Seeing is Believing: What Project 2025 Means for Business

A detailed plan for upending the federal government is easily available for public view on the Heritage Foundation’s website. Known as Project 2025, the document has sat there for months, flying largely under the media radar. Actress Taraji P. Henson finally called attention to the draconian plan in a fiery speech while hosting the annual BET Awards show, and now everyone is talking about it.

Why is everyone suddenly talking about Project 2025?

Project 2025 previously received some attention from the Union of Concerned Scientists and other climate experts. However, in terms of raising widespread public awareness about it, Henson provided a compelling, effective spark that broke through the media clutter, and BET Networks later posted a clip of her speech to YouTube.

“Pay attention,” Henson urged, looking straight into the camera. “It’s not a secret. Look it up … The Project 2025 plan is not a game. Look it up!” 

CNN, Forbes, the Associated Press and the BBC are among the many media organizations to report on Project 2025 following the BET Awards, along with a wave of conversation across social media. Despite the sudden spotlight, the Project 2025 agenda is still available online from the Heritage Foundation in a free PDF format as part of the organization’s Mandate for Leadership series. It is also for sale in book form.

“The Heritage Foundation is once again facilitating this work, but as our dozens of partners and hundreds of authors will attest, this book is the work of the entire conservative movement,” the organization’s website reads. “It is not enough for conservatives to win elections … we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration.”

What Project 2025 means for business

The Project 2025 agenda spans 922 pages, much of it spelling out steps to mandate government-enforced social control at a granular level, with a knock-on impact that could undermine corporate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

“The next conservative president must get to work pursuing the true priority of politics — the well-being of the American family,” the PDF version reads. “The Dobbs decision is just the beginning,” it continues, referring to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that effectively overturned federal protections for abortion. 

That’s just the first of four topic areas described in Project 2025. The others deal more directly with policies impacting economic activity.

For example, an op-ed authored by former Microsoft executive Jeff Raikes and published by Forbes sums up the entire document as a policy agenda that will “likely plunge the American economy into a death spiral.” In an echo of Henson’s warning, Raikes advises taking  Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s extremist statements on the campaign trail literally.

“It'd be natural to think that Trump is just mouthing off again, except, this time, he has a playbook in hand to accomplish his goals as soon as he gets into office,” Raikes wrote.

He also drew out the connection between a healthy economy and a functioning democracy, adding to a growing body of commentary on the business case for democratic representation. 

“Unfortunately, this Project 2025 agenda is brimming with extremely outside-the-mainstream ideas that threaten to roll back many Americans' fundamental rights and cause grave and perhaps permanent damage to our democratic system of government,” he wrote.

The 800-pound climate change gorilla in the Project 2025 room

Early signs of Raikes' “death spiral” warning have already emerged as the U.S. insurance industry grapples with the impacts of climate change. Raikes notes that Project 2025 refers dismissively to the “climate change alarm industry," but the economic impacts are all too real.

“Climate change is already costing the U.S. $150 billion a year, and those costs are expected to grow substantially in the years to come if left unchecked — which is what this report argues for,” Raikes wrote, referring to a 2023 report from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Indeed, insurers are already pulling out of Florida and other markets on the front lines of climate change-related impacts.

“Industry leaders note that insurance companies have been hammered by heavy payouts … and say they simply can’t afford to provide coverage in the areas that face the highest risk,” Alex Brown reported for the nonprofit news organization Stateline last month.

Despite the looming threat of a full-blown climate crisis, rapid decarbonization and adaptation will reduce risks and limit the damage, according to the NOAA report. With that, the choice on Election Day this year is clear and binary: Support the climate policies of the Joe Biden administration, or go down with the Project 2025 ship.