(Source MIRS.news, Published 07/18/2024) Among the more than 150 contributors to the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 is Michigan Republican Party Chair Pete Hoekstra, Hillsdale College and the Midland-based free market think tank the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The Mackinac Center, however, has since requested its name be removed from the project.
Project 2025, a 900-plus-page conservative blueprint to restructure the federal government, has been a frequent target of Democrats across the state campaigning for President Joe Biden’s re-election. Democrats of all stripes are trying to link the proposal to former President Donald Trump.
While Trump has distanced himself from the proposal -- posting on Truth Social that he doesn’t know who’s behind it and disagrees with some of its principles -- there are conservatives in Michigan who actively helped contribute to it.
The Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership” contributors are credited as having “generously volunteered their time and effort to assist the authors in the development and writing of this volume’s 30 chapters.
“The policy views and reform proposals herein are not an all-inclusive catalogue of conservative ideas for the next President, nor is there unanimity among the contributors or the organizations with which they are affiliated with regard to the recommendations,” it reads.
Among those listed as contributors are Hoesktra, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s Jason Hayes, Hillsdale College, along with the College’s politics lecturer and research fellow Michael Anton and Adam Candeub, a law professor at Michigan State University.
Hoeskstra, who is attending the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee this week, did not respond to a MIRS request for comment on his involvement with crafting policy proposals.
Progress Michigan’s Executive Director Sam Inglot focused on the Mackinac Center’s involvement specifically.
“Project 2025 poses numerous threats to our freedoms and fundamental human rights,” Inglot said. “It’s no surprise that the Mackinac Center is involved with Project 2025. We’ve watched them fight for decades for these same anti-worker, anti-freedom, anti-equality policies designed to usher in fascism and satisfy their wealthy and corporate overlords.
“Over the years, the Mackinac Center's approach to public relations has been to cast itself as a reasonable, nonpartisan group that's only concerned about fiscal responsibility, but signing on to the Project 2025 agenda is a mask-off moment,” he said. “And now, the Mackinac Center has revealed what they truly are – a far-right asset that is willing to throw their weight behind an extremist agenda with no regard for the vulnerable people who will become collateral damage in their fight to protect corporations and the wealthy. It's time for all of us – public officials, the media, and the public – to recognize that.”
Holly Wetzel, director of public relations for the Mackinac Center, said the Center was asked by the Heritage Foundation, creators of Project 2025, to “contribute expertise to a project, and we sent over some of our policy ideas.
“We are happy to work with diverse groups on public policy. We've collaborated in the past with everyone from the Heritage Foundation to the ACLU,” Wetzel said. “We offered ideas on labor and energy policy, which are publicly available on our website.”
Hayes, who was listed as the sole contributor from the Mackinac Center, is the group’s director of energy and environmental policy.
However, Wetzel said the Center has since determined that Project 2025 contains “some ideas we do not endorse, and others outside of our scope.
“We do not sign our names to things we do not fully endorse and requested that our name be removed from this project, which it has been,” she said.
Candeub, whose scholarly research has a focus on telecommunication, antitrust and internet issues, previously served as acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Deputy Associate Attorney General at the Justice Department during the Trump Administration.
He declined to comment further on his involvement with the project after telling MIRS he had been receiving threats related to his involvement.
Anton, a politics lecturer and research fellow at Hillsdale College’s Kirby Center in Washington, D.C., previously served in national security positions in both the Trump and former President George W. Bush administrations, along with California Gov. Pete Wilson and New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
