I’ve spent some time recently researching the Heritage Foundation, its history, membership, and plans. I had heard a little about it over the years but had not paid any attention until I began to see and hear articles and commentary about it the past few years. I had no idea how influential it has been in our national government since its founding in the early 1970s by Joseph Coors and two others. Learning how much of the organization’s policies have been enacted by every administration since its inception is amazing to me. Its members connections to, and lobbying of, congress have been very effective. Maybe too much so in my opinion.

The past couple of years I have been hearing alarm bells sounded by news outlets and public officials about a large document that will be used by the Trump Administration if Donald Trump is reelected. It is labeled the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. I have not read it all since it is about 900 pages long, but I have read outlines on Wikipedia and other places and I recommend everyone should do at least that much.

If Donald Trump is reelected, the role of our national government will be decimated in very scary ways. The plan is to replace most, if not all, heads of government agencies, as well as those employees considered not loyal to the Trump Administration. Additionally, many current government agencies and programs will be eliminated in total. Those include, but are not limited to, the Department of Education, federal protections in health care, workers’ rights, consumer protections, voter protections, immigrant rights, environmental protections, climate change regulations, and the funding of Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression. Further they will promote massive fossil fuel exploitation, further strengthening the power and role of the President and diminishing the powers to curb them, and on and on. 

Now they think they have the proper makeup of the Supreme Court to support these actions. 

Basically, the Heritage Foundation is an organization of mostly rich, powerful, old white men who want to turn back at least 70 years of progress toward what has been attempts at a more equal distribution of power, wealth, citizen rights, and input into determining the future of this country and the world. 

In my view they have become a very radical, ultra right-wing organization planning to destroy the very principals fought for by our founding fathers. And as Steve Bannon once said, Donald Trump is the perfect vessel to make it all happen since he will do and say anything and has no basic principles of his own except what’s in it for him.

I hope the voting public thinks hard about who they vote for in November.

Ken Kaiyala
6-23-2024