Donald Trump claims he never heard of it. The Republican Party platform mimics it without acknowledging it. Former Trump administration lackeys wrote it. The rightwing Heritage Foundation is promoting it as a 180-day playbook if Trump is elected and becomes a dictator on Day One.
But taking over the federal government and bring the United States back to the pre-New Deal, pre-Civil Rights, 19th century is only part of the Heritage/Republican party agenda. They want to take over school boards and impose their values on children. I thank Mercedes Schneider’s deutsch29 blog for bringing their campaign to my attention.
In a Forbes magazine article, Peter Greene explained “What Does Project 2025 Actually Plan for Education?” In the Project 2025’s foreword, Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation promises to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.” That means arresting, imprisoning, and designating as sexual offenders, teachers and librarians they consider purveyors of undefined pornography, the books they want banned.
The education chapter of Project 2025 was written by Lindsey Burke, head of the Heritage Center’s Center for Education Policy. Burke promotes family choice, which means more charter schools and vouchers or direct public money to support private and religious schools that will teach Christian values. She wants to eliminate the Federal government’s Department of Education, privatize “government” schools, cutback on federal funds mandated to support the education of children with special needs, end research on racial discrimination, and eliminate federal college student loans. Burke is keen on rejecting what she calls gender ideology and critical race theory that she claims is infecting our schools and children. Schools would be required to identify students by their “gender at birth.”
To promote the rightwing agenda in Project 2025, Heritage Foundation has a series of video tutorials for how rightwing activists can take over school boards and impose their agenda. They include Tiffany Justice, a former school board member in Florida and co-founder of Moms for Liberty, which has been designated an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Justice is an anti-vaxxer who accuses Disney of “sexualizing our children” and supported Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. She graduated from the University of Central Florida with a degree in communications but has no educational credentials other than being a mother.
The Heritage Foundation training videos also feature Lindsey Burke, former Tennessee commissioner and school voucher advocate Penny Schwinn who resigned after being accused of funding irregularities, and Louisiana state superintendent Cade Brumley who supports a state mandate that poster-sized copies of the Ten Commandments be hung in every classroom and is a defendant in an ACLU suit trying to block the requirement.
Did you ever see the movies Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Faculty? They could be documentaries about will happen if Project 2025 takes over schools.
