The think tank writing the 'blueprint' for Trump's second term

This episode delves into the influence of think tanks in American politics, focusing on a detailed plan called Project 2025 by the Heritage Foundation intended for Trump's potential second term.

1. Project 2025 represents a detailed conservative agenda for governing, including radical reforms and policy shifts.
2. The Heritage Foundation, a key player in conservative circles, has crafted this agenda with significant potential implications.
3. There's an ongoing debate about the role of think tanks in politics, with concerns about their influence resembling that of lobby groups.
4. Donald Trump has distanced himself from the project, citing its extreme measures, which contradicts his previous endorsements.
5. The episode also discusses the broader implications of such policy blueprints on democracy and public administration.

1: Introduction and Context

Host Manica Rahman Wilms introduces the topic and background of Project 2025 and its creators, the Heritage Foundation. Manica Rahman Wilms: "Today, we delve into the influence of think tanks in shaping political landscapes."

2: The Heritage Foundation's Role and History

Dawn Abelson discusses the foundation's inception and its pivotal role in American conservative policy-making. Dawn Abelson: "The Heritage Foundation was born out of a need to have a more immediate impact on policy decisions."

3: Impact and Concerns of Project 2025

The conversation shifts to the specifics of the Project 2025 document, discussing its potential impacts on various aspects of governance. Dawn Abelson: "Project 2025 aims to realign significant portions of the U.S. government with conservative ideologies."

4: Political and Social Implications

Discussion on the broader implications of think tank influence in politics, differentiating between educational and lobbying activities. Dawn Abelson: "It's about influencing policy in a way that aligns with specific political ideologies."

5: Conclusion and Reflections

The episode concludes with reflections on the potential consequences of implementing Project 2025's policies. Manica Rahman Wilms: "What does this mean for the future of American politics and governance?"

1. Stay informed about the activities and publications of major think tanks to understand their influence on politics.
2. Engage in public discourse about the role of policy documents in governance to ensure a well-rounded understanding of potential changes.
3. Critically evaluate the sources of political proposals to understand their origins and motivations.
4. Participate in community discussions or forums to voice opinions and concerns about significant political changes.
5. Encourage transparency in political advocacy and policy-making to ensure accountability.

Opponents of Donald Trump have been sounding alarms about Project 2025, a policy plan for a conservative presidency put forward by an influential think tank called the Heritage Foundation. But what exactly is the Heritage Foundation and how much power do they really have?

Donald Abelson is a political scientist at McMaster University who has written extensively about think tanks. He joins us to discuss their history and evolving role in American politics.

People

Dawn Abelson, Manica Rahman Wilms

Companies

The Heritage Foundation

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Dawn Abelson

Content Warnings:

None

Vas Bednar
Welcome to lately a new Globe and Mail podcast. I'm Vas Bednar, and every Friday, I'm going to be having a conversation about big defining trends in business and technology that are reshaping our everyday find lately, wherever you get your podcasts.

Kamala Harris
So some of you may have heard Donald Trump's running mate deliver remarks at the Republican National Convention.

He did not talk about project 2025, their 900 page blueprint for a second Trump term.

Manica Rahman Wilms
Thats US Vice President Kamala Harris at a recent rally.

Kamala Harris
He did not talk about it because their plans are extreme and they are divisive.

Manica Rahman Wilms
If youve been following the us election, youve probably heard about project 2025. Its the plan put together by the influential think tank the Heritage foundation. Its meant to be a roadmap for a potential republican government.

The plan focuses partly on standard policy, like tax reform, but it also details grander ambitions, like abolishing the Department of Education and replacing thousands of civil servants with political appointees.

Donald Trump has publicly distanced himself from project 2025 and called parts of it extreme, though a video recently resurfaced of him saying the Heritage foundation will, quote, lay the groundwork for his movement.

But how much power do think tanks like the Heritage foundation really have in influencing the government?

To answer that question, ill speak to Dawn Abelson, a political scientist at McMaster University whos written extensively about the relationship between think tanks and policymakers.

