Politics
Opinion: The ideas in Project 2025? Reagan tried them, and the nation suffered
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative playbook that would overhaul much of the federal government under a second Trump administration, has sparked fear and concern from voters despite the former president’s attempt to distance his campaign from the plan. But while Project 2025 might seem radical, most of it is not new. Instead, the now-famous document seeks to reanimate many of the worst racial, economic and political instincts of the Reagan Revolution.
Project 2025 begins with its authors (one of whom stepped down last month) boasting of the Heritage Foundation’s 1981 publication “The Mandate for Leadership,” which helped shape the Reagan administration’s policy framework. It hit its mark: Reagan wrote 60% of its recommendations into public policy in his first year in office, according to the Heritage Foundation. Yet the 900-plus-page Project 2025, itself a major component of a new edition of “The Mandate for Leadership,” does not contain any analysis of the economic and social price Americans paid for the revolution the Heritage Foundation and Reagan inspired.
If today’s economic inequality, racial unrest and environmental degradation represent some of our greatest political challenges, we would do well to remember that Reagan and the Heritage Foundation were the preeminent engineers of these catastrophes. Perhaps no day in Reagan’s presidency better embodied his policy transformations or the political ambitions of the Heritage Foundation than Aug. 13, 1981, when Reagan signed his first budget.
This budget dramatically transformed governmental priorities and hollowed out the nation’s 50-year pursuit of government for the common good that began during the New Deal. Once passed, it stripped 400,000 poor working families of their welfare benefits, while removing significant provisions from another 300,000. Radical cuts in education affected 26 million students. The number of poor Americans increased by 2.2 million, and the percentage of Black Americans living in poverty rose to a staggering 34.2%.
Of course, this was just the beginning of Reagan’s war on the poor, the environment and education. Following a Heritage Foundation plan, the Environmental Protection Agency’s operating budget would fall by 27%, and its science budget decreased by more than 50%. Funding for programs by the Department of Housing and Urban Development that provided housing assistance would be cut by 70%, according to Matthew Desmond’s “Poverty, By America.” Homelessness skyrocketed. And, as Project 2025 proposes, Reagan attempted to eliminate the Department of Education but settled for gutting its funding in a manner that set public education, in the words of author Jonathan Kozol, “back almost 100 years.” As funding for these issues nosedived under Reagan, financial support for the “war on drugs” skyrocketed and the prison population nearly doubled.
All the while, protections provided to the wealthy ballooned. Tax rates on personal income, corporate revenue and capital gains plummeted. For example, the highest income tax rate when Reagan took office was 70%. He would eventually lower it to 33%.
To ensure that wealth would be a long-lived family entitlement, Reagan instituted a 300% increase in inheritance tax protections through estate tax exemptions in his first budget. In 1980, the exemption stood at $161,000. By the time Reagan left office in 1989 it was $600,000. Today it is $13,610,000. This means that today nearly all wealthy children enjoy tax-free access to generational wealth.
And beginning during Reagan’s presidency, the number of millionaires and billionaires multiplied, increasing 225% and 400%, respectively, while the poverty of Americans across racial lines intensified. Even white males were more likely to be poor following Reagan’s presidency. Today poverty is the fourth-leading cause of death in the U.S., even though this is the wealthiest nation in the world.
If we feel like we live in a country that isn’t working for anyone who isn’t wealthy, these are some of the core reasons why. Looking back at the Reagan era and the Heritage Foundation’s original “Mandate for Leadership,” we must remember that our domestic wounds are largely self-inflicted, results of buying into racial, economic and environmental lies that continue to be sold. It is precisely the types of policies that devastated the nation during the Reagan administration that Project 2025 now seeks to resuscitate. Perhaps the only truly new thing Project 2025 suggests is using more authoritarian means to enact its agenda.
History has hinges, moments that change the trajectory of nations. The greatest progress in our country has almost always emerged during turbulent times. It is up to the United States’ most committed believers to close the door on terror and trauma and open one that leads to new democratic possibilities.
Our current moment represents more than an election. It is a turning point that has the potential to transform the United States for generations to come. We don’t need the version of the past that Project 2025 is trying to sell us. It didn’t work for most Americans then, and it won’t work for most of us now. But perhaps Project 2025 is the push the Democratic Party needed. While the Republican Party veers further into authoritarianism, Democrats must be equally determined to develop a truly equitable democracy and bind the wounds of a deeply divided nation.
Joel Edward Goza, a professor of ethics at Simmons College of Kentucky, is the author of the forthcoming book “Rebirth of a Nation: Reparations and Remaking America.”
