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Project 1925
Project 2025 is a shopping list, a plot, a loyalty test, anarchy in the making. It is not a mandate nor a party platform. To call Project 2025 a reformist critique is to lend Project 2025 undeserved merit as a political gesture.
One doesn’t read Project 2025. One wears it like a badge, a yoke, a halter. For its audience of one — Trump — Project 2025 is deniable. Of course, Project 2025 is deniable — for Trump, a gesture is a gesture.
“Mandate for Leadership, the Conservative Promise: Project 2025” does not simply confirm that Republicans prefer chaos to governing. The writers propose a regime far worse than chaos.
Malek Mania
According to political historian, Rick Pearlstein, (1) perhaps the most salient section of Project 2025, is chapter 2, “The Executive Office of the United States.” Chapter 2’s genesis can be traced to a memo from Frederic Malek, Director of White House Personnel, to then President Richard Nixon, (1971–1972) concerning a plan to circulate a list of 13 employees of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “with ‘Jewish-sounding surnames … along with a list of political affiliations.”
“The thirteen employees considered to be Jewish were demoted and sent to other positions within the US Department of Labor, where they were deemed to be at a lower risk of causing issues to Nixon.” (2)
