April 24, 2025 • 46 mins
Project 2025. Maybe you’ve heard whispers about it. Maybe you’ve rolled your eyes. But David A. Graham read the whole thing—and he sat down with Katie to break down why this isn’t just rhetoric – it’s a roadmap already in motion. From privatizing weather data to rewinding civil rights gains, this playbook for Trump 2.0 is more extreme—and more possible—than you might think. In this episode, Graham walks us through the wildest parts of the plan, the men behind it, and why his book The Project might just be the most important one you read this year.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
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
(00:24):
how sweeping and radical it is.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
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
(00:49):
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.
(01:12):
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,
(01:35):
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?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
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.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
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
(02:48):
doesn't have.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
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
(03:28):
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,
(03:49):
and that includes creating this very conservative vision of society.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
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
(04:13):
already during the course of his still young administration second administration.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
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
(04:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
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.
(05:35):
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.
(05:57):
And we're founded as you who shocked.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
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
(06:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
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
(07:11):
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
(07:33):
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
(07:56):
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
(08:17):
our children. What does that mean exactly? From their vantage point.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
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
(08:43):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
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
(09:38):
them and they want to reclaim it.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
What do they think of separation of church and state.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
They don't believe in it.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
They don't.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Another goal is to dismantle the administrative state and return
self governance to the American people. What does that mean exactly?
Speaker 1 (10:11):
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
(10:35):
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
(10:56):
want to with you know, get rid of these guard
reels we've traditionally seen, like Justice Department independence example.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
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
(11:26):
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?
Speaker 1 (11:43):
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
(12:04):
likely to make things worse.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
The third thing is defend our nation's sovereignty, borders and
bounty against global threats. Help me understand that.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
It's a little opaque.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
I think that means a couple Also, what is bounty.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Right, It's a lofty term they want to use to
make this seem maybe a little bit.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
More patriotic or old school or something.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
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.
(12:48):
They don't see how big a threat China is, and
it has to be confronted economically, culturally, and if necessary,
militarily as well.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
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.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
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
(13:51):
in our society. But what else is really fomented this?
In your view having read.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
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,
(14:24):
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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Vote casually mentioned he's a self described Christian nationalist, So
(15:27):
can you talk about what Christian nationalists believe and how
his principles bled into this document.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
You know, they believe that this is a Christian nation.
They believe that.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Well, can you explain why they believe that?
Speaker 1 (15:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
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
(16:34):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
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.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
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
(17:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
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.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
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
(18:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
What do you mean emotional appeal on principle for some
of these ideas.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
And what do you think they're talking about.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
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
(19:44):
Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
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
(20:09):
in some ways, these are things we've heard from the right.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
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.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Back Obama was a big proponent of right.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
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.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
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
(21:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
So they say Congress has abdicated it, but they don't
say the executive branch has seized it.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
No, they one of the executive branch to seize much more.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
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.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
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
(22:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Yeah, well, tell us more about that. What is the
long view for the architects of Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
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
(23:24):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
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.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
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
(24:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
They want to give money to women or families where
they're six or more children.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Give me an example of that.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
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
(25:34):
point for American society.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
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
(25:58):
the methods they've layed out.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
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
(26:23):
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
(26:45):
years of this administration.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
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.
(27:08):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
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.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
It's not something I focused on it.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Maybe you need to do a second book, right.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
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
(27:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Let's talk about the Elon Musk of it all and
how he fits into Project twenty twenty five. How does
he You.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Is he operating with this playbook?
Speaker 1 (28:24):
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
(28:46):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
They approve of what he's doing though right.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
They do, absolutely. I think they're they're driving it. They're
encouraging him, they're pointing him where to go.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
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
(29:22):
significantly as they had hoped.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
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
(29:46):
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.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
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.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Okay, dumb question, But isn't that against the law.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
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.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Commission aren't the chairman of the FED.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
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.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Let's talk about how they view the judiciary branch of
the American government. What is discussed in Project twenty twenty
five about that.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
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.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
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
(32:00):
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?
