The foreword begins on page 33 of the document. Roberts wastes no time getting into the fearmongering. Paragraph 2 reads, in part,

“Look at America under the ruling and cultural elite today: Inflation is ravaging family budgets, drug overdose deaths continue to escalate, and children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries.” (Kevin D. Roberts, PhD, Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership, page 33, paragraph 2.)

This is baseless fearmongering and bigotry.

Roberts goes on to say that after the 1970’s, the political right led the United States to “historic political, economic, and global victories.”

Fact check: The economy does better under Democratic leadership, and always has. The New York Times reported in February 2021 that: “Since 1933, the economy has grown at an annual average rate of 4.6 percent under Democratic presidents and 2.4 percent under Republicans.” [Source]¹

Roberts goes on to boast that by the time Reagan left office, 60% of the Heritage Foundation’s recommendations had become law.

So, let’s examine Reagan’s presidency. What was the lasting impact? Reagan claimed that his tax cuts would produce prosperity even as the 1980’s recession got worse. The National Debt tripled under his presidency. Without going into it here, here’s a good explanation of his economic policy, “Reaganomics.”²

Reagan reduced taxes substantially for the wealthy (top marginal tax rate on individual income was reduced from 70% to 28%.) He eliminated price controls on oil and natural gas, cable TV, phone service, interstate bus service, and ocean shipping. He deregulated antitrust laws, leading to the most bank failures since the 1930’s.

“Yes, there was an economic boom in the mid-80’s, as the economy recovered from a severe recession. But while the rich got much richer, there was little sustained economic improvement for most Americans. By the late 1980’s, middle-class incomes were barely higher than they had been a decade before and the poverty rate had risen.” Paul Krugman, The New York Times, 2008³

The result of Reagan’s economic policies were, in a nutshell, that the rich got richer, and the increased wealth gap widened the divide between the rich and the poor, dwindling the middle class. The Heritage Foundation shares these economic policies, favoring even more deregulation than Reagan did.

“This is an agenda prepared by and for conservatives who will be ready on Day One of the next Administration to save our country from the brink of disaster.” – Kevin D. Roberts, Project 2025 Foreword, page 35, paragraph one.

Roberts then lays out their “four pillars”, then elaborates on each one.

From the foreword of Project 2025, written by Kevin D. Roberts, PhD, page 35, paragraph 2:

1. Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.
2. Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.
3. Defend our Nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.
4. Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely – what our Constitution calls “the Blessings of Liberty.”

We’ve seen their version of “protecting children”, and it involves dismantling public education, banning books, separating children from their parents at the border, and their complete and utter refusal to enact ANY legislation which might prevent children from being murdered in their classrooms. The cognitive dissonance between #2 and #3 is interesting to me – after you dismantle the government, with what will you be defending the borders? Surely you don’t want to use the government-funded military, correct? Point #4 comes with a heaping helping of cognitive dissonance as well, since so many of their policies involve restricting people’s freedoms, rather than expanding them. I digress. Onto promise 1.

Promise 1: Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.

Roberts claims that the American family is “in crisis” (page 36, paragraph 3). He claims that 40% of all children are born to unwed mothers, including more than 70% of black children. (His percentages are correct, but the numbers are consistent with global trends.) [Source]⁴

He goes on to claim that “the Left” is threatening the tax-exempt status of churches and charities that “reject woke progressivism.” (Page 36, paragraph 6.) In fact, nobody is seriously threatening any such thing, and if they were, it’s because churches are inserting themselves into politics, thereby violating the separation of church and state. Another argument for removing tax-exempt status on a case-by-case basis is for when a church is found to be denying people their civil rights, such as opposing same-sex marriages. In fact even currently, a church can lose their tax-exempt status if political lobbying becomes a “substantial part of its activities.” [Source]⁵

“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.” – Kevin D. Roberts, Project 2025, Foreword, Pages 36-37.