Plains has no major hotel, a single small gas station and only a couple of restaurants, neither of which is usually open for dinner. Still, for the longest time, the tiny town had something that no other place in Georgia did: Jimmy Carter making it his home.
Especially as Mr. Carter withdrew from public life, the town has had years to prepare for life after him. But now that he is gone — Mr. Carter died last month at 100 — the town is hoping that its prospects as a tourism destination have not been buried along with its most famous son.
The optimism in Plains is grounded in the experience of other small towns known almost exclusively for their ties to a former president, which history has shown can still attract a crowd decades or centuries after that president has died.
Hyde Park, which borders the Hudson River in New York, has a steady stream of tourists coming to visit Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidential library, home and gravesite. Tampico, Ill., has erected signs advertising itself as the birthplace of Ronald Reagan, trying to encourage people to take a brief detour on the way to Chicago to see the apartment where Mr. Reagan was born.
These towns and others are banking on the country’s enduring fascination with its presidents. particularly among the collection of history buffs who find the insights they can offer irresistible.
“I recognized that there was something about getting to experience what they experienced and getting to see the world through their eyes,” said Joe Faykosh, a history professor at Central Arizona College.
He has visited all the available presidential birthplaces and homes and has interned at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio. He met the Carters in 2017 after the former president taught Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains.
There is no guarantee that the appeal will last forever, though. More than 100 presidential sites in big cities and backcountry towns attract thousands of visitors each year, but interest can fade as a president drifts further into history. In recent years, the reappraisal of historical figures and the sins of the past that has toppled monuments and renamed schools has also affected the appeal of historic sites.
Charlottesville, Va., has seen a decline in visitors to Monticello, the plantation that once belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Tourism officials there have adapted, broadening what had once been a largely generous interpretation of Jefferson’s history to a more complex portrayal, including his role in upholding slavery as an institution. They have also tried to market Charlottesville as an emerging wine region — an identity Jefferson had also worked to establish around 250 years ago.
“Leisure trips have focused in the past on kind of historical discovery, and now people — because of their relationship with history, because of the politicizing of history — have a different relationship with the past,” said Courtney Cacatian, the executive director of the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau. “A lot of people don’t seek it out as part of their vacation experience anymore.”
Plains isn’t so worried about the judgment of history. Many in the community believe that people’s perceptions of Mr. Carter’s legacy will continue to be favorable. Americans remain divided about his performance as president. But the week of funeral events highlighted a widespread admiration for his character and the extensive work he did after leaving office to protect democracy, fight ailments like Guinea worm disease and provide support to impoverished people worldwide.
Plains has become somewhat stuck in time — a capsule capturing the lives that Mr. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, had lived there, even while they were still alive.
There are no drive-throughs or supermarkets. The Dollar General downtown has a brick facade that makes it look like it has been there forever. Plains High School no longer has students — it is a site maintained by the National Park Service, just like the Carter family farm outside town and even the Carters’s home off Main Street.
It is a transformation the Carters have been deeply involved in. They created an exhibition at the high school about segregation. Visitors walking around the president’s boyhood home and farm can hear recordings of Mr. Carter sharing memories of his childhood, such as visiting his Black neighbors who lived in a ramshackle home nearby and the absolute joy he felt when he received a pony for Christmas.
“There’s just so many things that President Carter had his hands in,” said AB Jackson, a councilwoman in Plains.
Sarah Wollenweber and her 17-year-old son, London, said that the amount of documentation of Mr. Carter’s life and where he grew up set Plains apart from other presidential sites they had visited across the country.
“He’s one of the last great presidents we’ve seen who is genuine and actually kind, so it’s been really great to experience this,” London said. He and his mother drove 12 hours from Bloomington, Ill., to see Mr. Carter’s coffin being carried through Plains last week.
“They dedicated the whole town to him and his wife,” he added.
Many residents believe the Carters were keenly aware of how much their presence attracted tourists and positively impacted the town’s economy.
From 2014 to 2019, when Mr. Carter was still routinely teaching Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church, at least 50,000 tourists a year came to Plains. Beginning in 2020, the number of sightseers dropped significantly, as the pandemic stymied tourism and the Carters’ health declined. But visitorship picked up again last year, with approximately 45,000 people coming through the town. That does not include the hundreds of people per day who descended on Plains after Mr. Carter died on Dec. 29.
Over many years, Mr. Carter encouraged improvements to increase the appeal for tourists. He founded the Friends of Jimmy Carter, a nonprofit that owns the Plains Historic Inn, with its seven suites, as well as the antique mall below it. He was also instrumental in opening one of the town’s two restaurants: the Buffalo Café, which serves cheeseburgers, salads and pimento cheese sandwiches. And he convinced legislators to fund a train that would drop visitors off at his former campaign headquarters.
