On June 4, The Fulcrum published “ Project 2025 is a threat to democracy,” written by University of Iowa professor emeritus Steve Corbin. The article had a tremendous impact on our readers and quickly became the most popular post of the year.
For those who have not heard of Project 2025, it is a playbook specifically created for Donald Trump to use as a guideline for his first 180 days in office should he win the November election.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, proudly takes credit for facilitating the creation of the 887-page documentary.
Project 2025’s two editors were assisted by 34 authors, 277 contributors, a 54-member advisory board, and a coalition of over 100 conservative organizations (including ALEC, The Heartland Institute, Liberty University, Middle East Forum, Moms for Liberty, the NRA, Pro-Life America and the Tea Party Patriots).
Project 2025 consists of 30 sections on important federal government agencies or issues, such as the Federal Election Commission, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, Executive Office of the President and Department of Education.
While an in-depth analysis of what works and doesn't work in our democracy is a laudable and much-needed task, unfortunately Project 2025 is a biased political report designed to build a case for conservative solutions, using inductive reasoning to support preconceived opinions. What we need is deductive reasoning that analyzes the problem and offers solutions to the problem regardless of whether the solutions fit into a conservative, moderate or progressive mold.
As a result, Project 2025 has many potential dangers that would, at the very least, set back our country and, at worst, subvert our democracy.
The Fulcrum believes that a version of Project 2025 approached from a cross-partisan perspective, void of pre-determined left or right solutions, would serve as a guide for citizens and our elected representatives to ensure the healthy democratic republic we all desire.
In the words of the late management guru Peter Drucker: “I am not in favor of big government. I am not in favor of small government. I am in favor of effective government.”
And that is what The Fulcrum works in support of — effective government.
If we are to have a healthy and thriving democratic republic, we need a “Cross-Partisan Project 2025,” and starting next week, The Fulcrum will launch our version: an unbiased approach to the pressing issues that our nation must address. We will use a solutions journalism approach that focuses on:
- What's dividing Americans on critical issues?
- Which information presented by Project 2025 is factual and to be trusted, and what is not?
- What is oversimplified about Project 2025’s representation and perspective, and what is not? What are alternative solutions?
- What do people from all sides of the political spectrum need to understand to address salient points of Project 2025 in a critical-thinking manner?
- What are the questions nobody's asking?
Simply stated, we will explore the nuances and complexities of the subjects and issues covered in the Project 2025 plan. In the coming weeks, The Fulcrum staff and a selection of The Fulcrum’s regular contributors will report on components of Project 2025 from the above perspective.
We will not shy away from Project 2025’s most controversial components and will call attention to dangerous thinking that threatens our democracy when we see it. However, in doing so, we are committing to not employing accusations, innuendos or misinformation. We will advocate for intellectual honesty to inform and persuade effectively.
The Cross-Partisan Project 2025 series offers The Fulcrum a unique opportunity to provide reporting that banishes the old ways of demonizing “the other side.” We will be committed to implementing critical thinking, reexamining outdated assumptions, and using reason, scientific evidence, and data in formulating and testing public policy for 2025 and beyond. Our reporting and analysis will be based on a philosophy that seeks out diverse perspectives and experiences to find common ground.
Our nation needs to reshape our collective sense of civic responsibility, community building and political engagement. We must nurture new generations of thoughtful citizens and committed leaders who will promote a multidimensional approach to America's most important domestic and foreign policy issues.
That is the goal of The Fulcrum’s Cross-Partisan Project 2025.
More articles about Project 2025
- A cross-partisan approach
- An Introduction
- Rumors of Project 2025’s Demise are Greatly Exaggerated
- Department of Education
- Managing the bureaucracy
- Department of Defense
- Department of Energy
- The Environmental Protection Agency
- Education Savings Accounts
- Department of Veterans Affairs
- The Department of Homeland Security
- U.S. Agency for International Development
- Affirmative action
- A federal Parents' Bill of Rights
- Department of Labor
- Intelligence community
- Department of State
- Department of the Interior
- Federal Communications Commission
- A perspective from Europe
- Department of Health and Human Services
- Voting Rights Act
- Another look at the Federal Communications Commission
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.