Corporations and Project 2025
A group of 54 well-connected organizations, led by the extremist right-wing group The Heritage Foundation, has published the policy goals and tactical plans for the first year of the new presidency of Donald Trump, should he win the presidential election of 2024.
You may have heard of this document. It’s called The Mandate for Leadership, also known as Project 2025.
Project 2025 is the political platform of Donald Trump, who is by far the most likely candidate to win the presidential nomination of the Republican Party for the 2024 election. What’s more, Donald Trump is consistently polling ahead of President Joe Biden in both national and swing state polls.
So, Project 2025 is not an abstract manifesto from a fringe group. It is the political platform of the person who is most likely to become the next President of the United States of America.
Part of Project 2025, the part that’s been talked about the most, is a plan to replace the independent Department of Justice with a new Department of Justice staffed exclusively by political followers of Donald Trump. This new Department of Justice would be dedicated to the persecution of Donald Trump’s political enemies.
Project 2025 makes the following declaration about what it regards as the proper role of individual freedom in the United States of America:
“When the Founders spoke of “pursuit of Happiness,” what they meant might be understood today as in essence “pursuit of Blessedness.” That is, an individual must be free to live as his Creator ordained—to flourish. Our Constitution grants each of us the liberty to do not what we want, but what we ought.”
Let’s break down what policy statement means.
Project 2025 is saying that if Donald Trump is elected, Americans will no longer have the freedom to do what they want. Instead, freedom will be redefined as the ability to do what people in power tell them they ought to do. The only freedom Americans will possess will be the freedom to obey.
Who will Americans be compelled to obey? Project 2025 identifies its totalitarian leader as the “Creator”. “Creator” is one of the nicknames of the Christian god, of course.
“What we ought” to do means what the Christian god thinks we ought to do. According to Project 2025, if Donald Trump is elected President a year from now, Americans will only have the freedom to do what the Christian god tells them to do.
Of course, to get practical about it, the Christian god doesn’t show up for government hearings. The Christian god never appears for press conferences. The Christian god doesn’t send out memos or press releases about American politics. The Christian god never shows his face at all. It’s as if the Christian god doesn’t exist.
So, how is anyone supposed to know what the Christian god ordains that we ought to do? Those who believe that the Christian god does exist believe that their god speaks indirectly in two ways, through the Christian bible, and through the human leaders of Christian organizations. Many of Donald Trump’s evangelical supporters literally believe that their god speaks through present-day Christian preachers who have declared themselves to be prophets. Project 2025 is going along with this understanding, implicitly agreeing that what self-appointed channelers of the Christian god say about politics should have greater legal authority than the Constitution of the United States.
What Project 2025 is saying is that, if Donald Trump is elected President, the Christian bible and the proclamations of Christian leaders will replace the Constitution of the United States of America as the primary source of legal authority in the United States. If Trump is elected in 2024, all of your constitutional rights will be replaced by religious law.
According to Project 2025, freedom of speech will be revoked under Donald Trump. You won’t be allowed to say anything that Christian leaders don’t want you to say.
Freedom of the press will be canceled under Donald Trump. Freedom of the Press will be replaced by a ban against the publication of any material that Christian leaders don’t approve first. No blasphemy will be allowed.
Freedom of religion will be transformed into forced Christian worship by all Americans. Freedom of religion will mean the freedom to be forced to go to church, the freedom to be forced to give over 10 percent of your income in church tithes, whether you like it or not.
This is not conjecture. This is what the network behind Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign explicitly says: Under Donald Trump, the freedom to do what you want will be replaced with the freedom to do what religious leaders tell you that you ought to do. If Trump is elected, the pursuit of happiness in America will be replaced with the pursuit of a “blessed” religious life.
The people backing Donald Trump’s campaign are openly telling you that they want to replace your happiness with their religion. They don’t want you to pursue happiness. They want you to pursue “blessedness”, even if it makes you unhappy.
In this one short section of Project 2025, Donald Trump’s network of supporters is promising to replace American freedom with the religious tyranny of Christian theocracy. Most of us can understand that the liberty “to do what we ought”, where “what we ought” is determined by right wing extremist evangelical preachers, is the opposite of liberty.
This passage should be a severe reminder that Christian Nationalism is the foundation of the fascist ideology of the Republican Party. For Donald Trump’s supporters, fascist totalitarianism and Christian Nationalism go hand in hand.
There’s another terrible connection in this plan to destroy democracy, however. That is the connection between Christian Nationalism and corrupt corporate power.
Project 2025, the pro-Trump organization that is helping Donald Trump prepare for the destruction of American democracy, isn’t just the product of one isolated think tank. The Heritage Foundation coordinated the production of Project 2025, but 53 other organizations were also involved in the plan’s creation, and have signed their support for the entire plan.
Among the 54 organizations endorsing the replacement of American democracy with Christian Nationalist theocracy are several business lobbying organizations, such as the Coalition for a Prosperous America, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Institute for Energy Research.
Corporate power is supporting the push to replace democracy with fascist Christian Nationalism.
Some of the corporate supporters of Project 2025’s fascism are difficult to pin down. The Coalition for a Prosperous America, for example, doesn’t share full information about its corporate donors.
What information is available, however, shows a disturbing confluence of money flowing from the bank accounts of powerful corporations into the Christian Nationalist campaign of Project 2025.
The gigantic dirty oil corporation Exxon-Mobil, for example, has provided large amounts of funding for both the Institute of Energy Research and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. In turn, both of these organizations have endorsed Project 2025’s plan to replace American democracy with Christian Nationalist theocracy under Donald Trump. Money has flowed from Exxon-Mobil into the extreme anti-democracy fascism of Project 2025.
Other funders of the Competitive Enterprise Institute have been the Coca-Cola Company, General Motors, Texaco, Amoco, and the Ford Motor Company, the American Petroleum Institute, the American Plastics Council, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, Pfizer pharmaceuticals, and the big tobacco corporation Phillip Morris.
The Christian Nationalism of Project 2025 didn’t come out of nowhere. These corporations and corporate lobbying organizations have provided the money that has been necessary for Christian Nationalist fascists to campaign in support of Donald Trump. These corporations have provided financial support to networks of fascist activists who are working for the downfall of American democracy, and its replacement with totalitarian Christian Nationalist theocracy.
The operations of Project 2025 show that Christian Nationalism isn’t just the product of extremist Christian churches. Christian Nationalist fascism is being funded by multinational corporations who are willing to see your freedom sacrificed for the sake of their profits.