“He wanted to make sure that the town stays viable,” said Kim Carter Fuller, the president’s niece. “Whatever he could do within reason, he did.”
But Plains could only accommodate so much. The town is less than one square mile in size and has little public land to sell for development. There is also tension between wanting to attract more tourists and not wanting to disturb the town’s traditional way of life.
“We don’t really want to change Plains,” said Ellen Harris, a councilwoman. “That’s what makes us unique.”
Locals were grateful that the Carters chose to be buried at their home instead of at their presidential library in Atlanta, a decision they hope will help to maintain a steady stream of visitors. In the coming months, the gravesites of the Carters will be opened to the public. The modest ranch home the president and the first lady built in 1961 — where they raised their children and returned to after leaving the White House — will be made accessible to the public for the first time shortly after.
Events with historical ties — like the city’s yearly peanut festival in September that pays homage to Mr. Carter’s roots as a farmer — will continue to be a draw, some say. There are also newer attractions. The latest, Apt. 9A, which opened for private tours in October, is the government-subsidized home Mr. Carter moved his wife and three sons into after his father’s death in 1953.
After a 2001 walk-through with Ms. Carter in the apartment, Annette Wise, who led the project, received donations and searched through thrift stores to find items to recreate the family’s modest furnishings at a time when they had almost no income. Paint chips in a closet helped her to track down the precise shade of dark green the Carters had painted their living room and later used in campaign signs.
Ms. Wise said she believes all the time and effort will ultimately be worthwhile.
“Plains is headed in the right direction,” said Ms. Wise, who is a member of the Plains Historical Preservation Trust and a founder and the president of the Rosalynn Carter Butterfly Trail. “They’ve left us big shoes to fill. But they’ve given us plenty of time to learn what to do.”
Rick Rojas contributed reporting. Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
Politics
Trump says Jack Smith is a 'disgrace' after special counsel resigned from DOJ: 'He left town empty handed!'
President-elect Trump blasted special counsel Jack Smith as a “disgrace” to himself and the country following Smith’s resignation from the Justice Department.
Smith’s resignation was announced in a court filing Saturday.
“The Special Counsel completed his work and submitted his final confidential report on January 7, 2025, and separated from the Department on January 10,” a footnote in the filing said.
Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social on Sunday to criticize Smith for his investigations into the incoming president.
SPECIAL COUNSEL JACK SMITH RESIGNS AFTER 2-YEAR STINT AT DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
President-elect Donald Trump arrives to speak at a news conference at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024, in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
“Deranged Jack Smith was fired today by the DOJ. He is a disgrace to himself, his family, and his Country. After spending over $100,000,000 on the Witch Hunt against TRUMP, he left town empty handed!” Trump wrote.
Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 to investigate Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and his mishandling of classified documents.
Smith previously served as acting U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee in 2017 during Trump’s first administration.
The resignation comes ahead of the release of Smith’s report on the case related to Trump’s role in the attack on the Capitol. A recent court filing revealed that Garland plans to release the report soon, possibly before Trump takes office next week.
Jack Smith, US special counsel, speaks during a news conference in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“As I have made clear regarding every Special Counsel who has served since I took office, I am committed to making as much of the Special Counsel’s report public as possible, consistent with legal requirements and Department policy,” Garland wrote in a recent letter to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md.
A judge from a federal appeals court ruled on Friday against blocking the release of Smith’s report.
After Trump’s presidential election victory in November, Smith filed motions to bring his cases against the president-elect to a close.
Smith asked a judge in late November to drop the charges against Trump in the case related to the Capitol riot. Prior to that request, Smith filed a motion to vacate all deadlines in that case, which was anticipated after Trump’s electoral win.
TRUMP PRESSES GOP TO SWIFTLY SEND ‘ONE POWERFUL BILL’ FOR HIS SIGNATURE ASAP
Special Counsel Jack Smith announces an indictment of former President Donald Trump during a press conference on August 1, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Getty Images)
Trump said after the cases were dropped that they “should never have been brought.”
“These cases, like all of the other cases I have been forced to go through, are empty and lawless, and should never have been brought,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “It was a political hijacking, and a low point in the History of our Country that such a thing could have happened, and yet, I persevered, against all odds, and WON. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Fox News’ Andrea Margolis contributed to this report.
In 2016, the American Bar Assn. couldn’t say enough good things about Merrick Garland, then the chief judge of the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, when it sent the Senate a report giving him its highest rating. So at Garland’s confirmation hearing, a bar official gave senators samples of the unanimous praise from hundreds of lawyers, judges and law professors who were contacted by the group’s evaluators.