I’m curious how words merely existing are depriving Americans of their First Amendment Rights, and how deleting those words from government regulations/legislation is going to restore those rights. If anything, removing those words arbitrarily is a violation of 1A – it’s literally censorship by the government. Again, lots of cognitive dissonance here, and he’s unclear on what removing these words actually hopes to accomplish, other than effectively legalizing discrimination against anyone who fits into any of those phrases. Seriously? The phrase “reproductive health” is woke? Insanity.

He goes on to claim that pornography should be outlawed, and that “its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women.” (Page 37, paragraph 2) Oh? Child predators, all? Someone needs to check Kevin’s hard drive for the type of porn he’s watching. He adds that educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. I promise, no public librarians are purveyors of actual child porn, but if they were, I can agree with this point. The problem here is allowing people like Kevin to broadly couch things like even innocuous stories about LGBTQ families as this type of material.

He goes on to advocate for school choice “schools serve the parents, not the other way around”, and says that the “noxious tenets of critical race theory and gender ideology should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country”, and that it’s “poisoning our children.” (Kevin D. Roberts, Project 2025 Foreword, Page 37, paragraph 4)

Critical race theory isn’t taught in public elementary schools, it’s taught in law school. Moreover, it’s not exactly new, or particularly “scary”, unless you’re a seething racist. CRT emerged in the 1970’s and is literally just the idea that if you’re a person of color, the justice system in the United States has systemic racism built in, and that POC get treated differently by the police, courts, et al. You don’t have to look around very hard to know that this is 100% true. Police brutality, for example, far disproportionately affects people of color. [Source]⁶

CRT is an analysis framework on how we can combat systemic racism in our legal system. So, what’s wrong with a kid knowing that? They don’t teach it in schools, but so what if they did? Might it inspire a kid to help work towards racial equity in our legal system? Horrors!

He goes on to say that allowing children on social media platforms is “child abuse”, and that the government should address that in their “big tech” policies. He doesn’t elaborate on what that would look like in this foreword.

He goes on to praise Roe v. Wade being overturned.

Promise #2: Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.

Roberts lays out their goals of making the federal government “smaller, more effective, and accountable.” He points out that the way we negotiate spending bills in this country is deeply flawed (I agree with this point, but disagree with his proposed remedy), (page 39, paragraph 1).

“In recent decades, members of the House and Senate discovered that if they give away that power to the Article II branch of government, they can also deny responsibility for its actions. So today in Washington, most policy is no longer set by Congress at all, but by the Administrative State. Given the choice between being powerful but vulnerable or irrelevant but famous, most Members of Congress have chosen the latter.” (Kevin D. Roberts, Project 2025 Foreword, Page 39, Paragraph 7.)

Is…the Administrative State in the room with us right now? I kid. In context, he’s arguing that Congress is increasingly useless (I agree), and claiming that unelected bureaucrats in various government departments are the ones effectively setting the laws. 

He then goes off the rails a bit, claiming that “Bureaucrats at the Department of Education inject racist, anti-American, ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms; Bureaucrats at the Department of Justice force school districts to undermine girls’ sports and parents’ rights to satisfy transgender extremists; Woke bureaucrats at the Pentagon force troops to attend “training” seminars about “white privilege”; and Bureaucrats at the State Department infuse U.S. foreign aid programs with woke extremism about “intersectionality” and abortion.” (Kevin D. Roberts, Project 2025 Foreword, Page 40, bulleted list.)

In 2020, Russell Vought, also a material contributor to Project 2025, ordered the Air Force to stop using training materials that mention race. [Source]⁷ Vought called diversity and unconscious bias training intended to create inclusive environments “un-American propaganda training sessions.” Deeply, deeply racist.

Roberts goes on to say that a conservative President must “defang and defund the woke culture warriors who have infiltrated every last institution in America.” (Page 41, paragraph 1.) It is heavily implied that this should be done by firing any bureaucrats deemed disloyal to the agenda and replacing them with loyalists.

