During the campaign, there was polling that showed twenty twenty five was deeply on popular, but people just didn't believe that Trump would do these things. They said, if Trump did, you know, band abortion entirely, for example, I wouldn't like that. But there's no chance he's going to do this. And there's a whole list of those things. So I think when people understand what it actually means, there will be
more pushback. But if they see it simply as a kind of fuzzy pro family agenda, they may underestimate just how sweeping and radical it is.
Hi, everyone, and welcome back to this episode of Next Question You Know. Project twenty twenty five is a nearly one thousand page document that is designed to serve as a blueprint for transforming American society. Most people, of course, heard of it prior to the election, but many people hadn't and still haven't read it, and those who did read it thought there was no way in hell that Donald Trump would actually implement it. Well guess what he has.
So here are the questions, what does Project twenty twenty five actually say, what does it mean? And is there any way to stop what seems to be this runaway train. David Graham, who's a writer for the Atlantic, has written a new book called The Project. How Project twenty twenty five is reshaping America, and he's here to answer those questions and more. I think you're one of the few people, David, who has read Project twenty twenty five's Mandate for Leadership
cover to cover. It's almost one thousand pages, nine hundred and twenty two. So, in broad strokes, what was your takeaway after reading the whole damn thing?
Right? You know, I'd read bits and pieces during the campaign, but I hadn't read the whole thing, And when I actually sat down to read it, I was pretty astonished. It was a richer document that I had realized. It was more radical, it was more interesting. There are these conflicts in it, and it seemed like such a roadmap to what we would expect from a Trump administration. And I think that's exactly how it's played out.
You were initially somewhat skeptical of the hype around Project twenty twenty five, but as you said, it was much more radical than you thought. Can you tell us more about that and what you ascertained that made you think Jesus this is pretty serious stuff.
You know, we get these kind of policy blueprints every four years, and often there are just kind of lists of policies people want, and that's what I thought this was too. But this is really a whole scheme for remaking the federal government and then remaking American society. I think it's ambitions are just much broader, and it has methods. I mean, they thought about how to make these things happen in a way that the typical policy wishless just doesn't have.
Like what I mean, tell us how they hope to implement it to get widespread acceptance, and we'll talk about its popularity or left up later, but it's much more give us a little more meat to understand the methodology they hope to incorporate.
Yeah, I mean, the centerpiece is taking charge of the federal government and taking charge of the executive branch in
a way that no president has before. So they lay out how to take over the Justice Department, how to use the Office of Management and Budget, which is you know, kind of a dusty agency as the command center for taking charge of the federal government, how to use the Office of Presidential Personnel, and then to sort of accrue presidential power by taking over independent regulatory agencies, so things like you know, the FCC or the FTC. Traditionally, you know,
they work relatively independently. They're appointed by the president and their leaders, but then they do their own thing. They think that's unconstitutional. They want Trump to be directing those things. And once you have control of all of them, and you start to push civil servants out as well, you can make the federal government do what you want to do, and that includes creating this very conservative vision of society.
Donald Trump during the campaign obviously distanced himself from Project twenty five, but it seems like he is in it hole hog, isn't it. Talk about the difference between how he talked about this document and how it's been implemented already during the course of his still young administration second administration.
You know, there's something like seventy contributors to Project twenty twenty five. A quarter of them were in his first administration. Some of them were cabinet members. Russell Vote, wh's kind of the intellectual architect, was the head of OMB in the first administration. He is again. He led Trump's policy committee during the twenty twenty four campaign. So the idea that there was really any distance I think was always
very flimsy. But now that he's in office, he's put these people in top positions and he's followed their prescriptions really closely. So, you know, if you look at the executive orders we saw in the first week of the presidency, thirty seven of forty seven I believe, according to Bloomberg, were directly from Project twenty twenty five. He's following the blueprint right as it's laid out.
Tell me more about this Russell Vogue guy, because if he is sort of the intellectual archaet of it, tell me about his background, his philosophy, and how he has imbued this document or this blueprint with his own ideas.
So votes an interesting guy because he comes from this sort of traditional conservative, socially conservative, fiscally conservative wing of the Republican Party, and he worked for Phil Graham and the Senate. He came up through these these traditional channels. Doesn't seem like naturally a Trump guy because he is so socially conservative. But he got into the first Trump administration and he found himself really frustrated by what he saw.
