A crowd of about 80 people gathered just before Halloween at the La Grange Public Library to learn more about Project 2025 at an open forum on Oct. 29 organized by the League of Women Voters of the La Grange Area.
Jack Bentley, executive director of the Elmhurst Citizens Advocacy Center, spoke for more than an hour, saying that while his organization has typically been involved in democracy-related issues at the local level, the current political climate calls for a national approach.
“Since our mission has been rooted in democracy for thirty years, and since people are concerned about where democracy stands at the federal level, uniquely in the last year or so, we will talk about it,” he said.
Project 2025, conceived by the Conservation Heritage Foundation in 2023 to serve as a model for modern-day leadership.
The nearly 900-page document, officially titled “A Mandate to Lead,” is posted online at static.heritage.org.
The work is divided into five sections and includes essays on executive power, common defense, public welfare, the economy, and independent regulatory bodies.
Although President Donald Trump said during the 2024 campaign that the project was not a formal part of his plans, it includes the work of several influential Trump administration advisers, including leading trade adviser Peter Navarro, White House budget director Ross Vought, and Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
For background, Bentley recommended an Atlantic article titled “The Project: Project 2025 is Reshaping America” by David Graham. But Bentley’s presentation focused on the 2025 project as it relates to constitutional issues.
He added: “We will not get into a dilemma regarding politics.” “We’ll talk about constitutional theories and laws…. Tonight is no substitute for doing your own research.”
Many in the audience were familiar with the basic premise of Project 2025, although Bentley told one woman that this was not a mandate for “authoritarian” leadership, as she put it.
But he agreed with an audience member who said the project was something whose beginnings date back to Ronald Reagan.
“This is not something that just happened,” he said. “This didn’t just happen under Trump or in the last couple of years.”
Bentley said the original plan was to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education, and provide tax cuts for the wealthy.
“Project 2025 is kinder to environmental regulations than the original version,” he said.
Bentley said it is difficult to estimate how much of Trump’s agenda has been implemented because many of his executive orders have been challenged through lawsuits; Some were successful and some were not.
“The consensus in the media seems to be that it’s about 48% — less than half — done,” he said.
Bentley identified several areas of concern regarding the project, including its goals of expanding executive power, promoting the traditional cultural agenda, and liberalizing the private sector.
He also highlighted Project 2025’s position on issues of gender/family rights, migration, economics and trade, and global security.
Bentley spoke about the role the Federalist Society played in the modern conservative movement, noting that its goal was to promote an originalist view of the Constitution, specifically pointing to the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as a proponent of that legal theory.
He said originalism was the legal reason behind overturning longstanding legal precedents, the most obvious of which was Dobbs v. Women’s Health of Jackson, the 2022 Supreme Court decision that ruled that the Constitution does not grant the right to abortion.
When asked why it was important to understand Project 2025, one attendee posited that it seemed like conservatives were targeting our nation’s founding document.
“It seems to me that they are trying to violate the Constitution,” she said, referring to conservative attacks on education and “the pillars of democracy as I see it.”
Another man echoed the sentiments of the first crowd.
“It (Project 2025) is important because the way things seem to be going now, things are happening without any deliberation process,” he said. “When I grew up I thought, perhaps naively, that there was a lot of give and take in the Legislature… It was broad decision-making, not what I consider individual policy decision-making.”
Bentley offered some suggestions for positive actions citizens can take. They included summoning government representatives, attending public meetings, attending protests, signing petitions and voting in every election.
Furthermore, he recommended organizing protests, starting voter registration drives and running for office.
Andrea Martonfi, event coordinator for the La Grange chapter of LWV, was pleased with the turnout for the event.
“I think that was a good start,” she said afterward. “I think we’ll start a study group here for this entire document. It’s not long and we should just educate ourselves in detail on what some project is about.”
Hank Beckman is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.