Im Manica Rahman Wilms, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail.

Dawn, thank you so much for joining me today.

Dawn Abelson
Oh, it's my pleasure.

Manica Rahman Wilms
So Project 2025 was put together by a think tank called the Heritage foundation, along with input from other conservative groups as well. So what is the Heritage foundation?

Dawn Abelson
Well, the Heritage foundation is considered among the most influential think tanks in the world, not only in the United States. The Heritage foundation was set up in 1973 by two former republican congressional aides, Paul Weyrich and Edwin Fuller.

And both were very eager to establish a new think tank. But what really triggered things was one day in the early seventies, it was during the Nixon administration.

Weyrich and Fuller were sitting down for breakfast on Capitol Hill, and they were talking about a report that they had received from another conservative think tank called the American Enterprise Institute. And the issue was whether or not the us government should fund the supersonic transport. And it was very, very controversial issue at the time.

And Weyrich and Fuldner looked at each other and they said, you know what? This is an unbelievable report. I wish more think tanks were producing this kind of work. But the problem was they received the report about four days after the vote had taken place in the US Congress.

Manica Rahman Wilms
So you couldn't actually use that information that was in the report then.

Dawn Abelson
Absolutely. So what happened was they picked up the phone and they called then president of the American Enterprise Institute, gentleman by the name of William Barody, and they said, doctor Birouti, we just wanted to tell you we received the report on the supersonic transport. It was incredible. But we have one question for you. Why did it arrive after the vote took place in Congress? And Berut, his response was, we simply didn't want to influence what was taking place on the floor of the House and the Senate. And at that point, the idea for creating the Heritage foundation was born. So Fuller and Weyrich combined had experience in government, in the academic world, in the business world, and they felt that there was a need to create a think tank that was conservative in orientation, that would serve as a counterweight to the more liberal brookings institution. But they needed to develop a new model, a model that really transformed the think tank landscape in the United States and around the world.

Manica Rahman Wilms
So, Don, it sounds like what they wanted to do really was actually influence the people making those decisions then, right?

Dawn Abelson
Absolutely. And particularly decisions being made on Capitol Hill. So they knew how government worked. They knew how important ideas were and how to work the process. And so they put their heads together.

They came up with $250,000 in seed money from Joseph Coors.

And that was in 1970. 319 74, by 1980. So only five, six years later, the Heritage foundation had produced a massive blueprint. And I know we're going to be talking about Project 2025, but Project 2025 was really based on the initial report that heritage produced called mandate for leadership.

And it was intended to be a conservative blueprint for the incoming Reagan administration.

And Reagan referred to it as the bible of his administration.

It was well over 1200 pages.

It made the Washington Post bestseller list because reporters thought, oh, my goodness, there are hundreds and hundreds of policy recommendations in this report based on conservative principles. We need to pay a lot of attention to what heritage is doing and the impact that they have.

Manica Rahman Wilms
So was this, I guess, the first time that a think tank or some kind of institution like this had such influence in american politics? Cause you mentioned the Brookings Institute, but was this substantially different than what came before?

Dawn Abelson
It wasn't the first time that think tanks had influence. I mean, the Brookings Institution was the organization responsible for creating a national budget system in the United States.

There were other think tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations. That played a very important role in terms of developing a war and peace studies project. The Rand corporation that many people have heard of was extremely influential because its number one patron was the US Department of Defense. It was the RaND Corporation, which was set up in 1946, that began to entertain ideas about mutual assured destruction and thinking about the unthinkable. Could the United States survive a nuclear war? So there were plenty of examples of think tanks having influence. The difference was that heritage changed the model by which to assert influence. They became what was known as an advocacy think tank. They combined policy research with aggressive marketing and promotion.

Manica Rahman Wilms
That's interesting. So how is that different than something like a lobby group here, don?