He saw civil servants, he felt who were obstructing Trump. But he also saw political appointees who he thought were lazy, or who were rhinos, or who were you know, trying to obstruct Trump for whatever their ends were. And he
didn't want that to happen again. And so he designs Projects twenty twenty five as a way to have staff who would be on board, who'd be trained and ready to go, and as a set of methods to sort of drive through that opposition and to bring about the you know, the Christian nation that he says we should be. And we're founded as you who shocked.
I know you've read bits and pieces before you wrote this book, but when you read it in its totality, what was your reaction in general as just an American citizen in terms of what they were trying to do.
I was amazed how radical it was. I mean, this is just a program for all of society, and they want to change so many basically, you know, want to change the way your children are taught and what you get in classrooms. They want to change the way you interact with your healthcare providers. They want to affect really everything,
every part of life. And I think I hadn't realized that I mean, I remember reading through it and I kept like, you know, walking out of my office to my wife, like you won't believe what I'm reading here? Can you believe that they're saying this? And you know, I think it is. You know, it's important to understand just how systematic it is. And that's what I didn't grasp until I read the whole thing, and what I hope I can convey in the book.
Well, you know, I'm curious if you saw it also as a blueprint for autocracy, because you know, it sounds both like it wants to go back in time right and remove what most people see as progress or some people see as progress in terms of equal rights, the role of women, and marginalized communities, opportunities, you know, being more full throated participants in American life, and autocracy. So where do you see it philosophically? Landing it's a melding
of those two things, you know. So some of the ideas here are things that we've heard from the Republican Party or from social concertis for a long time. And I think what sets this apart is the willingness to use the federal government as a kind of coercive force This is not a sort of, you know, Ronald Reagan limited government idea. This is about accruing a lot of presidential power and using it to, you know, to build the society people want in a way that the Republican
Party has traditionally stood against. We'll talk about the Christian nationalism part in a moment, because I don't want to make listeners viewers think that I just was like glossing that over. But first I want to talk about some of the goals of Project twenty twenty five. They're four of them, and let's talk about them. One is restore the family is the centerpiece of American life and protect our children. What does that mean exactly? From their vantage point.
It means a whole range of things. So it means, for example, abolishing the Department of Education and giving parents and giving religious organizations much more ConTroll over education, moving things away from the public school system and towards private schools and religious schools. It means banning abortion nationwide. It means defining gender or defining sex as male and female with nothing between, sort of pushing trans people into the shadows.
It means using things like welfare to encourage nuclear families to encourage marriage and fatherhood. They lay out basically how to use every department of the government as a way to achieve these things.
How much of the document feels like, either blatantly or implicitly, a backlash against progressive sort of liberal thinking in general. Does it go without saying or is it specified within Project twenty twenty five.
It is specified at places. And they talk a lot about wokeness. They don't tell us what they mean by that,
but they're clearly reacting against something. And in statements, you know, in interviews elsewhere, Russell Vote and Paul Danz, who is sort of his partner in building this, have talked about their reaction to how society has changed, and they're feeling that, you know, Christianity is being sidelined, and then the America that they know and love is being taken away from them and they want to reclaim it.
What do they think of separation of church and state.
They don't believe in it.
They don't.
It's simply not a factor. I mean, they say that the government shouldn't establish a church, but they say this is a Christian nation, it was founded as a Christian nation, and it should be Vote speaking to Charlie Kirk a couple of years ago said, you know, the left uses all these pejoratives for us. They call me a Christian nationalist, But unlike a lot of the pejoratives, I think that's true. I'm a Christian, I'm a nationalist. I think we should have a Christian nation.
Another goal is to dismantle the administrative state and return self governance to the American people. What does that mean exactly?
So, the administrative state is basically the executive branch as we know it. We have hundreds of thousands of civil servants who, you know, we interact with them when we're dealing with social security. They are forecasting our weather, they are sending grants to our schools, all of these things, and they operate in a sort of semi autonomous way. They're non political, they stay in the government no matter what happens. They're also these independent agencies that act sort
of outside of the president's purview. They want to demolish all of that. They think the president should have full control of anyone who works at the executive branch, and those people should be basically working towards his political goals, whatever those might be. And so they want to lay off civil servants. We've obviously seen a lot of that already,
and I will see more of it. They want to convert other civil servants to being political appointees, and they want to with you know, get rid of these guard reels we've traditionally seen, like Justice Department independence example.
