But omits warnings for journalism and media communication

By Mischa Geracoulis

After months of expert legal and public policy analysis, advocacy group warnings, and independent press reporting on the Presidential Transition Project 2025 (Project 2025 for short), the corporate press is finally catching up. Capturing headlines is Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, a 180-day playbook for the next conservative administration. Its authors are a cadre of ultra-conservative, mostly men—some of whom espouse White supremacist and misogynistic views—connected to the Heritage Foundation and its lobbying arms, Heritage Action for America and Sentinel Action Fund.

Much of the 920-page playbook—which is available online for any and all to see—reads like a textbook for dismantling democracy as we know it, and an ax-grind against liberals and progressives. The playbook’s government and policy recommendations reek of Trumpism, no matter how much Trump denies knowing about it. At least seventy former and current Heritage staffers worked for the Trump administration; four were even part of Trump’s cabinet.

Written in hyperbolic, accusatory language, the playbook’s sweeping recommendations are antithetical to any semblance of governmental checks and balances. If enacted, Project 2025 would decimate the democratic principles and practices that provide citizens with agency, including the rights to be informed and freedom of the press. Journalists and anyone who values these rights would be remiss to ignore Project 2025’s plans for media and communications. And yet, until now, much of the establishment press have done just that.

Marginalizing White House correspondents

The playbook’s first chapter (pp. 23–42), written by Rick Dearborn, a Heritage Foundation fellow and Trump’s former chief of staff, says there’s no legal requirement to provide “permanent space for media” at the White House, and advises the next administration to “reexamine the balance between media demands and space constraints on the White House premises.”

For decades, the press corps has had access to the White House press room. Lisa Graves, the executive director of True North Research, a national investigative watchdog group, noted during an upcoming episode of the Project Censored Show that when Trump was president, he was especially hostile to certain members of the press corps, Black women in particular. Dearborn’s proposal, said Graves, signals that a conservative administration would limit press access to loyalists who won’t pose critical questions.

Plundering public media

Chapter eight on media agencies (pp. 235–251), written by Mora Namdar of the American Foreign Policy Council, with contributions by Mike Gonzalez and Victoria Coates of the Heritage Foundation and shock-jock Frank Wuco, attacks the US Agency for Global Media and the media outlets it oversees—Voice of America, Office of Cuba Broadcasting, Middle East Broadcasting Network, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Open Technology Fund—for liberal bias, criticism of the US government and Trump, and for supposedly endangering national security. According to Namdar, any critique of the government that is “insulting to the president” is harmful to US foreign policy and national security goals.

The chapter defends former Trump appointee, Michael Pack, alleging that Pack’s efforts to reform the US Agency for Global Media and its attendant outlets were unjustly blocked. But Pack, who served as CEO of the arch-conservative Claremont Institute from 2015 to 2017, is part of the right-wing media. He didn’t “reform” the agency; he gutted it and its outlets, either sacking the leaders or compelling them to resign, only to replace them with Trump loyalists. Facing multiple lawsuits for wrongful terminations and charges of improperly using donations to benefit his own company, Pack settled on the latter, agreeing to pay back $210,000 to Public Media Lab, the nonprofit from which he’d appropriated the funds. In January 2021, Biden restored the jobs of those fired, and Pack resigned.

Mike Gonzalez promises that conservatives will “reward” a president who strips the Corporation for Public Broadcasting of taxpayer funding. “The 47th President can just tell the Congress—through the budget he proposes and through personal contact—that he will not sign an appropriations spending bill that contains a penny for the CPB.”

This applies to NPR, PBS, Pacifica Radio, and American Public Media, all of whom Gonzalez characterizes as “leftist broadcasters” that must be “shorn of the presumption that they act in the public interest.” This would include stripping the stations of their noncommercial, educational status, and imposing steep licensing fees.

The assault on public media would be detrimental to the many Americans who rely on these outlets for community-based reporting on public affairs, arts, culture, and education. Public media provides a space for newer voices and marginalized perspectives, making for a more broadly informed citizenry that in turn impacts civic engagement and voting choices.

