, would be eliminated.

Voting rights and political representation for Black communities face grave threats under Project 2025. The LDF found that the plan calls for overhauling the Census Bureau, likely worsening the persistent undercount of Black Americans. This could reduce federal funding and Congressional representation for areas with large Black populations. It also proposes criminalizing certain election-related activities, potentially intimidating and suppressing Black voters.

In housing policy, Project 2025 would eviscerate fair housing protections and rental assistance programs that Black families disproportionately rely on. Federal enforcement of anti-discrimination laws would be delegated to states, many of which have historically resisted civil rights. The plan also seeks to transfer control of critical affordable housing programs like Section 8 to states with histories of racial discrimination, threatening housing stability for millions of low-income Black families.

Public safety proposals in Project 2025 read like a throwback to the “tough on crime” era, likely expanding the use of the racially discriminatory death penalty. Given the well-documented racial disparities in capital punishment, this would disproportionately impact Black defendants. The plan would roll back efforts to address police misconduct that violates constitutional and civil rights, removing key accountability tools that have been crucial in addressing systemic racism in law enforcement.

Access to health care, particularly reproductive care, would be severely curtailed. The plan calls for banning federal access to abortion care and criminalizing health care providers. Given that 42 percent of women seeking abortion care are Black and that Black women already face disproportionately high maternal mortality rates, these policies could have devastating consequences for Black women’s health and autonomy.

Environmental protections vital to the health of many Black communities would be gutted under Project 2025. The plan would shut down the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice, allowing the federal government to ignore persistent environmental racism that causes severe health disparities in Black communities, leaving Black people even more vulnerable to pollution and hazardous living conditions.

Perhaps most alarmingly, Project 2025 represents a fundamental shift in the understanding and application of civil rights laws. The plan seeks to reframe these laws to focus on what its proponents perceive as “anti-white racism,” targeting programs in government and corporate America designed to counter historical racism that has favored whites. This ranges from longstanding policies aimed at giving minorities economic opportunities to more recent diversity initiatives.

This ideological shift is evident in the rhetoric of several prominent figures promoting Project 2025 who tout “reverse racism” as the most important civil rights issue of our time. Jeremy Carl, a senior fellow at the Project 2025-supporter the Claremont Institute, and author of The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart, made the rounds on conservative podcasts this spring arguing that American culture is “very uncomfortable with whiteness in all of its manifestations.”