Scary, right, I mean, you're talking about it so matter of factly, but you know, most civil servants aren't necessarily there to push an ideological agenda. They're really there to keep the government going right, the wheels of government operating right. So it's almost a sense of paranoia that there are dark forces lurking. I guess that's why they call it the deep state, but dark forces lurking everywhere that have a very concrete political agenda that they're trying to push.
But it really that's not really the case of government workers, Isn't it exactly right?
It's not. I mean, you know, there are surveys that show that government workers lean left in their politics, but most of the things they do simply are not political. And I think, you know a lot of Americans gripe about bureaucrats, but when I read the prescriptions here, I think is making these people, you know, appointed on the basis of their politics, on their loyalty to the present. Is that going to make services better or is it
going to make things worse? It seems to me it's likely to make things worse.
The third thing is defend our nation's sovereignty, borders and bounty against global threats. Help me understand that.
It's a little opaque.
I think that means a couple Also, what is bounty.
Right, It's a lofty term they want to use to make this seem maybe a little bit.
More patriotic or old school or something.
I think that means first of all, borders, so it means closing the border. It means reducing immigration, both legal and I legal. There's a sense that there are too many people coming into the country through whatever means. So that means fewer visas, making it harder to immigrate. Those are things that they value. And it also means a kind of existential conflict with China. So throughout you see the sense that China is a threat that Americans don't grasp.
They don't see how big a threat China is, and it has to be confronted economically, culturally, and if necessary, militarily as well.
And finally, secure are God given individual rights to live freely what our Constitution calls the blessings of liberty. So how do they view liberty because a lot of people think that liberties are being taken away, not granted to American citizens.
That's right. There's this chilling quote where Kevin Roberts, who's the head of the Heritage Foundation which convened this, says you, liberty is doing not just what we want, but what we ought. So it's libert or willing. And I mean, this is not liberty. And I think the way most people understand it, it's using the federal government to tell you how to live.
Where do you see the germ of this coming from. Obviously we talked about a backlash against I guess pluralism, globalization, equal rights right, and I think gender roles, DEI, affirmative action, et cetera, et cetera, trying to level the playing field in our society. But what else is really fomented this? In your view having read.
It, yeah, I think it has a very long history. And so you know DEI is a boogeyman often in the document, but you go further back and their concerns about you know, Title nine, for example, and they want to use Title nine to enforce certain priorities. But also they're very skeptical of it. They're skeptical of the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission, they're skeptical of the New Deal itself. So, you know, it's a sense that over the last century things have happened to change the way America works that have taken us away from the Christian founding. They see and they want to reclaim things in that way.
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or follow them on social media. You talk about Russell Vote casually mentioned he's a self described Christian nationalist, So can you talk about what Christian nationalists believe and how his principles bled into this document.
You know, they believe that this is a Christian nation. They believe that.
Well, can you explain why they believe that?
You know, they look at the founders and they say, many of the founders were Christians. They see language about God, and they simply believe that since, you know, since European settlers arrived in the in what is now the United States, they would bring Christian ideas and that is the foundation of the country. And they think that that has always been in the DNA. But we've started to drift away from that.
I mean, so, how does this fit in with sort of Donald Trump's seeming obsession with anti Semitism and sort of Jewish American citizens.
You know, they often use this language about a Judeo Christian society, and they talk about, for example, a biblically grounded vision of the family. And so it's a little bit broader, but very much it's focused around Christianity. So, for example, you know, they think that there should be all people should have a sabbath. You know, they should not have to work for at least a day a week, and if they do, they should have to get time
and a half. This is an idea that maybe could have appeal across the spectrum, but it's phrasing these very religious ways, and they say, we assume this would be Sunday, but it could, for example, be Friday evening to Saturday evening if for somebody of a different faith. So there's a little bit of accommodation. But the norm is very much Christianity, and so much of the policy stems from Christianity.
Can you talk about the dark side of Christian nationalism for people who are perhaps unaware of the sort of nefarious ramifications of this kind of ideology.
I mean, it's very much about telling people how to live, and so it means shutting down abortion rights. It means pushing women towards motherhood and out of the workplace. Not out of the workplace, but away from the workplace. It means knocking down, you know that many of the changes we have seen in the last few decades of giving women more leeway and more rights. It means discouraging things
like divorce. It means schools that are tutoring children in biblical principles and that are not necessarily teaching things like evolution. So I think it's a you know, there are a lot of ideas that are not popular, and it's a very totalizing way to approach.
