Project 2025 is like QAnon. The only significant number of people paying attention to it are on the left.
Not. Not even close. For those who didn't want to bury their head in the details of that 300+ page document, Chapter 16 was the part that impacts our issues the most. Link to that here -
https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
Project 2025 was a pet project of the anti-public land segment of the Republican Party. Trump's advisers were all over it. He was advised to dismiss it, as he knew it was bad baggage with some of his base. He won because he had way smarter advisers than the clown show he was running against.
The Heritage Foundation funded and coordinated Project 2025. It was a "wish list" of folks who have been public land vandals for decades. Mike Lee might be the visible face of that effort, but he's hardly the strategist.
The strategist is Russ Vought, now head at Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Vought was one of the leaders of Project 2025. He now has OMB sit in on meetings for BLM, USFS, USFWS, and other agencies, something that never happened in the past.
Vought hand-picked the person to write Chapter 16 of Project 2025, the chapter on Public Lands. Who did he pick? William Perry Pendley, a devout "sell the public land" guy from the Mountain States Legal Foundation who has
written extensively about how/why to sell public lands.
Chris Wright, Secretary of Energy and former oil and gas executive, was asked to advise on Project 2025. DOE has its 9 principles for energy dominance that are the same as outlined in Project 2025. Some of the Executive Orders on energy and regulation that have been signed by POTUS are almost verbatim with Project 2025.
A few other Admin people listed as advisors or authors (over 260 given credit as contributors) in the Project 2025 document are:
Stephen Miller - White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, and POTUS Homeland Security Adviser
Brendan Carr - Chairman of Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
Adam Candeub - General Counsel for the FCC (the guy who decides what deals get a thumbs up or thumbs down, or decides who the FCC does/doesn't go after.)
Paul Adkins - Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission
Peter Navaro - Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing
Tom Homan - Border Czar
Brian Cavanah - Associate Director for Homeland Security
Karoline Leavitt - White House Press Secretary
The list is much longer, but I think I've made the point.
Of the 267 "contributors" listed in the credits for Project 2025, over 140 of them came from Trump's first administration, his election team, or his transition team. That's more than 50%. It is laughable to entertain the idea that this was not part of the POTUS 47 plan.
Trump did a remarkable job of deflecting it. The facts present today make it hard to deny that it was, and still is, part of the road map put together by the Heritage Foundation.
Asking some in DC who are "in the know" as to the origin of the attacks on public lands and the conservation infrastructure, and all fingers points to Vought, Wright, and Pendley, three main contributors of Project 2025.
I met with a lobbyist last week who lobbies mostly on the conservative side of Congress. He was asking me ideas about how Rs might change the narrative on public lands and conservation. I didn't have much to offer, short of changing course.
If there is a good nugget I learned from the discussion it is that there are many Rs who would do anything to get rid of Mike Lee. As he told me, "Not a single R, outside of Lee and Friends, will touch another public land disposal bill after the mess created last summer." I guess that's one good thing that came of the big battle last summer.
When asked about the attacks on conservation, wildlife, privatizing resources while socializing costs/liabilities, and other actions that are going to have lifetime consequences to wildlife, he wasn't very reassuring that the folks he talks to have any concerns about those actions. When I asked more questions on the topic, his response was similar to my unhelpful response about how Rs can look better on public lands and conservation. He gave me the looked of, "I get your concerns, but I don't have any advice for how you can change the course we are on."
The 2024 D candidate and process was such an abysmal mess, it surely didn't offer much for alternatives. As I tell my D-loyalists, "I agree with all the facts pointed out as to the completely unpresidential character of the POTUS. But, what does that say about your candidate if your candidate lost to him by a large margin?"
Some wanted these changes and voted for such. Some did not expect it to go this far, yet voted for POTUS based on other priorities in their life. Yet, here we are.
I can understand why Terry says he "didn't vote for this." I hope he and others who voted for POTUS and who are having that feeling are compelled to stand up and speak up on the issues of public lands, conservation, access, etc. That's our only hope to prevent a dismantling of many systems that provide habitat necessary for robust wildlife numbers.
The election is done, based on how voters assessed their priorities. What matters now is that we give voice to wild places and wild things at this time when the folks with the levers of power have no interest in considering such. If we don't do so in the next few years, wildlife on public lands, the wildlife we have access to, is going to take the hit. If we think tags are hard to draw at the lower herd levels of today, we "ain't seen nothin' yet" would be the appropriate phrase to compare what it will be like 10 years from now.
