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.
Unbridled Presidential Powers (Pages 43-44)
“The modern conservative President’s task is to limit, control, and direct the executive branch on behalf of the American people. This challenge is created and exacerbated by factors like Congress’s decades-long tendency to delegate its lawmaking power to agency bureaucracies, the pervasive notion of expert ‘independence’ that protects so-called expert authorities from scrutiny, the presumed inability to hold career civil servants accountable for their performance, and the increasing reality that many agencies are not only too big and powerful, but also increasingly weaponized against the public and a President who is elected by the people and empowered by the Constitution to govern.
. . .
The great challenge confronting a conservative President is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power— including power currently held by the executive branch—to the American people. Success in meeting that challenge will require a rare combination of boldness and self-denial: boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will and self-denial to use the bureaucratic machine to send power away from Washington and back to America’s families, faith communities, local governments, and states.”
Why it Matters: Talking Points
These two paragraphs appear quite early in the 900-page tome that is Project 2025 and set a tone that is pervasive throughout the manifesto. The words also signal to readers that it is not necessary to continue reading, for this is the work of ideologs, not of serious analytical thinkers.
The idea that we should let America’s families, faith communities, and local governments develop regulations and policies now researched and implemented by agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission, or the Securities and Exchange Commission is simply preposterous.
Parse each sentence in the quoted paragraphs and you will see clearly how the authors embed their ideology, trampling on any notion that the agencies of the executive branch should craft careful, thoughtful, and sound proposals as the foundation of proposed federal activity. This is an early blaring indication that is the hallmark of Project 2025. It is a blueprint for amassing total power in the presidency with the actual stated goal of exercising “the boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will”.
These quotes confirm the worst fears of unbridled presidential power, offering a strong example of why it is critical to prevent Project 2025 from ever being implemented.
Visit our website for more on our Project 2025 Talking Points Series.
Thank you for your dedication to maintaining our democracy. Please support our efforts by donating to LDAD and by sharing this email with your networks. As always, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] if you may be interested in volunteering or if you wish to share your ideas.
Lawyers Defending American Democracy