Life, but it is popular in some quarters. Can you talk about where Project twenty twenty five resonated and the segment of the population who might embrace this, if not wholeheartedly, then half heartedly.
Yeah, you know, I think that this vision of society, and this the kind of backlash we're talking about, is really core to Donald Trump's appeal. It is people who feel like they are losing status in society. They feel like, you know, a white man in particular, don't have the same kind of status they once did. The Christians are persecuted, that white people are persecuted. And for those people, Donald
Trump is very popular. They want to see this kind of vision and they're willing to follow a plan that offers some of these things. Now, I do think that that's a little bit. I think it's a bit of a shallow appeal. I think people have this really emotional connection to it, but when they get to some of the details of Project twenty twenty five, I don't think they're going to be as fond of some of them.
What do you mean emotional appeal on principle for some of these ideas.
I think that just the concept that that something's been taken from you. We're going to put things back the way they were at some point, and this is often left quite, you know, a little bit vague. At some point things started to change in this country and they're not the way they once were, and this is often done. It's kind of vague way, it's kind of a new window.
And what do you think they're talking about.
Well, I think they have to be studiously they because no one wants to say things were better before the Civil Rights Act, when on occasion we've seen politicians say that it has gone very poorly for them, so they have to sort of cloak it in this vagueness. This is why when we say make America great again, Trump never tells us exactly when it was that America was great that he wants to go back to.
Well, let's talk about sort of you talked about the inherent sexism. What about the inherent racism of this document? Clearly it is anti immigrant, right unless they're white immigrants, white Christian immigrants, right, So can you talk about how you interpreted the inherent racism that these people incorporated in Project twenty twenty five.
I think was a real paternalistic attitude and a lot of the document. You know, they say that we need to restore the family, and they say in you know, for example, in poor black communities, they're not allowed enough fathers living in the home. We need to encourage that. You have in the chap on the Department of Housing and Urban Development a sense that, you know, things like housing vouchers or public housing are creating a culture of
dependency and people are not willing to help themselves. So in some ways, these are things we've heard from the right.
I want to say, and I think there's some people, even who are moderate who can say I could get on board with the need to have more involved fathers in all communities.
Back Obama was a big proponent of right.
So at its face, it's not that offensive. But is it imbued with more sort of racist dog whistles or innuendo that would be interpreted by the average person.
I think a lot of that is not necessarily there. They do keep us a very sort of color blind approach at a lot of places. But what you see is a disparate impact on people. If you start directing aid on these ways, if you start putting it through religious groups, if you take away things like the EEOC, you're going to have disparate impact, and they say disparate impact is a you know, a false concept that ought to be thrown out.
So yeah, let's talk about that, because is there much discussion on the impact of all these proposals and policies and is there any kind of appreciation or acceptance of how these things could go or wry.
No, I would say there's a little bit of a gap. They talk about as sort of the shining future they imagine, and they talk about the policies that they are, but there's a gap in between about how exactly these things work. And I think often they fail to really grapple with the impacts of the things they suggest. So, you know, they complain about politicization in the executive branch, and then they offer a plan to politicize it that seems to
cut against what you want. They complain that Congress has abdicated too much power and is you know, no longer as a sort of as it should bete and they want to give more power to the executive branch.
So they say Congress has abdicated it, but they don't say the executive branch has seized it.
No, they one of the executive branch to seize much more.
Do you think Donald Trump is in lockstep with a lot of these policies or do you think he simply sees it as a means to an end, as a means to a massive power grab by him and the people around him who agree with him.
I think it's symbiosis. So for Trump, he gets trained employees, you know, trained staffers who are loyal to his project, who are ready to go on day one. He has a whole policy agenda and he has ways, for example, to clear out the deep state that he hates, and to reak retribution by using the Justice Department, newly in his control, as a tool of retribution. And for them,
they have a vessel. I mean they understand that these things are hard to do, that they've been conservative priorities for a long time and they haven't happened, and they see Trump as someone who's willing to sort of force it through. So each side gets something they want, but they're looking way beyond Trump. I mean, this is a plan for decades to come, and Trump is just the first stage of that.
Yeah, well, tell us more about that. What is the long view for the architects of Project twenty twenty five.