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Really, because she offended people with a recent decision, tell
us about that.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
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
(32:31):
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.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
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
(33:12):
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
(33:34):
one that is closer to them ideologically.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
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.
(34:00):
If they have cleared out the experts and they're bringing
people who don't have any training in these things.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Let's talk about climate change. Since it is Earth Day today,
what is the document stance on global warming?
Speaker 1 (34:14):
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
(34:34):
basically be in charge of getting more oil and gas extracted.
Everything is arranged around fossil fuels.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
But is protecting the earth and clean air, clean water?
Is that not a Christian value?
Speaker 1 (34:46):
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
(35:06):
worry about it, and I think that's it's very hard
to grasp.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
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?
Speaker 1 (35:24):
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,
(35:45):
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.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
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.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
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.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Right, you know, they say, well, technology will fix these things,
but I think it's whistling past the graveyard.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
How will technology fix these things?
Speaker 1 (36:55):
They don't tell us that.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
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,
(37:21):
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.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
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
(38:06):
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
(38:27):
to back it up. You know, it's a whole program,
and it's a very old school I'd.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Say, yeah, and so anti women and I don't know,
just really bizarre.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
House so I mean, I think pro women is being
able to make the choice right.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
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.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Yes, or what was that woman's name, something Morgan, Marabelle Morgan.
Do you remember her?
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (39:06):
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
(39:27):
wearing nothing but saranne rap. I was right.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Wow, good recall, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
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.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
You know, they talk about it, And what did your.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Wife say about this when you came and said, wow,
you won't believe what it says here?
Speaker 1 (39:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Well, when you say gender ideology, I mean what does
that mean exactly?
Speaker 1 (40:13):
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.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
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
(41:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
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.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
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,
(42:00):
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.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
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
(42:41):
than this few of America.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
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
(43:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
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.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
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
(43:56):
and pull out what is important and make put in
terms that people can understand.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
So this is kind of the cliff Notes version of
twenty five.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Yes, I want people to understand what's important and how
it all works without having to weigh through a lot
of technical language.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
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
(44:30):
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
(44:52):
how you navigate this crazy world, reach out send me
a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear from
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(45:17):
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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
(00:24):
how sweeping and radical it is.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
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
(00:49):
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.
(01:12):
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,
(01:35):
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?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
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.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
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
(02:48):
doesn't have.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
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
(03:28):
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,
(03:49):
and that includes creating this very conservative vision of society.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
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
(04:13):
already during the course of his still young administration second administration.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
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
(04:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
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.
(05:35):
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.
(05:57):
And we're founded as you who shocked.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
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
(06:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
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
(07:11):
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
(07:33):
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
(07:56):
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
(08:17):
our children. What does that mean exactly? From their vantage point.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
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
(08:43):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
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
(09:38):
them and they want to reclaim it.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
What do they think of separation of church and state.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
They don't believe in it.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
They don't.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Another goal is to dismantle the administrative state and return
self governance to the American people. What does that mean exactly?
Speaker 1 (10:11):
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
(10:35):
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
(10:56):
want to with you know, get rid of these guard
reels we've traditionally seen, like Justice Department independence example.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
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
(11:26):
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?
Speaker 1 (11:43):
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
(12:04):
likely to make things worse.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
The third thing is defend our nation's sovereignty, borders and
bounty against global threats. Help me understand that.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
It's a little opaque.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
I think that means a couple Also, what is bounty.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Right, It's a lofty term they want to use to
make this seem maybe a little bit.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
More patriotic or old school or something.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
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.
(12:48):
They don't see how big a threat China is, and
it has to be confronted economically, culturally, and if necessary,
militarily as well.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
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.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
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
(13:51):
in our society. But what else is really fomented this?
In your view having read.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
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,
(14:24):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
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Vote casually mentioned he's a self described Christian nationalist, So
(15:27):
can you talk about what Christian nationalists believe and how
his principles bled into this document.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
You know, they believe that this is a Christian nation.
They believe that.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Well, can you explain why they believe that?