Promise 3: Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.

“Those who run our so-called American corporations have bent to the will of the woke agenda and care more for their foreign investors and organizations than their American workers and customers. Today, nearly every top-tier U.S. university president or Wall Street hedge fund manager has more in common with a socialist, European head of state than with the parents at a high school football game in Waco, Texas.” (Page 42, paragraph 4.)

That’s fairly rich, coming from the party who supports a “billionaire” who inherited his money and has absolutely nothing in common with average Americans. He goes on to shit on the UN and the EU, citing “signing international treaties on pharmaceutical patents, climate change, and childrens’ rights” as something he’s egregiously offended by. (Page 42, paragraph 6.)

He then baselessly claims that the Left supports open borders (they don’t, and Trump killed bipartisan legislation recently that would have alleviated problems at the border by telling Republicans not to vote for it so he could continue to campaign on the issue. [Source]⁸

“At its very heart, environmental extremism is decidedly anti-human.” (Kevin D. Roberts, Project 2025 Foreword, Page 43, Paragraph 4.) He elaborates on this statement by saying that mitigating climate change “abandons confidence in human resilience and creativity in responding to the challenges of the future.” Which might actually be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. We shouldn’t do anything about climate change, because doing so would deprive us of the opportunity to adapt and adjust once we’re well and truly fucked?

He goes on to say that American Big Tech is less a contributor to the U.S. economy than it is “a tool of China’s government.” (Page 44, paragraph 2.) He cites TikTok as an example of the collaboration between Big Tech and the CCP.

“Illegal immigration should be ended, not mitigated; the border sealed, not reprioritized. Economic engagement with China should be ended, not rethought.” (Kevin D. Roberts, Project 2025 Foreword, Page 44-45.)

Let’s start with economic engagement with China.

“The U.S. and China are economically interdependent. The U.S. is China’s largest export market, and China is the U.S.’s largest import market. China relies on the U.S. for roughly $580 billion of exports per year, total foreign direct investments of $124 billion, joint ventures in high-growth industries, and more. The U.S. relies on China for economic growth in investments, people flow, idea flows, and trade in key industries. Estimates suggest that decoupling would cost the American aviation industry up to $875 billion by 2038; the semiconductor industry up to $159 billion and 100,000 jobs; the medical services industry more than $479 billion over the next decade; and more.” – Source Kenneth Gatten III, Penn State⁹

In August 2019, Trump “hereby ordered”¹⁰ companies to find an alternative to doing business in China. It was not immediately clear that this was an order, since he tweeted these wishes rather than doing anything officially. Point being, Trump supports these policies, even if (last time) he was ineffective at enacting them. This time, they have a better plan.

In any case, the government “hereby ordering” private businesses to pull their factories out of China sounds an awful lot like the government controlling the means of production. There’s an official phrase for that. That phrase is “command economy.”¹¹ Command economies are controlled by the government rather than by the free market. Examples of countries that have had command economies include Cuba, North Korea, and the former Soviet Union.

As for the border, it’s not possible to “seal” it. More than 40% of illegal immigrants fly here and overstay their welcome. [Source]¹² Is he suggesting shutting down all international air travel as well?

Second, the effect of “mass deportations” would be economic devastation. In 2017, Robert Warren and Donald Kerwin authored a paper about the subject, pointing out in part that:

• Removing undocumented residents from mixed-status households would reduce median household income from $41,300 to $22,000, a drop of $19,300, or 47 percent, which would plunge millions of US families into poverty.
• If just one-third of the US-born children of undocumented residents remained in the United States following a mass deportation program, which is a very low estimate, the cost of raising those children through their minority would total $118 billion. (The alternative is deporting minor children of illegal immigrants who are U.S. Citizens.)
• The nation’s housing market would be jeopardized because a high percentage of the 1.2 million mortgages held by households with undocumented immigrants would be in peril.
• Gross domestic product (GDP) would be reduced by 1.4 percent in the first year, and cumulative GDP would be reduced by $4.7 trillion over 10 years.

