Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. I'm Stephen Carol and this is Here's Why, where we take one news story and explain it in just a few minutes with our experts here at Bloomberg. Now. It's a pretty bland name for something aspiring to be the most important political blueprint in America. Project twenty twenty five is getting plenty of attention.
Their campaign is Project twenty twenty five. It is taking away reproductive freedom across this country.
Donald Trump is also trying to distract people. He wants to direct attention away from his record and his Project twenty twenty five plan.
The plan's stated goal is to rescue the US from the quote grip of the radical left. It's architects want it to be the policy framework for Donald Trump if he wins re election in November. The Republican nominee has tried to distance himself from it, though, but the Democrats want Trump to be linked to its more radical ideas. In a sign of how politically sensitive it's become. The man who directed it, Paul Dan's a step down after criticism from Trump. So here's why Project twenty twenty five
has America's attention. Our senior editor at Wendy Benjaminson joins us from Washington for more high Wendy sou First of all, who is behind Project twenty twenty five.
Well, this was led by the Heritage Foundation, which is a longstanding conservative think tank in Washington. But it rose to power really during the Reagan administration of one of those very sort of old school conservative things, and it has evolved, along with the Republican Party into sort of a mago organization. But they were joined by one hundred conservative groups around the country that wanted to sort of
Donald Trump a to do list for his presidency. And the policy ranged all over the place, from really really extreme to things that Donald Trump has said that have long been conservative doctrine.
So what's going to happen to it now that Paul Don's has gone.
Well, I'm not really sure because one of the funny things about this is that even though Trump has said some of the policies are ridiculous and all of that, the trouble is a lot of them are the things he says every time he gets in front of a microphone. You know, to have mass deportations of illegal immigrants, to get rid of federal agencies that he doesn't like to politicize the federal bureaucracy. One of the major points that he disagrees with him on is abortion. Donald Trump has
never been a really strong anti abortion person. He's a New Yorker or all that, but he has adopted a more liberal, if you will, stands on abortion because he wants to win the election. And America is two thirds to three quarters in favor of some abortion rights and this one calls for absolutely no abortions and mandated by Congress.
So it's not the sort of dilemma that he's facing that even though this project very neatly puts together, as you say, lots of things that he said before, there are things that he doesn't like. Or is it about him not accepting the premise that this is a blueprint that's being onto him or to do list.
Honestly, I think what's happening is he's running from it because the Democrats are quite effectively wrapping it around his neck.
Right.
They're saying, this is what Donald Trump is going to bring to the country. Look here and you'll see the Trump administration, you know, laid out in front of you for twenty twenty four to twenty twenty eight. You know, some of them are very extreme. One of them would limit the powers of the federal agency called OSHA, Occupational Safety and Health Administration that keeps workers safe on their jobs.
It would not only limit their power, but allow miners to do inherently dangerous work, allow child dangerous labor in this country. Again, so there are parts of it that he's saying, come on this, I'm not going to do that, but he actually hasn't specified what he will and will not do. It's just that the Democrats have so perfectly wrapped this around his neck and said this is what you're going to get.
So this is in a lot of ways a very useful political tool for the Democrats. As you've outlined. Surely they don't want to see Project twenty twenty five jettisoned for now.
And they're not going to let it happen. They are going to continue to open this big gift box that the Heritage Foundation gave them, and every day, every rally, every AD is going to mention Project twenty twenty five and all of the really startling policies in it, which include the US military conducting mass deportations of proposedly illegal immigrants. Who knows how many people could get wrapped up in mass deportations. It gets rid of the Department of Education.
The most scary thing in it is that it politicizes the federal bureaucracy, so that even administrative assistance in the Department of Energy or a biologist at the Environmental Protection Agency would have to be loyal to Donald Trump, not
to the people of the United States. Those federal agencies are supposed to be staffed below the top levels with people who are working through across administrations, and the politicization of the federal bureaucracy would be quite a sea change for the United States.
Maybe another way that the Heritage Foundation and some of those behind Project twenty twenty five might hope to have influence is in personnel terms, to try and get people into the key jobs if Donald Trump were to win the election. Is that perhaps how this agenda stays relevant.
Absolutely, that is how it would stay relevant. The people who wrote Project twenty twenty five Paul Dan's it's Ben Carson, the former Housing secretary, and other people who were extremely close to Trump in his first administration who wrote this.
So presumably Trump will appoint some people who were involved in Project twenty twenty five, or simply agree with some of the policies in Project twenty twenty five, and so it can find its way into Americans' lives of if Donald Trump is elected, no matter whether he says he likes it or not.
Okay, and that's one of the reasons that we might hear so much more about it over the next few months. Wendy Benjaminson in Washington, Thank you so much for joining us for more explanations like this one from our team of twenty seven hundred journalists and analysts around the world. Search for quick take on the Bloomberg website or Bloomberg Business app. I'm Stephen Caroll. This is here's why. I'll be back next week with more. Thanks for listening.
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