“He may be the perfect human being,” effused one anonymous fan. Another: “Judge Garland has no weaknesses.”
Opinion Columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
Therein lies the tragedy of Merrick Garland. A man who could have been a truly supreme justice — but for then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s unprecedented Republican blockade — instead became a seemingly ineffectual attorney general, at least regarding the defining challenge of his tenure: holding Donald Trump accountable for trying to steal the 2020 presidential election.
The traits that the bar experts saw as Garland’s strengths — deliberative caution, modesty, judicial temperament, indifference to politics — turned out to be weaknesses for the head of the Justice Department in these times.
So intent was Garland on restoring the department’s independence and integrity — after Trump, in his first term, openly sought to weaponize it against his enemies — that the attorney general initially shied from investigating and prosecuting Trump for his role in the postelection subversions culminating on Jan. 6, 2021. By all accounts, Garland feared the optics of the Justice Department turning its legal powers against the man President Biden had just beaten at the polls.
Of course Trump, the master of projection, was going to, and did, accuse the attorney general of the very thing that Trump himself was guilty of: weaponizing the Justice Department. Yet in a nation based on the rule of law, the case against Trump needed to be pursued.
Garland succeeded in reviving the department’s post-Watergate norms, which restrict contacts between law enforcement officials and the White House, norms that Garland, as a young Justice lawyer in the Carter administration, helped develop in response to Nixon-era abuses. But so much for Garland’s achievement: Trump, saved by his election from having to answer for Jan. 6 or for a separate federal indictment for filching classified documents, will be back in power next week, more emboldened than before and backed by appointees willing to do his vengeful bidding at the Justice Department and the FBI.
Last week, there were small victories for accountability, if not for Trump’s alleged federal crimes. On Friday he was sentenced for his one conviction, in New York state court in May, for falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to a porn star ahead of the 2016 election. Judge Juan M. Merchan gave the president-elect no penalty, but at least the sentencing underscored Trump’s distinction as the only felon-president. Separately, Garland indicated he would make public the final report from special counsel Jack Smith detailing the evidence for Trump’s culpability for Jan. 6.
The 72-year-old attorney general soon leaves office having angered all sides — Republicans for going after Trump at all, Democrats for not going after him fast and hard enough. California Sen. Adam B. Schiff, formerly a member of the House Jan. 6 committee, was among the first Democrats to publicly blame the Justice Department, at least partially, for letting Trump avoid trial before the 2024 election, complaining on CNN that the department had focused too long on “the foot soldiers” who attacked the Capitol “and refrained from looking at … the inciters.”
A recent CNN retrospective on the Trump prosecution called 2021 “the lost year.” At a time when the former president was still on the defensive about Jan. 6, the Justice Department followed a bottom-up strategy targeting more than 1,500 rioters in its largest criminal investigation ever. Prosecutors insisted they were chasing leads involving Trump and close allies, while sorting out the legal complexities of trying a former occupant of the Oval Office.
By 2022, questions about Garland’s deliberative dillydallying became unavoidable. In March, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ruled in a civil case that “the illegality of the [fake electors] plan was obvious.” The next month FBI Director Christopher Wray authorized a criminal investigation into the scheme. Then in June the House Jan. 6 committee held its televised hearings, essentially a daytime drama about Trump’s multipronged efforts to keep power, starring Republican eyewitnesses.
That development, finally, prodded Garland to get serious about the man at the top. In November 2022, Garland named Smith as special counsel. As fast as Smith seemed to work, it wasn’t until August 2023 — two and a half years after the insurrection — that Trump was criminally indicted. Months of legal challenges from the Trump team followed, delaying everything and putting forward what seemed like a crazy claim, that Trump should have presidential immunity.
Yet to point fingers solely at Garland for letting Trump off the hook shifts blame from those even more deserving of it. McConnell, for instance, who engineered Trump’s Senate acquittal in February 2021 after his impeachment for inciting the insurrection; conviction could have been paired with a vote banning Trump from seeking federal office. And the Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority, which took seven months before mostly siding with Trump’s claim that he and future presidents are immune from criminal charges for supposedly official acts.
Even if Garland had moved aggressively, there’s a good argument that all the delays available to Trump would’ve made a trial and verdict before the election unlikely. And this fact remains: The ultimate jury — voters — had more than enough incriminating facts available to decide Trump was unfit to be president again. A plurality decided otherwise.
Still, Garland’s performance makes me doubly sad that he ended up at Justice instead of becoming a justice.
@jackiekcalmes
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