Dawn Abelson
Yeah, so it is different, although the boundaries have become increasingly blurred. So it's a question that a lot of people ask. Well, think tanks engage in lobbying. Are they not a lobbyist? There are different rules that govern their behavior. The majority of think tanks in the United States are registered under the internal Revenue Code as 501, chapter three organizations. They are tax exempt, and most of them are charitable. And this is important because it allows them to go out and raise money.

Part of the problem with charitable status, though, particularly for think tanks, is because they're registered as educational research institutions.

They are only allowed to engage in a little lobbying, in a little advocacy.

So what think tanks in the United States have done over the last number of years, including heritage, is to create separate organizations. In this case, it's called heritage action, which is treated differently by the Internal Revenue Service, which allows them to engage in far more lobbying and political advocacy.

Manica Rahman Wilms
And there is still a connection, though, to the original organization.

Dawn Abelson
Absolutely. So they're almost like sister organizations. They're joined at the hip.

They should be governed differently because they have a different mandate, but there is cross fertilization.

So it is possible and indeed probable that senior level people involved in the Heritage foundation are also involved in heritage action. So it allows them to have their cake and eat it, too.

Manica Rahman Wilms
Wow. Okay. And you talked about kind of the origin of the Heritage foundation. What place does it occupy? Today in american politics, the Heritage foundation.

Dawn Abelson
Is considered among the top two or three think tanks on the globe. They have a budget well in excess of $100 million us a year. They have well over 200 staff.

They have the capacity to engage in projects like Project 2025, which cost in excess of $22 million USDA. When you look at the budget of the Heritage foundation alone, it is more than probably all think tanks in Canada, combined with plenty left over.

Manica Rahman Wilms
We're going to talk more in depth about Project 2025. But first on, I just want to ask you how this compares to Canada, because it sounds like think tanks have a very specific and ingrained role in american politics. Now, is that the same in canadian politics?

Dawn Abelson
Well, of course, we have two very different political systems. The United States has far more points of access for think tanks to become involved. When a new administration comes to office in the United States, pretty much the top layer of the senior bureaucracy is hived off. So overnight, five to 8000 relatively senior positions become available.

Many of those positions end up being filled by think tank experts. That does not happen in Canada.

Far fewer access points. Interest groups, think tanks, advocacy coalitions know that in Canada, there's no point trying to lobby members of parliament because of the parliamentary principle of strong party unity in the United States, it makes all the difference to target individual members of Congress because they are not bound by party unity. Now, the country has become increasingly toxic and partisan over the last number of years, but it does not dissuade policymakers from reaching out to whomever they would like to speak for information and advice.

Generally speaking, that doesn't happen as often in Canada because the parties want to present themselves as being strong and united.

Many other differences as well. There are probably about 100 think tanks in Canada, but none of them come even close to the top tier think tanks in the United States.

Manica Rahman Wilms
We'll be back in a minute.

Vas Bednar
Welcome to lately a new Globe and Mail podcast that's all about navigating life in the new economy. I'm your host, Bastner.

Every Friday I'm going to be having a conversation, maybe even a raucous one, about big defining trends in business and technology that are reshaping our everyday. It's about the innovations that are changing our world, whether you've noticed them yet or not. Join us for the latest on lately. Wherever you get your podcasts.

Manica Rahman Wilms
Let's talk more specifically about Project 2025. So this is the plan that the Heritage foundation, along with other groups, has put together for a republican presidency. They put out a policy document that says over 900 pages. So a massive document here. Dawn, what are the most significant things in it?

Dawn Abelson
Well, the blueprint really is intended to cover off every federal government department and agency, abolish the Department of Education because it's been seen as being too liberal, supporting the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

A lot of discussion about trade policy, which Canadians should be concerned about.

There is a lot of focus on american foreign policy, criticisms of the US State Department advancing a far more isolationist policy there are recommendations to move away from any organizations that support the principles of climate change, politicizing the civil service, something that we wouldn't respond well to in Canada, because public servants, regardless of the government they serve, are supposed to remain neutral in Project 2025. The call is for those who enter government. They must align themselves with conservative republican principles. That's a very dangerous thing.

