Heritage Foundation & Project 2025 - the Devil & the Details
Republican Manifesto for a Trump Presidency - Read What You Can - Read Between the Lines for the Rest
What’s on the chopping block besides ‘abortion’ which Project 2025 does not recognize abortion as being part of women’s healthcare - even though the national statistics reflect that American women routinely die in childbirth, and alarmingly, those statistics are rising. Nevertheless, their aim is to “ban choice” for women - no matter how conceived, or whether a woman is healthy enough to carry a pregnancy - or not.
US Maternal Mortality Rates Rising
According to an AMA (American Medical Association) journal article in 2023:
U.S. maternal deaths are on a worrisome trajectory. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported that mortality rose from 861 maternal deaths in 2020 to 1,205 maternal deaths in 2021, a 40% overall increase.
Those 1,200-plus maternal deaths translate to a maternal mortality rate of 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births for 2021, compared with 23.8 in 2020 and 20.1 in 2019, according to Sandra Adamson Fryhofer, MD, chair of the AMA Board of Trustees.
Also in 2021, the maternal mortality rate for Black women was 69.9 deaths per 100,000 live births. That is 2.6 times the mortality rate for white women.
Maternal mortality rates in the U.S. are, shockingly, at their highest level since 1965.
The AMA article goes on to state there are a number of reasons for the drastic changes, including maternity deserts in rural areas, lack of trained staff in “interprofessional practices,” lack of or poor insurance coverage, and the lack of broadband services to get telehealth to, and educate these women.
Correlations with Broadband Access
Importantly enough, these troubling mortality statistics also correlate with the lack of ‘broadband’ in these communities, something President Biden has addressed in his Broadband initiative. But at the end of May 2024, funding has run out, and Biden is waiting on Congress to act.
Words from the White House on Biden’s expiring Broadband Connectivity initiative:
[M]ay 31st, is the final day that households will receive any benefit from the Affordable Connectivity Program on their internet bills. Without Congressional action to extend funding for the program, millions of households are now at risk of losing their internet connections. President Biden is once again calling on Congress to extend funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program, so tens of millions of Americans can continue to access this essential benefit.
Biden still however offers some hope and a way forward for the underserved at reduced prices he negotiated in this initiative.
Data Tells the Story
So now that we know that maternal death rates are sky high, so why isn’t Congress currently working to extend the Broadband Connectivity Initiative if they are fervently pro life?
Most noteworthy, President Biden signed into law in December 2022, The “Data Mapping to Save Moms’ Lives Act” to help provide guidance on where the need to assist moms across America is greatest.
Project 2025 - A Republican ‘Heritage Foundation’ Nightmare in Waiting…
This publication is just a synopsis of some of just a handful of egregious inclusions in the Manifesto of the Heritage Foundation - Project 2025. It is a blueprint for the next administration if Trump is elected. Most egregiously, the American media does not sufficiently publicized this Manifesto and the issues represented, but it appears the Media is more intent on ranking on Biden and his “fitness” to serve, while keeping the American people in the dark.
A Brief Synopsis of a ‘Handful’ of Egregious Issues Outlined in Project 2025
Project 2025 initiatives for a Trump presidency are vast. Under the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), an overhaul by Project 2025 is cited below, (Found on P. 587 of their Manifesto):
Congress should incentivize on-site childcare. Across the spectrum of professionalized childcare options, on-site care puts the least stress on the parent-child bond.
Congress should amend the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to clarify that an employer’s expenses in providing on-site childcare are not part of an employee’s regular rate of pay. [In other words employees have to pay!]
DOL [Dept. of Labor] should commit to honest study of the challenges for women in the world of professional work. The Women’s Bureau at DOL tends towards a politicized research and engagement agenda that puts predetermined conclusions ahead of empirical study. [Notice nothing said about pay equality for women…].
And of Course We Can’t Forget the Environment - or Can We?
Project 2025 takes issue with Biden’s farm to fork initiative and helping to feed those who are ‘food insecure’ with food stamps.
These Project 2025 authors state:
The federal government does not need to transform the food system or develop a national plan to intervene across the supply chain…. [p. 292].
They also take issue saying:
The Biden Administration’s centrally planned transformational effort minimizes the importance of efficient agricultural production and instead places issues such as climate change and equity front and center. [p. 292].
Obviously, the authors of Project 2025 “ignore” the inherent effects of climate change, and as a result, the growing food insecurity around the nation and the globe. Their short-sided view, and ignorance of current wildfires and floods effect on feeding the masses is staggering.
And not to be outdone, they also take issue with “organic farming” and regenerative practices that are sensitive to climate change that will ensure productivity.
These 2025 authors state:
The Biden Administration’s centrally planned transformational effort [for sustainable food] minimizes the importance of efficient agricultural production and instead places issues such as climate change and equity front and center. [p. 292].
