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During the bitter presidential election campaign, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and her supporters regularly quoted from the Project 2025 tome produced by more than 100 righting thinktanks and led by the massive Heritage Foundation.
At one point, such was the intensity of attacks around it, Donald Trump publicly disavowed the document and distanced himself from it.
The controversial 900-page document, painted by Democrats as a roadmap for Trump’s second term, set out plans to expand executive authority, replace civil servants with ideologically aligned appointees, crush abortion rights and impose an anti-immigrant agenda
But as MAGA supporters today crowded in for the Heritage Foundation’s packed watch party for the inauguration, there was no sense of distance from the incoming administration, just one of uncontained jubiliation and gloating over defeated enemies.
One Heritage employee pointed out that the Project 2025 badges have been reissued but are “bigger than before, much bigger.”
“That’s because we won,” they said. “We don’t have to worry about Kamala misquoting us any more.”
The attacks on Heritage did not appear to have frightened away donors or international politicians. Among the guests over two days of celebrations were for former UK Conservative prime minister Liz Truss – a regular visitor – Conservative shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel and a group of peers from the British House of Lords. There were also visitors from Canada and Australia.
“Everyone likes to be with a winner,” it was noted.
A number of researchers and directors there are now mulling over whether to take a pay cut to go in and work for the new administration which at the last count was still looking for 3,000 staff out of 4,000 for day 1.
“Public sector pay sucks here,” noted one who was reluctant to leave his position at a thinktank which is already shaping a new America, or “a golden age” as Trump put it.
The executive orders being issued today, the policies on cancelling the green deal and net zero policies, the drill baby drill and two genders only and anti-trans policies – all can be found in the large tome prepared ahead of the Republican nomination race.
The list of potential staff, many of them in the Heritage building at 214 Massachusetts Avenue NE, are now being drafted into Trump’s radical rightwing adminstration “of patriots.”
But the inauguration event was much more than the suits and political operators of DC with MAGA supporters sheltering from the sub-zero temperatures to celebrate.
In what became a pantomime atmosphere with Make America Great Again baseball caps, stars and stripes and Trump medalions, there were boos as figures like Biden, Harris, Obama, Bush and the Clintons appeared on the giant screens. And loud cheers and “let’s go!” every time the Trump family and Vances appeared.
As the screen focused on an apparently sleeping Biden there was derisory laughter.
But the atmosphere became intense as Trump went to the podium to deliver an acceptance speech, which one person in the room afterwards described as “a huge f*** you” to the establishment audience sat around him.
Each sentence and announcement was greeted with cheers and shouts of “Make America Great Again!” or “It’s over baby!”
There was more laughter every time the screen showed Kamala Harris’s strained face.
This was a party where the winners wanted to rub it in.
“That was the greatest speech I have ever heard,” one emotional partygoer said as people started to tuck into burgers and wine.
But with all the celebrations the serious conversations in corners were starting. America is on a new trajectory and the people in the room at Heritage plan to be a big part of it.
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