Manica Rahman Wilms
What is it about that that could be dangerous?

Dawn Abelson
What's dangerous is that in government generally, you want people who are open minded, who consider the options at their disposal so they can help best advance the public interest.

What you don't want to do is to just hear the same message over and over again.

The best leaders are those that have the capacity to listen and the capacity to listen to different points of view. If you begin to politicize the public service in the United states, you end up with a generation of sycophants whose primary responsibility is to support ideologically and politically, even when they know it's the wrong thing to do, the leader in charge. And so it's dangerous in the sense that it minimizes or reduces the number of policy options that leaders would consider viable.

It creates an environment that will become even more toxic because people who are qualified but don't want to go down a certain path for fear that it could be damaging, could easily be removed from office. And it really forces on the american electorate a very myopic view of how the United States and the world ought to be governed. So the whole idea of government is to make sure you bring people in who have different voices and who can support their initiative by going to the electorate. Because, after all, the United States, at least until now, has been a republic where the power flows directly from the people.

The last thing you want to do is to create a government that is not for the people, but one that informs the people about what they ought to do and should be doing. So in that sense, it's quite dangerous.

Manica Rahman Wilms
Yeah. What you're kind of talking about is kind of a system change.

Dawn Abelson
There not only is system change, think of Orwell 1984.

I mean, people in government who see themselves as cogs in a wheel, people who see themselves as part of an idea factory, but all the conclusions lead to the same place, the introduction of more and more conservative principles.

Manica Rahman Wilms
What has Trump said about this document? Like, is this actually what he wants to do if he gets in office?

Dawn Abelson
He hasn't gone into much detail. Again, there's been the occasional reference to it. You know, Trump is not the type of president who's going to sit down and wade through a 900 page document. He'll get an executive brief.

But as Trump said in the four years he was in office, of course, he knows more than everybody else does. So how open and willing he would be to prioritize this document over others, we'd have to see.

Manica Rahman Wilms
And we should say he has been trying to distance himself from this in recent weeks. So he wrote on social media, I know nothing about Project 2025. He has nothing to do with them referring to the Heritage foundation. So he is trying to distance himself from the organization.

Dawn Abelson
These days, it's not only distancing, it's about him being able to take credit for any changes that are made. And he does not want to be seen as being too closely aligned to any organization that would be seen as a mouthpiece for him and his administration.

Manica Rahman Wilms
We just have a few minutes left here, dawn, but I want to ask you about the democratic side, too, because the Democrats have really been raising alarm bells about project 2025. Right. The Biden campaign, when it was the Biden campaign, they called it a plan to strip away freedoms. Vice President Kamala Harris has called it extreme and divisive. I guess. What do you make of that kind of rhetoric on the democratic side?

Dawn Abelson
Well, they wouldn't see it as rhetoric. They would see it as a cautionary tale of what could happen should Trump be elected to a second term.

So they're raising alarm bells because they're deeply concerned about how this organization could fundamentally encroach upon civil rights and civil liberties.

What could happen if you populate a government with people who are anti vaxxers, people who do not believe that climate change is real, with people who would like to abolish the US Department of Education, for people who would want the United States to focus on issues at home and not engage on the world stage. So there are a lot of really important issues that Democrats are focusing on, because their fear is it's not only about Trump. But imagine if the 2024 outcome is Republicans win the Oval Office and down ballot, they end up winning both the House and the Senate and a majority of gubernatorial campaigns.

The left has a lot to concern itself about, and this would very much change the political climate in the United States for years to come. And so I don't see it as much as rhetoric, but really as an opportunity to inform and to educate people about what organizations like the heritage foundation do and why they ought to be concerned.

Manica Rahman Wilms
Dawn, this was really fascinating context. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here today.

Dawn Abelson
Oh, manica it's been my pleasure. Thank you so much.

Manica Rahman Wilms
That's it for today. I'm Mainika Ramon Willms. This episode was produced by Kevin Sexton. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy McLaughlin, and Michal Stein. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Fraynor is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.