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Dear John,
Project 2025 embodies an agenda led by the Heritage Foundation to revise, reorganize and eliminate vast portions of the statutes, rules and norms that were built over decades, and that have guided our democracy and preserved our freedoms during Republican and Democratic administrations alike. Embodied in a 900-page document entitled “Mandate for Leadership – The Conservative Promise,” and developed in collaboration with more than 100 other organizations, Project 2025 would dramatically change both.
It is important to stress that recent changes in the Project’s leadership alter neither the document’s text nor the “Mandate for Leadership” that lies behind it. The president of the Heritage Foundation has made clear that the policy work has been completed as scheduled and their efforts to build a personnel apparatus to carry out this work at all levels of government continues.
All of us, and lawyers in particular, have a role to play in discussing with others the nature of the proposed changes and how they endanger our freedom. To facilitate those discussions, Lawyers Defending American Democracy is publishing a series of “Talking Points” that highlight changes Project 2025 is intent on making and their potential effect.
Each Talking Point will quote directly from a section of the document and explain its impact on our democracy, our freedom, and the rule of law. Please share this information widely with your friends, family, and colleagues in the upcoming months.
Hostility to Science (Page 60)
“[T]he next Administration will face a significant challenge in unwinding policies and procedures that are used to advance radical gender, racial, and equity initiatives under the banner of science. Similarly, the Biden Administration’s climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding.”
Why it Matters: Talking Points
From beginning to end, the Project 2025 blueprint for America reflects an unabashed hostility to the independence of science. The plan does not reject all science, just science that supports an outcome the Project’s authors consider to be “woke.” Hence the plan would eliminate dozens of science-based policies that address climate change, the environment, abortion, health care access, technology and education. Science that confirms or supports their definition of “woke” initiatives or policies is summarily dismissed as “junk.” The director of the Climate and Energy program at the nonpartisan Union of Concerned Scientists has observed that the independence of science is attacked across the board in the Project’s plan.
Project 2025 identifies scientific agencies and divisions as “vulnerable to obstructionism” and recommends that thousands of civil service positions be reclassified as political positions answerable to the President. The objective is to assure that the appointees to these scientific agencies, and other agencies, are “wholly in sync” with Presidential policy.
This turns scientific integrity on its head: rather than hire experienced scientists to conduct research and fairly report the results and conclusions, Project 2025 proposes to screen and hire “scientists” who will adhere to the administration’s preconceived policy, regardless of the facts and science.
Project 2025 proposes to abolish or dismantle federal agencies or offices whose mission includes scientific research and reporting. In keeping with this quote’s reference to climate science as “climate fanaticism,” Project 2025 proposes to dismantle the nation’s climate science infrastructure by eliminating multiple agencies and offices throughout the federal government.
A thriving democratic society requires leaders to openly debate and engage the public in discourse based on facts and science. If federal policies are grounded, not on facts and science, but on a slavish adherence to the preconceived beliefs and biases of those in power, the country will be on a path toward autocracy.
Visit our website [[link removed]] for more on our Project 2025 Talking Points Series.
T hank you for your dedication to maintaining our democracy. Please support our efforts by donating [[link removed]] to LDAD and by sharing this email with your networks. As always, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] [[email protected]] if you may be interested in volunteering or if you wish to share your ideas.
Lawyers Defending American Democracy
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