The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a plan for a conservative administration to roll back the voracious federal leviathan, has been attacked by Democrats and disavowed by Donald Trump. Does it merit the criticism?
In today’s Martin Center article, David Randall of the National Association of Scholars examines it, focusing on how it would affect higher education.
First and foremost, Project 2025 would dismantle the Department of Education. Randall writes, “Project 2025’s boldest ambition is to dismantle the ED — an ambition it states in the education chapter’s first sentence. The chapter’s first substantive section (pp. 325-30) details how precisely the ED’s 36 constituent programs should be distributed to Cabinet departments, including the Interior Department, the Labor Department, the Justice Department, and the Health and Human Services Department, and in many cases administered as block grants to the states.”
Good. The creation of the Department under Jimmy Carter was among the nation’s worst blunders. But Randall fears that distributing its functions elsewhere might not eliminate the contagion.
He continues, “It is bold in wonderful ways, including its commitments to parental rights, accreditation reform, and the reconception of workforce education. But I judge that we will not be able to save American education from the malign woke advocates who have spread throughout every level of government and civil society if we forego use of the ED to promote a positive vision of conservative education reform.”
Can we rescue education from those malign forces without using their own tool of government power? That’s the big debate.