What If One Book Ran the Whole Government? Page 80 Is Already Federal Rule

Project 2025 is a 2023 policy book from the Heritage Foundation, and one page of it is already federal rule. This episode reads what the Mandate for Leadership asks for in its own words and checks each proposal against the public record.

Page 80 asks for a class of federal jobs whose holders can be removed without the usual appeals. The Office of Personnel Management made that a final rule on March 9, 2026, and Executive Order 14410 moved about 8,000 positions into it on June 3. Lawsuits in Washington and Maryland were still pending as of September 28, 2026. The episode also covers the education chapter, the Homeland Security chapter, what fact checkers found the book does not say about Social Security, and a chapter where two writers disagree with each other in print.

The last part is labeled speculation. It runs the book twice, once the way its supporters hope it goes and once the way its critics fear it goes, and then pushes both versions to 2040.

This is Episode 1 of Project 2025, Chapter by Chapter, from What Comes Next.