They understand that the firste hundred days are very important, as we've seen, they understand the first two years before the midterms are very important. They want to get as far as they can toward that. But the changes they're making are not going to be reversed no matter, you know, how Democrats do in the midterms or who the next president is, because you can't rehire thousands of federal employees. There's going to be so much brain drain. There's going
to be programs that are shut down. You know, there's an end to basically all climate change research is kind of plated here. Those are things that are hard to put back. You can't rehire all the generals they've fired, which is another Project twenty twenty five priority. So the next president will inherit a government that is much smaller and is reoriented a lot, and they will have to grapple with that rather than what Trump received on January twentieth.
Could you get on board with anything that was in Project twenty twenty five in terms of you know, so called waste, fraud and abuse. I think it's so interesting they're you know, getting rid of fraud by getting rid of the people who are basically responsible for recognizing, recognizing and doing something about it. Right.
Yeah, I mean people talk about waste, fraud, and abuse, and obviously nobody is in favor of those things. But it's a lot harder to find that than it seems as Elon Musk has discovered. It's not just sitting there waiting to be discovered. You know, I think there are some really interesting ideas in here, and I think, for example, they're concerned about driving at birth rates, this pro natalist view, but there's places that you can see, you know, crossover
with the left. They think duelas should be available to all mothers. For example, they think that childcare should be more easily avaiable. They advocate for childcare in the workplace, saying, you know, parents shouldn't have to be so far away from their children.
They want to give money to women or families where they're six or more children.
M There's all these ways to encouraging and you know, these are ideas that I think the left would like. Often that they have diagnoses that I think are reasonable, it's whether the prescription works, and that's often where the problem is.
Give me an example of that.
Well, I mean, I think talking about Congress is a great one. Congress is very broken. If you talk political scientists or former members of Congress from either party, they'll tell you that it's just that giving the president unfettered power everything else isn't going to fix that problem. It's not going to solve the problems in our politics.
I know that you right that the architects of Project twenty twenty five sought the year twenty twenty four as a critical moment in time comparable to seventeen seventy six or eighteen sixty. Can you describe that? And I guess they look at it as a huge and dramatic inflection point for American society.
That's right. I mean, I think that they phrase it this way tells us how important it is to them and how sweeping their plan is. They're trying to meet a moment like that. Kevin Roberts, the head of Heritage, said last summer that we're in the midst of a second American revolution and bloodless if the Left allows it
to be. I think that's pretty chilling, and it also explains, I think why it's so important to pay attention to this and understand what they want to do and understand the methods they've layed out.
I would probably normally save this towards the end of our interview, but you know, as I hear this, it feels like a runaway train, right, And I think so many people are wondering how can we stop this train? And there don't seem to be the tools at our disposal to say, hey, we don't want this society. And in fact, I think only thirteen percent and who knows how deep the understanding is of this plan approve of Project twenty twenty five in America. But it is happening
at full speed. So how do you stop this or how do you reverse course? If, in fact, so much damage is going to be done in the first two years of this administration.
I think it's a really tough question. I mean, I think the first thing is understanding it, and I think that is something we've missed. I think Democrats don't seem to be looking ahead. I think a lot of the population has been shocked by things that have happened. And you know, one of the things I wanted to do in the book was explain to people where things are going so that they can look ahead, and so they're a little bit less surprised and they can start figuring
out how they want to respond. And I think that's valuable for people who agree with Projects twenty twenty five too. I think it's important to understand this. It's an important part of being an American citizen to see where our country is headed.
That's a pretty unsatisfying answer. I having to be honest with you. I'm talk to me, so I agree. Understanding it is the first step. But what can be done at all? Or is that something you actually didn't focus on in this book.
It's not something I focused on it.
Maybe you need to do a second book, right.
Being the sequel? Right? I mean, I think there was so much in the document that I felt like I had to get. I had to explain all of those and break it down and figure out how to respond to it as a such a vast topic too, you know, I think people need to understand that what is going to come later is not going to be returned to where things were. We're not going to go back to pre Project twenty twenty five. We have to rethink what
American government should be like. I think I've thought a lot about the post Watergate reforms and whether we might see something like those sorts of reforms to the government, you know, after Trump leave's office.
Let's talk about the Elon Musk of it all and how he fits into Project twenty twenty five. How does he You.
Know, he's not contemplated and the speed with which he's acted is something that has come to as a surprise to me. The things he's done have not. It's really been the space.
Is he operating with this playbook?
