OK, I’ll admit it: I never got around to reading the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page Project 2025 manifesto. But the left-scream media, to which I religiously attend, did a pretty good job of laying out its major objectives. As you’ll recall, Trump vociferously denied its tenets during his second-term campaign, then, in typical Trump style, immediately flipped and put Russell Vought, one of its primary architects, in charge of the critical Office of Management and Budget. Turns out I really didn’t need to read Project 2025, as we are now living it…and enduring its dreadful consequences.
Recently, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut rightly characterized the current regime as “A pathetic, senile old man, surrounded by a bunch of inept sycophants.” While that latter applies to the most visible of his minions–Noem, Bondi, Patel, Hegseth–lurking just out of sight are some who really aren’t inept, just evil. I give you the aforementioned Vought and, of course, that prince of darkness, Stephen Miller. These people are skillfully implementing the goals of Project 2025.
We have most of another year to go before, hopefully, a Congress is elected that can still the destruction being wrought by this regime. Come 2029, we may able to strip the White House of its cheesy gold, rebuild the porticoed East Wing, rip down the Big Brother banners adorning our government buildings and restore the name and cultural stature of the Kennedy Center. Those are the superficial things. But it will take a generation for us to regain the institutional integrity and trust of federal government that will have been lost by then.
Do you any longer have respect for the Justice Department? The FBI? The Supreme Court? Has ICE rendered your trust in law enforcement moot? Do you believe the advice of the CDC or in the deregulations of the EPA? Or think the fundamental changes being made by the Energy Department are wise? Is the word “Homeland” starting to sound like “Vaterland,” and has “Homeland Security” become an oxymoron. When you see our flag, does your heart still swell with pride? Simply having to answer these questions traces directly back to Project 2025. And that’s why the Democrats need to start working on their own version.
For the moment, tactically, the Democrat drumbeat is affordability. Yes, it is “the economy, stupid” which drives election results. But I hope we all realize that in a free-market economy like ours there’s little the government can actually do about prices. It’s OK to ride that illusion through November 2026, but winning then will be just a small step toward stopping the bleeding. The cure will have to be long-term, and it will have to begin in 2028, by electing a fresh set of pols in Congress and a charismatic president who can restore both dignity and intelligence to the office. To accomplish that, the Democrats need a Project 2029.
It won’t have to run to 900 pages. It should be short, so everyone who votes can fully take it in. Just a list will suffice, albeit a long one, since there’s so much to be unraveled. And, it will have to be somewhat tempered by the fact that not all of what has been done under Trump started out as bad ideas. People were right to be dissatisfied with our government. Certainly, our border had to be sealed, the chronic problem of illegal aliens addressed and bloated federal bureaucracy streamlined. Unfortunately, on these, and on many other Project 2025 initiatives, Trumpism threw the baby out with the bathwater.
But, while we pull back on some, in order that America is never again taken over by a cult-sponsored, criminal gang, major changes have to be vigorously advanced: Term limits on Congress; the independence of the DOJ (an elected Attorney General?); getting money out of politics; banning insider trading by pols; breaking up the media monopolies; eliminating gerrymandering at all levels of government; establishing 20-year Supreme Court term limits; returning the idea of liability to presidential actions; limiting executive orders; limits on presidential pardons; lowering the impeachment threshold for cabinet officials who promise one thing during confirmation hearings and then do the opposite. This list could be greatly expanded. But it’s a list that the vast majority of Americans would applaud being implemented by statute or Constitutional amendment.
So, Democrats, it took years, hiding under their rocks, for the evil geniuses of the Epstein Class to concoct Project 2025. You have just a year or so to put together your own transformational plan and begin to sell it to the American people as a run-up to the 2028 elections. Get to work!
©2026, David B Bucher
SoEast 