Speaker 1 (15:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
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
(16:34):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
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.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
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
(17:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
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.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
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
(18:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
What do you mean emotional appeal on principle for some
of these ideas.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
And what do you think they're talking about.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
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
(19:44):
Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
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
(20:09):
in some ways, these are things we've heard from the right.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
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.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Back Obama was a big proponent of right.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
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.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
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
(21:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
So they say Congress has abdicated it, but they don't
say the executive branch has seized it.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
No, they one of the executive branch to seize much more.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
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.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
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
(22:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Yeah, well, tell us more about that. What is the
long view for the architects of Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
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
(23:24):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
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.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
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
(24:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
They want to give money to women or families where
they're six or more children.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Give me an example of that.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
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
(25:34):
point for American society.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
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
(25:58):
the methods they've layed out.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
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
(26:23):
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
(26:45):
years of this administration.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
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.
(27:08):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
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.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
It's not something I focused on it.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Maybe you need to do a second book, right.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
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
(27:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Let's talk about the Elon Musk of it all and
how he fits into Project twenty twenty five. How does
he You.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Is he operating with this playbook?
Speaker 1 (28:24):
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
(28:46):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
They approve of what he's doing though right.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
They do, absolutely. I think they're they're driving it. They're
encouraging him, they're pointing him where to go.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
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
(29:22):
significantly as they had hoped.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
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
(29:46):
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.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
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.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Okay, dumb question, But isn't that against the law.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
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.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Commission aren't the chairman of the FED.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
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.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Let's talk about how they view the judiciary branch of
the American government. What is discussed in Project twenty twenty
five about that.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
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.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
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
(32:00):
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?
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Really, because she offended people with a recent decision, tell
us about that.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
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
(32:31):
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.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
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
(33:12):
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
(33:34):
one that is closer to them ideologically.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
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.
(34:00):
If they have cleared out the experts and they're bringing
people who don't have any training in these things.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Let's talk about climate change. Since it is Earth Day today,
what is the document stance on global warming?
Speaker 1 (34:14):
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
(34:34):
basically be in charge of getting more oil and gas extracted.
Everything is arranged around fossil fuels.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
But is protecting the earth and clean air, clean water?
Is that not a Christian value?
Speaker 1 (34:46):
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
(35:06):
worry about it, and I think that's it's very hard
to grasp.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
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?
Speaker 1 (35:24):
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,
(35:45):
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.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
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.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
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.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Right, you know, they say, well, technology will fix these things,
but I think it's whistling past the graveyard.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
How will technology fix these things?
Speaker 1 (36:55):
They don't tell us that.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
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,
(37:21):
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.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
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
(38:06):
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
(38:27):
to back it up. You know, it's a whole program,
and it's a very old school I'd.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Say, yeah, and so anti women and I don't know,
just really bizarre.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
House so I mean, I think pro women is being
able to make the choice right.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
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.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Yes, or what was that woman's name, something Morgan, Marabelle Morgan.
Do you remember her?
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (39:06):
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
(39:27):
wearing nothing but saranne rap. I was right.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Wow, good recall, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
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.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
You know, they talk about it, And what did your.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Wife say about this when you came and said, wow,
you won't believe what it says here?
Speaker 1 (39:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Well, when you say gender ideology, I mean what does
that mean exactly?
Speaker 1 (40:13):
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.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
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
(41:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
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.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
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,
(42:00):
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.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
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
(42:41):
than this few of America.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
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
(43:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
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.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
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
(43:56):
and pull out what is important and make put in
terms that people can understand.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
So this is kind of the cliff Notes version of
twenty five.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Yes, I want people to understand what's important and how
it all works without having to weigh through a lot
of technical language.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
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
(44:30):
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
(44:52):
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
producers are Adriana Fazio and Meredith Barnes. Julian Weller composed
(45:17):
our theme music. For more information about today's episode, or
to sign up for my newsletter wake Up Call, go
to the description in the podcast app, or visit us
at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me on
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(45:40):
you listen to your favorite shows. What if we told
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disease by the end of the century. The chan Zuckerberg
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