WASHINGTON — The Washington Post published on Monday an in-depth report linking the current Trump presidential campaign with “Project 2025,” a coalition of conservative organizations whose road map for the next Republican presidential administration includes a call to immediately outlaw all pornography and imprison people who produce and distribute it.
The Post article, authored by the paper’s lead Trump reporter, Isaac Arnsdorf, with Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett, states that much of the planning for a second Trump term “has been unofficially outsourced to a partnership of right-wing think tanks in Washington. Dubbed ‘Project 2025,’ the group is developing a plan, to include draft executive orders, that would deploy the military domestically under the Insurrection Act, according to a person involved in those conversations and internal communications reviewed by The Washington Post.”
Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership” blueprint, including the call to criminalize all adult content, was first reported on by Brynn Tannehill in an August feature for Dame magazine.
The relevant excerpt Tannehill quoted from the introduction to the conservative policy road map reads, “Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”
The paragraph is signed by Kevin Roberts, president of the influential right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation, which the Post credits with organizing the Project 2025 coalition. However, Monday’s Post article also explicitly connected the initiative with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
The Post reported that Trump and his allies “have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.”
A Call for 'Conservative Warriors'
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung refused to answer the Post’s questions about Project 2025.
“President Trump is focused on crushing his opponents in the primary election and then going on to beat crooked Joe Biden,” Cheung told the reporters. “President Trump has always stood for law and order, and protecting the Constitution.”
The Post reported that Jeffrey Clark, a fellow at former Trump budget director Russ Vought’s Center for Renewing America, is leading the work on the Insurrection Act under Project 2025. According to the article, Clark is also one of the six unnamed co-conspirators mentioned in the indictment for Trump’s pending federal election interference case.
Project 2025 director Paul Dans confirmed Clark’s involvement, stating, “We are grateful for Jeff Clark’s willingness to share his insights from having worked at high levels in government during trying times.”
But after online publication of the Post story, Heritage Foundation rep Rob Bluey said, “There are no plans within Project 2025 related to the Insurrection Act or targeting political enemies.”
The paper noted that Dans referred to the Project 2025 database of potential personnel for a second Trump administration as “a conservative LinkedIn,” which would allow “applicants to present their resumes on public profiles, while also providing a shared workspace for Heritage and partner organizations to vet the candidates and make recommendations.”
“We don’t want careerists, we don’t want people here who are opportunists,” Dans said. “We want conservative warriors.”
The Project 2025 blueprint is the first platform-like document at the national level linked to the Republican frontrunner since 2016. In 2020, during the COVID crisis, the more limited Republican National Convention did not produce a new presidential party platform, instead re-endorsing the 2016 platform under which Trump was elected.
The 2016 Republican platform stated, “Pornography, with its harmful effects, especially on children, has become a public health crisis that is destroying the lives of millions. We encourage states to continue to fight this public menace and pledge our commitment to children’s safety and well-being.”