He is very much If you look at what he's doing, he's following what they're doing it. He's doing it a lot faster they you know, they these are people who have served in government and thought really hard about how they could work using the laws, using what's in place to achieve what they wanted, and Musk kind of just buldoze through it. He's made those things happen a lot faster. But he's working closely with Russell Vote, and I think for people like Russell Vote and other Project twenty twenty
five architects, Musk is just a vessel. In the same way that Trump is a means to an end, Musk is a means to an end as well.
They approve of what he's doing though right.
They do, absolutely. I think they're they're driving it. They're encouraging him, they're pointing him where to go.
Is saying, now though, that DOGE will produce only fifteen percent of the savings that promised, and the New York Times is saying that estimate is inflated with errors and guesswork. So how can they be pleased with the results if they're not really, I guess, dismantling the deep state as significantly as they had hoped.
You know, I think the efficiency is something he talks about a lot. It's not their concern. Their concern is getting rid of the employees. And we see these people leaving every day. We see them. Russell Vote said he wanted to put the federal bureaucracy in trauma, and I think we see that happening all the time. Federal workers are in fact in trauma. They're contemplating the exits, they're being forced out. Just today, I see that the federal watchdog in charge of employees is no longer going to
be fighting these dismissals. And so this progress is happening. Even if they don't save money, they know that they're putting things under the President's control, and they're moving things toward this Christian society. Anything else is just kind of collateral damage.
So who will replace all these people? There will have to be a litmus test for your religious beliefs and your loyalty to Donald Trump.
Right. They want people chosen on whether they're true to the president, whether they are longtime MAGA believers. And you know, we saw for example, people being question for their jobs in the administration. Do you believe the twenty twenty election was stolen? If you say no, you don't get a job. These are the kind of tests that we're going to get.
Okay, dumb question, But isn't that against the law.
There's a lot of things that are ostensibly against the law, and if you just do them and try to get away with them, you can do that. And one thing that the architects of Project twenty twenty five want to do is push things to Supreme Court. So, for example, it's illegal for the president to take control of or to fire you know, members of the National Labor Relations Board or the Federal Elections.
Commission aren't the chairman of the FED.
For example, but they want to they they believe that it's unconstitutional if they can push that the Supreme Court. They think they now have a conservative majority that will rule with them and overturn ninety five years of president About this, well.
Let's talk about how they view the judiciary branch of the American government. What is discussed in Project twenty twenty five about that.
They almost don't pay attention to any of the lower branches. You know, we've seen the President Jdvan tell these people attacking federal judges directly. The architects of Project twenty twenty five mostly see the Supreme Court as allies, and they think if they can push these cases to them, they're going to get favorable rulings and be able to work towards society they want.
And what do you think do you think the Supreme Court will rubber stamp a lot of the stuff that's being done, or do you think that they will say, hey, wait a minute, this has gone too far and uphold the decisions the lower courts may be making when they are against what Donald Trump wants to do.
It's really hard to know. We've seen sometimes the Supreme Court go along with what seemed like very far fetched arguments from Trump. I mean, you know, give immunity the immunity exactly, and then we saw them more recently shooting down as alien Enemies Act use. So it's a little bit hard to tell. I think the question is, you know, we know there are two to three votes who will agree with almost anything he says. They know there are three votes that will vote against almost anything he says.
And the question is where these people in the middle. You know where John robertson, where Cunny Barrett come out?
Really, because she offended people with a recent decision, tell us about that.
You know, she is somebody who the right has worked so hard to get judges in place who will work along with them, and I think you know those efforts go right along with Projects twenty twenty five. They were very upset about somebody like a David Suiter proving more liberal than they expected. And so when they see a judge who doesn't simply rubber stamp what Trump says, they
see this as disloyalty. So there's an implicit idea that the judiciary should be listening to the president, that it shouldn't be an independent check, even if that's not something that is directly stated.
This is so friggin' terrifying. If you want to get smarter Every morning with a breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and wellness and pop culture. Sign up for our daily newsletter, Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. SO Project twenty twenty five calls for drastic tax cuts, the elimination of federal regulations, massive reduction in the federal workforce, but also is proposing a slew of initiatives that would need to be paid for
and administered by you, guessed at the federal government. So how do they reconcile just replacing perhaps one bureaucracy with one that is closer to them ideologically.
