Lions, tigers, and Project 2025!
A lot of people seem pretty freaked out about Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s effort to lay out an agenda for a second Trump term. And also, it should be noted, seed their ideas into the policy conversation, which is a purpose of these ideas docs as well. Heritage updates their manifesto every few years, this is not some new whole cloth exercise despite what you may have heard. (In a sign of how stagnant education policymaking has been the last eight years, despite the pandemic, here’s Bellwether’s 2016 ideas book, many are still topical).
One way to think about Project 2025 as far as education (I have not read all of it across the range of issues but, not surprisingly, plenty in there I don’t like based on what I have read) is that it’s extraordinary, a unique threat. The other is that it’s mostly just more of the same, often longtime, conservative wish list updated with some 2024 culture war themes.
Every time someone comes along and says they’re going to “abolish” the Department of Education it’s treated as a new and unique moment. It’s not. Trump proposing it, as president, would not even be new.
Yet despite largely being more of the same Project 2025 is nonetheless important because elements of it could happen, especially with J.D. Vance on the scene. Despite his recent stumbles, Vance will care about policy. That’s not something Trump can be credibly accused of. Trump also has been generally indifferent on education policy. Vance likes these populist social issues. He’ll want to leave a mark on policy. Say what you want about Project 2025, it is chock full of policy ideas.
That’s where it gets interesting. Though not getting so much attention, for obvious reasons, Trump is distancing himself from Project 2025. Of course, we’re talking about Donald Trump, so this could be just what he instinctively thinks he needs to do in the moment and he’ll tack a new direction when it suits him. Or it could be a hide the ball play. But right now, rhetorically, the Democrats and the former President are largely in agreement on Project 2025. He’s called it “abysmal” and “seriously extreme.” Democrats would not disagree. At last, unity.
It also matters because should Trump win in November he’ll have to staff a government. Ordinarily that’s a logistical problem but there are plenty of people. Trump’s situation is somewhat unique and different. We’ve never had a former president run for a second term with most of his senior Senate confirmed officials and many former aides saying they would not work again for that president and that they don’t even think he should be president. Even with the obvious caveat that in politics winning forgives a lot, Trump has a staffing problem.
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So while everyone is saying lots of Trump people are attached to Project 2025 doing the former president’s bidding, the reality is probably the inverse. His administration will inevitably end up doing some of their bidding precisely because they’ll be buried in the various agencies where the day to day minutiae of policy happens. Trump may have consolidated power among Republicans on the big picture items – the gap between the RNC platform and Project 2025 is noteworthy on some hot-button issues. Still, incoherence remains. And that incoherence will be resolved in different ways on different issues. Personnel is policy. This is going to be a source of personnel. Control of Congress will obviously matter a great deal as well in terms of how much Project 2025 is a messaging document versus a policy document.
As far as the Department of Education is concerned the Project 2025 folks seem to realize that an outright straight-up abolition is unpopular and impractical so they’re talking a sort of Shawshank Redemption approach to it. Smuggle the department’s work out piece by piece into other agencies. The policy ideas here are more detailed than we’ve seen in the past.
Vance will care about policy. That’s not something Trump can be credibly accused of.
This does begin to answer the serious follow-up question to cries for abolition, which is, ‘ok, if you get rid of the Department, what’s the plan for administering all the funds, programs, and regulatory roles that the agency oversees?’ That’s where big idea politics meets program administration.
I’m not a fan of many of the Project 2025 proposals for education but it’s not just a straight up wave your hand and abolish the Department of Education document, and every idea is not beyond repair. It has ideas for how to reform or move some of the programs. We could do worse than debate those from an efficacy point of view because pretty much everyone agrees there is some room for improvement. I’m not optimistic we’ll get that conversation, I didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree. Some of the rhetoric in the document harkens back to when Republicans bullied civil servants at the Department of Education.
Again, keep an eye on J.D. Vance with all of this. He is going to want to do policy, and has to in order to set himself up for 2028. He’s caught lightning in a bottle but a disastrous second Trump term would upend that. Even a political shape shifter like Vance will have to make some commitments, this seems like a likely place.
Politically, Vance will help the ticket with young men, across demographic groups. In 2016, 51% of young men identified as Democrats, in 2023 that was 39%. He’ll also help in the rust belt, where the Trump campaign, too, seems to think this race will be won. But he’ll hurt among women – especially if he can’t get in front of his rhetoric – and that’s a group that’s been key to Trump’s success. Project 2025 is a liability there as well, including on education. There is a reason suburban Democratic door knockers are wearing buttons that say, “Google Project 2025.”
Trump had plenty of options to expand his map but went with Vance instead. It’s a Clinton picking Gore style move: define and focus the message. That was a better choice when the opponent was Biden. Now, facing Kamala Harris, the Trump team has to wish they had broadened the map. It’s a race with some underlying dynamics that matter a lot more than Project 2025.