[Source]¹³

Robert J. Shapiro wrote in May 2024¹⁴ “By any measure, a policy that eliminated 4.5 percent of the current workforce, including large numbers of college and high school graduates, would set off serious economic tremors. Using Okun’s Law on the relationship between rising unemployment and GDP, a 4.5 percent drop in employment is associated with depressing GDP growth by more than 9 percentage points. This estimate also includes the impact on other jobs. A recent study of much more modest programs to deport immigrants found clear evidence that they cost other American jobs. By one calculation, deporting 1 million immigrants would lead to 88,000 additional employment losses by other Americans, suggesting that Trump’s program could cost up to 968,000 Americans their jobs on top of the 7.1 million jobs held by immigrants up for deportation.”

In North Carolina alone, this would result in 1 in 4 construction workers being deported, crushing that industry there, which already struggles to hire skilled workers. [Source]¹⁵

So, are mass deportations a GOOD idea? No. They’re simply a white nationalist/racist idea that would crush the economy and (further) impoverish American families.

“But,” you might ask. “If we deport all of those immigrants, won’t American citizens simply take those vacant jobs?”

That’s a good question. This is a form of the “Schrodinger’s Immigrant” argument – people claiming simultaneously that immigrants are both “taking our jobs”, and “too lazy to work.” Both of those things cannot be true at the same time. To answer the question, let’s look at an example from North Carolina. (Facts taken from the NC Department of Labor¹⁷, this case study¹⁸, The Washington Post¹⁹, and the North Carolina Department of Commerce²⁰.)

The NCGA supplies manual laborers to North Carolina farms. It is the largest user of the H-2A Guest Worker program, designed with migrants in mind. Under H-2A regulations, the NCGA must submit an application to the US Department of Labor for migrant workers, proving that it has actively recruited U.S. citizens, and that none (or not enough) would take the jobs. (H-2A is a kind of temporary visa for foreign/migrant workers.)

This means that before any immigrants are recruited to take these jobs, the NCGA offers the farm work to American citizens.

Unfortunately, data shows that U.S. citizens’ willingness to work on farms is virtually nonexistent. Here’s the data from 1998-2012:

Number of North Carolina citizens unemployed during any given year: At least 130,000, and up to 489,000 in 2011.

Number of North Carolina citizens who asked to be referred to the NCGA: Never above 268, even though the NCGA hires U.S. citizens who apply at a rate of 97%.

In 2011, 245 U.S. citizens were hired to work on North Carolina farms, out of 268 referred. Only 163 of those (66.5%) bothered to show up on their first day of work. Only 7 employees lasted to the end of the growing season.

Number of workers the NCGA was looking for in 2011? 6,500. That means that even though the work was offered to them, only 268 unemployed U.S. citizens were even interested in it, only 163 of those (61%) took the positions, and only 7 completed the job (2.6%).

Here’s the reason it was important to look at the North Carolina market to make this point. In NC, they ONLY use legal farm labor, because of the way they’re structured. Under H-2A regulations, each worker has a visa (thus, isn’t here illegally), and NC farms are required to pay the same wage to everyone, thus not being able to benefit from paying migrant workers less. It’s $9.70 per hour, by the way. More than $2 more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr.

This refutes the argument that if farms paid more, more Americans would want the jobs. Perhaps that’s true, but if they paid much more than they do, they can’t farm profitably, or can’t hire as many workers, which disrupts the food supply and hurts everyone long-term. In states where these laborers are paid even less, it stands to reason that even fewer Americans are interested in the jobs. This refutes the argument that “there is no job an American won’t do.”