According to these 2025 authors, Biden did not sufficiently mention “affordable food” and “efficient production,” or in their words “the incredible innovation and respect for the environment that already exists within the agricultural community.”11
Holding on to that premise, these authors continue to “devalue” what the Biden Administration’s USDA did say: they “strongly supported12 the recent United Nations (U.N.) Food Systems Summit.”
According to their statements made by the USDA:
The stated goal of the Food Systems Summit was to transform the way the world produces, consumes and thinks about foods within the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and to meet the challenges of poverty, food security, malnutrition, population growth, climate change, and natural resource degradation.13 [p. 292].
Obviously, these Project 2025 authors have blinders on - distancing themselves from the dire and obvious need to create and maintain a sustainable food supply in light of the unrelenting droughts, wildfires, floods and natural effects of climate change that can and does quickly decimate crops in many parts of this nation and world. They also do not seem to understand that adaption and innovation is key to human survival, especially in light on their bent towards increasing the human population in the US with their “right to life” initiatives.
Blinders On
It is apparent these authors do not want to recognize climate change, they only want to frack and drill for oil and gas everywhere the can (also included in Manifesto), and importantly, they are against Biden’s green “renewable” energy initiatives and want them repealed immediately - including dismantling windmills they claim are eyesores. [Trump used to claim they killed lots of birds!]
The 2025 authors also want to ignore greenhouse gas pollutants [p. 426] stating under the heading of Mobile Sources Regulation by the Office of Transportation and Air Quality:
Ensure that other states can adopt California’s standards only for traditional/criteria pollutants, not greenhouse gases.
Include life cycle emissions of electric vehicles and consider all of their environmental impacts. [good luck with that one - this is why regulatory agency experts are indispensable.]
Stop the use of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to increase standards on airplanes. [Meaning: Let Boeing continue to make defective planes endangering the public.]
Reconsider the Cleaner Trucks Initiative to balance the goal of driving emissions without creating significant costs or complex burdens on the industry. [Meaning stink it up, so the transportation industry can make more money. Too bad if you can’t breathe or have asthma.]
And of course the above list is not “exhaustive” nor does it represent all the concerns everyone should have about Project 2025.
Project 2025 compares and contrasts Biden’s USDA Mission Statement and their Position:
Biden’s USDA Mission Statement:
The USDA’s new vision statement illuminates the focus of this effort:
An equitable and climate smart food and agriculture economy that protects and improves the health, nutrition and quality of life of all Americans, yields healthy land, forests and clean water, helps rural America thrive, and feeds the world.3 [p 290].
Project 2025 Position on USDA’s role:
Project 2025 authors seem to believe without evidence that Biden’s effort:
is one of a federal central plan to put climate change and environmental issues ahead of the most important requirements of agriculture - to efficiently produce safe food. [p. 290].
Project 2025 authors incorrectly believe:
Congress must limit the USDA’s role.” and that “Core principles should be included within any mission statement, including a recognition that farmers, and the food system in general, should be free from unnecessary government intervention. [p. 290].
Conclusion
Despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, the Biden Administration is trying to “ensure” that our nation weathers upcoming and relentless storms causing food crops to fail, and ultimately food insecurity - while ensuring we stay innovative enough to do it. That is, to survive climate change, we must make our planet more habitable, and our air and water capable of sustaining life. As the Bible tells us and these religious radicals should know, we have a duty as stewards and guardians of God’s Green Earth - to take care of it, and not plunder for our own selfish purposes.
The Goal of Project 2025
Along with the recent US Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, (overturning Chevron USA v. National Resources Defense Council - 1984), the goal of SCOTUS and the Heritage Foundation is to create a “unitary executive,” and thwart separation of powers found in our Constitution giving inherent powers to each of the three branches of government. The intent is to cripple US regulatory agencies so the “unitary executive” can seize complete control. Such examples include crippling the USDA’s role and that of the EPA - to ignore greenhouse gasses and climate change, to allow more pollutants in the air, water and soil - to pollute with impunity, wrecking havoc with the planet, drilling and fracking all for a buck. Not only will all this prove disastrous for farmers, food crops and sustenance of the masses - but for the sanctity of the precepts of God’s green Earth and creation these right-wing “Christians” claim to revere. Yet, our survival as a people and as a nation are at stake. God gave us free Will - and Eve gave us Knowledge - now it is up to us to use it wisely or perish.
To learn more about Project 2025, Subscribe to The Legal Edition, or Read the 900+ page document here. Note: Numerical notations represent footnotes, and can be referenced in Project 2025 Manifesto noted above.
Copyright 2024, Mary Kay Elloian, MBA, JD, Esq. - All Rights Reserved.
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