I don't think they do. I think it's a real flaw. And although, for example, they say a recurring theme because it's organized by department, there's a chapter on each department, is that the writers say that we need to get rid of many federal employees, we need to hire some more in this agency, we need to expand the Defense Department,
we need to expand the Department of Homeland Security. So I think there's a real flaw there, and they don't explain how they're going to administer a lot of the things. If they have cleared out the experts and they're bringing people who don't have any training in these things.
Let's talk about climate change. Since it is Earth Day today, what is the document stance on global warming?
They don't say that global warming is a hoax. They just don't want to deal with it. So any climate related research would be shut down, Climate warnings would be thrown out, environmental regulation would be trashed across the board. So that's air pollution, water pollution, but that's also you know, greenhouse gas issues. They think that the Interior Department should basically be in charge of getting more oil and gas extracted. Everything is arranged around fossil fuels.
But is protecting the earth and clean air, clean water? Is that not a Christian value?
You know, you would think so. And the story they tell I think is very strange. They say, back in the seventies, the air was dirty, the water was dirty. We cleaned things up. We should celebrate that. Why are environmental that is always telling us how bad things are. We need to look at all the things that are really goot and we need to focus on things that
we can measure. And they say, you know, we can't measure climate change well enough and so we just shouldn't worry about it, and I think that's it's very hard to grasp.
One of the more radical proposals you highlight is the privatization of NOAH, which is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which provides essential weather data. What do they have against that agency?
So there's a couple of things there. One is that NOAH oversees a lot of climate research, and they you know, they believe that that that's pernicious, that it's part of the sort of leftist ideology that's pushing things. So they want to put some of these things in the private sector, and that's been a conservative party for a while. There was an attempt to privatize it in the first Trump
administration that didn't get very far. So you know, there's an element of the private sector can do things better, and also an element of we've got to get these climate things out of the way and not be telling people about this because it will make them believe the climate change is a problem.
But doesn't know what does so much in terms of you're saying they want to privatize sort of the National Weather Service and telling people when storms are going to be happening, and they want to erase sort of the impact climate change may have on these weather events.
Right, if you're worried about hurricanes, you know, if you live in a hurricane zone, you want the National Hurricane Center to be doing its best work, and you wanted to be thinking about climate change because climate change affects hurricanes. If we shut these things down, it's going to you know, it's going to directly affect people's lives. It's going to it threatens their very safety.
And also just about development, you know, if you want to think about flooding or see exact levels and all kinds of things that not only impact sort of quality of life, but really life and death decisions, right for both, you know, on the personal level and on the societal level, right.
Right, you know, they say, well, technology will fix these things, but I think it's whistling past the graveyard.
How will technology fix these things?
They don't tell us that.
I want to dig into the family first toenda a little bit more, because it's super fascinating and kind of the trad wife's dream. Right. One of the mandates is restore the family is the centerpiece of American life. But they have a very specific image of what a family should be at a time where families have become increasingly diverse, right, right, So talk about that, and you know, they have this very Ossie and Harriet, yes, throwback vision of American families
and American life. And you say they want to push women away from the workforce, but not completely get them out of the workforce. Can you explain sort of how they view what is sort of ideally this American family.
You know, for them, the highest calling for a woman's motherhood and everything should be rerented around that. They want women to be having more children. They want them to be spending as much time as they can with the children, so that ideally means being at home for the children. Failing that, they should, you know, and they should have childcare on site where they're working. The father should be working. The father should be the bread winner. They should be
the focus of the family. The children should be gender conforming, so their boys or their girls, they you know, wear blue or pink. Trans people are sort of pushed into the shadows. They're skeptical of same sex marriage. They don't talk about overturning the precedents, but they say, and this is not true, but they claim that same sex marriage has higher divorce rates. I spend a long time trying to track down how they justify this. There's no data
to back it up. You know, it's a whole program, and it's a very old school I'd.
Say, yeah, and so anti women and I don't know, just really bizarre.
You know they I think there are women involved who would say that this is in fact, this is pro women, this is this is a.
House so I mean, I think pro women is being able to make the choice right.
It's I mean, this is very much this tad wife aesthetic. As you say, you know, they think that women will be happier in the circumstance.
Yes, or what was that woman's name, something Morgan, Marabelle Morgan. Do you remember her?
Oh?
No, I think she used to say you should greet your husband when he comes home from work wrapped in saranne wrap. I just remember, anybody remember Marabelle Morgan here? Anyway, maybe google her and see if I'm right? Am I we interrupt this podcast to get a little more context here. Marabelle says you should greet your husband at the door wearing nothing but saranne rap. I was right.