Moreover, defunding public media would accelerate the ongoing crises of newsroom layoffs and news deserts, opening even more doors to the takeover of vulnerable local news markets by syndicated news media corporations. The US government invests much less in public media than many comparable nations. Fiscal year 2024 breaks down to approximately $1.60 per US citizen—a small price for a commitment to an informed public. Already operating on threadbare budgets, American Public Media gets a portion of CPB funding and otherwise depends on donations and grants, while funding for the Pacifica Network is entirely dependent on listener contributions and grants.

Suppressing online freedom of expression

Chapter 28 on the Federal Communications Commission (pp. 845–861), is written by Brendan Carr, a Republican Trump-appointed commissioner, known for accusing social media platforms of biases against Trump and opposing net neutrality. Carr calls for reforms to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the bipartisan legislation that protects citizens’ freedom of expression online, as a way “to rein in Big Tech’s attempts to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square.”

Although bipartisan politicians and citizens alike agree that online platforms are fraught with misinformation and disinformation, leveling Section 230 and net neutrality would only privilege Trumpist and MAGA positions and corporate interests at the expense of diverse perspectives and freedom of expression.

Indeed, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression argues that “undermining Section 230 would lead to less expressive freedom and viewpoint diversity online.” The Electronic Freedom Foundation says that if the law was changed to “make us liable for the speech of others, the biggest platforms would become locked-down and heavily censored.”

China as a distraction from online privacy concerns

Other concerns about Big Tech, such as personal private data collection and AI, are only cursorily addressed in the playbook. The spotlight is on the “Chinese Communist Party” and on banning carriers, such as China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom, and taking stronger action against TikTok. Carr wants to expand the Covered List—the list of communications equipment and services deemed to pose an unacceptable risk to US national security and citizen safety. Carr says the US “needs to stop entities from directly or indirectly contributing to China’s malign AI goals.” To secure US networks from the interference of our foreign adversaries, the FCC should compile and publish a list of “all entities that hold FCC authorizations, licenses, or other grants of authority with more than ten percent ownership by foreign adversarial governments, including China, Russia, Iran, Syria, or North Korea.”

Outsourcing cyber protection

At the same time, Carr wants the FCC to create “a market-friendly regulatory environment,” and rescind “heavy-handed FCC regulations…that restrict investment and competition.” This ties to the chapter by Ken Cuccinelli, a fellow at the Center for Renewing America, on the Department of Homeland Security (pp. 133–170), which takes aim at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Cuccinelli, who served as acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Trump administration, claims that CISA is an “apparatus of the political Left…[which] the Left has weaponized to censor speech and affect elections at the expense of securing the cyber domain and critical infrastructure, which are threatened daily.”

Cuccinelli wants CISA to “leave cybersecurity functions to the Department of Defense, FBI, National Security Agency, and US Secret Service.” He says, “The entirety of the CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee [should be] dismissed on Day One [of a new administration].” The only role he sees for CISA is to “help states and localities assess whether they have good cyber hygiene in their hardware and software in preparation for an election—nothing more.”

If Carr or Cuccinelli are genuinely worried about US cybersecurity, the recent global outages caused by the cybersecurity vendor CrowdStrike validates the need for “cybersecurity redundancy,” multilayered security measures and backup systems that ensure continuous protection and functionality even if one layer fails or is compromised. In fact, current CISA director Jen Easterly proposed in 2023 that tech companies should be held liable for selling vulnerable products and has repeatedly warned Congress about the need for additional cybersecurity.

Reining in Big Tech, however, will not be accomplished by turning the FCC regulatory environment over to the profit-driven private market that Big Tech already runs. Nor can protection from foreign adversaries be assured by ending CISA’s work to secure the infrastructure. Cuccinelli may be more focused on settling a score from 2020 than national security. Ever since then-CISA director Chris Krebs debunked Trump’s 2020 election fraud claims, far-right Republicans have been looking to dismantle the agency. As Graves noted, Project 2025 is as much about personnel and Trump loyalty as policy.

This is but a snapshot of a few chapters that highlight what Project 2025 holds in store for independent journalism, press freedoms, and the public’s right to be informed. Despite the critical attention now being focused on Project 2025 by the establishment press, these issues remain surprisingly underreported. Make no mistake, if enacted, Project 2025 would not only be an assault on the press but on every liberty accorded through a democratic system of checks and balances upon which the right to know and the free flow of information hinges. Read Project 2025 as fair warning for the upcoming presidential election, as potential consequences of choice, and as an act of civic duty.