What these numbers tell me is that if Americans really believe that migrant workers are “stealing their jobs”, they only feel that way for as long as it takes to make an anti-immigrant point about it. They don’t actually WANT the jobs that are being “stolen” (which they aren’t); they only want to feel ENTITLED to those jobs over a foreign person. Which they are, if they actually wanted to perform the work.

Take a moment now to imagine what would happen to the U.S. food supply if we had mass deportations, and U.S. farms could only manage to get 2.6% of the labor they needed?

(Obviously my point here doesn’t apply to white-collar labor.)

Promise 4: Secure our God-given individual right to enjoy “the blessings of liberty.”

“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. This pursuit of the good life is found primarily in family—marriage, children, Thanksgiving dinners, and the like.” (Kevin D. Roberts, Project 2025 Foreword, Page 45, paragraph 4.)

One interpretation of this is that he (and by extent, the authors of Project 2025), wish to dictate what it is we “ought” – that is, have families and children. He goes on to say that the government resents that we (Americans) don’t want to be told how to live (I agree), but then tacitly supports the government dictating how people should live.

This statement is particularly nonsensical: “Left to our own devices, the American people rejected European monarchy and colonialism just as we rejected slavery, second-class citizenship for women, mercantilism, socialism, Wilsonian globalism, Fascism, Communism, and (today) wokeism. To the Left, these assertions of patriotic self-assurance are just so many signs of our moral depravity and intellectual inferiority—proof that, in fact, we need a ruling elite making decisions for us.” (Kevin D. Roberts, Project 2025 Foreword, Page 46, paragraph 4.)

He seems to be saying that the Left supports women being second-class citizens. Which is ironic, given that the Right’s policies on women more or less afford them the same rights over their own bodies as livestock (and less bodily autonomy than we actually afford corpses in this country.)

“There is no such thing as “the government.” There are just people who work for the government and wield its power and who—at almost every opportunity—wield it to serve themselves first and everyone else a distant second. This is not a failing of one nation or socialist party, but inherent in human nature.” (Kevin D. Roberts, Project 2025 Foreword, Page 46, paragraph 7). I can agree in general terms with this statement. He then nonsensically equates the Soviet Empire, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and Vermont (yes, really) when discussing failed socialist policies. (Most of those suffer/suffered under fascist policies, not socialist.) The Vermont mention was a not-veiled dig at Bernie Sanders, whom Roberts mentions by name in the paragraph.

“The next President should promote pro-growth economic policies that spur new jobs and investment, higher wages, and productivity.” (Kevin D. Roberts, Project 2025 Foreword, Page 47, paragraph 8.)

Is that going to be before or after we deport 4.5% of the workforce and crush the economy?

“Today, in addition to the problem of Big Tech censorship, we see speakers at universities shouted down, parents investigated and arrested for attempting to speak at school board meetings, and donors to conservative causes harassed and intimidated. The next conservative President must defend our First Amendment rights.” (Kevin D. Roberts, Project 2025 Foreword, Page 48, paragraph 2.)

Where are parents getting arrested for speaking at school board meetings? He appears to be referring to Scott Smith (Loudoun County, Virginia)¹⁶, who was arrested at a schoolboard meeting for obstruction of justice and disorderly conduct, not for “speaking.” (He threatened a woman.) Technically speaking, people who “shout down” university speakers are exercising THEIR OWN first amendment rights, but Roberts apparently doesn’t like it when non-conservatives do that.

Under the subheading “best effort” (Page 48):

“This book, this agenda, the entire Project 2025 is a plan to unite the conservative movement and the American people against elite rule and woke culture warriors.” (Kevin D. Roberts, Foreword, Project 2025, Page 48, paragraph 4.)

Roberts goes on to claim that “Left”ist federal policies are eroding our freedoms, but does not elaborate as to which freedoms, exactly, or by which policies. He seems to really just be railing against “woke” culture, which hasn’t done anything to restrict anyone’s actual freedoms. (If it had, he’d surely articulate that.)