Wow, good recall, Yeah.
I'll take famous anti feminists for two thousand, please, Alex right. I mean it is just so such a throwback and honestly so insulting to women.
You know, they talk about it, And what did your.
Wife say about this when you came and said, wow, you won't believe what it says here?
She was not a fan. You know, you talk about gender ideology, they say all these things left to pushing gender ideology and anything that is sort of contra their vision. But I think they fail to understand how much what their offering is an ideology too. They don't recognize that.
Well, when you say gender ideology, I mean what does that mean exactly?
So that means, for example, the idea that you could be non gender conforming, it means LGBTQ people in general, all of these things they see not as you know, not as real people who exist in the world, but simply as a figment of leftist ideology.
There are currently forty Republican women serving in Congress at the moment, eight women in cabinet level positions in the current Trump administration. So how do they reconcile that would they like to see those women just go home and take care of their children or grandchildren.
They don't reconcile it. It's another one of these flaws, you know. I think there are a lot of prominent women in the White House and in the conservative movement right now. The contributors to Project twenty twenty five, though, are much more male than a lot of that, and the sort of leading architects are very much male. I think if somebody like Roger Severino, who wrote the chapter on Health and Human Services and writes about a lot of this, his wife, Carrie Severino, is a very prominent
lawyer in the conservative movement. She's been involved in confirming judges for Trump. And so even as they're pushing these ideas, there are people in the orbit who don't really conform to the vision.
They say, so what you know, you said that you didn't really know what the solution was. In terms of pushing back. Is part of it providing an alternate vision for America by say Democrats are people who are more progressive in their thinking. You know.
Part of the reason I think it's unsatisfying is that there are ideas that are more popular. A lot of the things that the Democrats have been pushing are things that pull much better, And I think people haven't understood the details of Project twenty twenty five or they don't believe it. So during the campaign there was polling that showed Project twenty twenty five was deeply unpopular, but people
just didn't believe that Trump would do these things. They said, you know, yes, I don't if Trump did, you know, banned abortion entirely, for example, I wouldn't like that. But there's no chance he's going to do this. And there's a whole list of those things. So I think when people understand what it actually means, there will be more pushback. But if they see it simply as a kind of fuzzy pro family agenda, they may underestimate just how sweeping and radical it is.
But what do you think of this notion of an alternative vision for America that perhaps maybe isn't as progressive as some of these policies and actions were during previous administrations, but that represents something that is certainly far less radical than this few of America.
Yeah, I mean, I think there is a broad consensus around a lot of things. I think most people understand that trans people exist, and they may have hesitations about specific policies, but they certainly don't want to write them out of the language of the government. There are people who you know, oppose abortion on moral grounds, but understand that there's a danger in banning it nationwide need access to healthcare. They're people who you know, something like medicaid
is an example here. Medicaid is wildly popular and people on the right have been trying to cut it for decades. It's something that people like. So some of the things that are already there, and I think there's a consensus that is just looking sort of to be marshaled and organized around an alternative.
Do you think this got enough attention during the campaign? I know many of my followers were saying, why aren't you talking more about Project twenty twenty five. At that point, I felt like everybody was talking about it. But you say people were talking about it but not taking it seriously.
Yeah, I mean, and I would count myself in this. I had looked at it, and I looked at bits and pieces. You know, you read some of the individual policy points. You're writing about an issue, or you're covering issue and you get a little bit of it, or there's something you're passionate about it has to be read as a whole, and that's very hard to do. You know, this is nearly a thousand pages. It's an often very
technical language. You know. One thing I hope to do in the book is to make these things more legible and pull out what is important and make put in terms that people can understand.
So this is kind of the cliff Notes version of twenty five.
Yes, I want people to understand what's important and how it all works without having to weigh through a lot of technical language.
Well, David Graham, you've ruined my day. I'm very sorry, but thank you, and I think this is a really important book for people to read if they want to understand what's going on, because you really can't come up with solutions or an antidote until you figure out what the game plan is, so you can not only decide what your defense is going to be, but what your offense is going to be as well. Definitely, thank you
so much, Thank you, Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me, a subject you want us to cover, or you want to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world, reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear from you next Us is a production of iHeartMedia and Katie Couric Media. The executive producers are Me, Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz, and our
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