The extremist Mandate for Leadership, dubbed “Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project,” is a 900-page document published by the Heritage Foundation and meant to serve as a road map for a far-right presidential administration. While its policy proposals are sweeping and would affect nearly every facet of American life, its overarching goal is clear: to lay out an authoritarian playbook that would destroy the system of checks and balances our forefathers designed when they sought freedom and popular sovereignty almost 250 years ago. In dissolving the American idea, the plan’s extremist policies would give far-right politicians, judges, and corporations more control over Americans’ lives.
This series will unpack the various components of Project 2025, which touches everything from health care and abortion rights to overtime pay and education. This radical policy agenda would concentrate federal power in the presidency, direct all levers of government to dismantle democracy, and pull the rug out from under America’s middle class.