Book Five · A Seussian Political Fable
The Nine-Hundred-Page
Plan for Bumbloo-Wee
Or: Project 2025 and the Mandate for Everything
"It's not a wish list.
It's a to-do list.
With a timeline."
Part One
The Book That
Planned It All
The Heritage Foundation, forty years in the planning business
Now deep in the heart of Washington, D.C.,
Lived a think tank called Heritage — quite old, you'll agree —
That had published a Mandate for Leadership before,
Back in Reagan's first year, nineteen eighty-one's door.
That old Reagan-era book had some influence, they said —
The new administration had used it instead
Of starting from scratch — sixty percent of its pages
Became policy. Heritage remembered for ages.
So in Twenty-Twenty-Three, with Trumpy in mind,
They gathered three hundred and fifty, designed
To write every chapter of every department
Of government — a nine-hundred-page, fine
Blueprint for exactly how Bumbloo would run
If the right kind of president won.
Project 2025 was published by the Heritage Foundation in April 2023. Its centerpiece is "Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise" — a 920-page policy document written by over 350 contributors, most of them former Trump administration officials. The Heritage Foundation first published a "Mandate for Leadership" in January 1981 for the Reagan administration.
Part Two
The Four Great Pillars
of the Plan
The four pillars, holding up a very specific ceiling
The plan had four pillars — each one with a role
In the project of capturing power in whole:
Pillar the First was The Book, large and dense,
With a chapter for every department — immense.
What to cut, what to keep, what to change, what to end —
Nine hundred pages of governmental bend.
Pillar the Second was The Database grand —
A LinkedIn for loyalists, right-wing and planned,
Where vetted conservatives entered their name
To replace the career folk — the whole staffing game.
Pillar the Third was The Academy fine,
Training those loyalists to fall right in line
With conservative governance — ready from Day One
To hit every agency, every office, every run.
Pillar the Fourth was The Playbook most clear:
What executive orders to sign in first year,
Which regulations to kill in first week,
Which department heads' offices to seek.
Project 2025's four pillars: (1) "Mandate for Leadership" — the 920-page policy book; (2) a personnel database — a "Conservative LinkedIn" of vetted loyalists; (3) the "Presidential Administration Academy" — training for appointees; (4) a transition playbook — specific Day One and first-180-days action plans. The Heritage Foundation described it as "the most comprehensive" transition project in history.
Part Three
The Great Civil Servant
Replacement Machine
Schedule F: the policy with the boring name and the sweeping implications
Now buried deep in the nine hundred pages
Was a plan through the governmental stages
To replace all career staff — the experts, the lifers —
With loyalists, true believers, and strifers.
They called it Schedule F — a bureaucratic name
For a very un-bureaucratic game:
Strip civil service protections away
From tens of thousands of federal employees today.
An epidemiologist? Out! Not aligned!
A nuclear safety inspector? Resigned!
A thirty-year veteran of the State Department's halls?
Replaced by someone who passed the loyalty calls.
The vetting questions asked, with serious air:
"Does life deserve protection from conception? Declare."
"Should the president advance his agenda without
Unelected officials in the way? Sort it out."
For Project 2025 had a core simple belief
Summed up short and plain, almost causing relief:
Personnel is policy. Get the right people in place,
And the government bends to your will, face to face.
Schedule F, originally signed by Trump in October 2020 and revoked by Biden, was reinstated by Trump on Day One of his second term. It reclassifies federal workers in "policy-related" roles — potentially 50,000+ employees — stripping civil service protections and making them easier to fire and replace with loyalists. The Heritage Foundation's personnel database vetted candidates on ideological litmus tests.
Part Four
I Never Heard of It
(Said the Man Surrounded By It)
Trumpy-Wumpy, not knowing a single thing about Project 2025
Now Trumpy-Wumpy, when asked on the trail,
Would wave off the question without fail:
"Project 2025? I know nothing about it!
Some proposals are abysmal — let's doubt it!"
Meanwhile, behind him, the authors all waved,
The same people who'd staffed him, advised him, and saved
His first term's last year — now writing the plan
For his second — as closely as anyone can.
Four days after the second inauguration came,
Time Magazine analyzed each executive claim:
Two-thirds of his actions that first busy week
Mirrored or partially mirrored the book's technique.
And CNN found, in that first week's great sprint,
Of fifty-three orders signed with great glint,
Thirty-six of them matched what the book had laid out.
That's sixty-eight percent — give or take — without doubt.
"I know nothing about Project 2025. I have not read it. I disagree with some of the things they're saying and some of the things they're saying are absolutely terrible."
— TRUMP, JULY 2024. Four days into his second term, analysis found nearly two-thirds of his executive actions mirrored Project 2025 proposals.
Despite Trump's campaign denials, CBS News identified at least 270 Project 2025 proposals matching Trump's policies. His transition team used the Heritage Foundation's personnel database to fill positions. Several campaign officials maintained direct contact with Project 2025 organizers throughout 2024.
Part Five
Day One, Two, Three,
and the Signing Hand
The Resolute Desk, briefly needing structural reinforcement
And then came the day — January the Twentieth —
When the nine-hundred-page plan became foremost
In the governance of Bumbloo-Wee's great land,
As Trumpy-Wumpy signed with his presidential hand.
Out went the Gender Policy Council — gone!
Out went the diversity offices — so long!
Out went Biden's nondiscrimination orders — done!
Schedule F reinstated — here we run!
The Paris Climate Agreement? Withdrawn again!
The Department of Education? On the chopping plain!
Federal DEI programs? Abolished with speed!
Each order a chapter from the book, guaranteed.
One hundred and thirty executive orders signed
In the first months of term — each one designed
To match what was written by those three-fifty-plus
In the nine-hundred-page book — without much fuss.
On Inauguration Day, Trump signed executive orders ending DEI programs, reinstating Schedule F, withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, ending gender-affirming care for federal workers, and reversing Biden-era nondiscrimination policies — all core Project 2025 proposals. CNN analysis found 36 of 53 first-week executive orders matched Project 2025. Trump signed 130 executive orders in his first months.
Part Six
The Authors Take
Their Posts
Personnel is policy, as it turns out
And then came the part that the authors most prized:
The personnel database, fully utilized.
The people who'd written the book took their chairs
At the desks of the agencies — caught unawares
Were the career professionals, shown to the door
While the authors installed their own chapters once more.
Russell Vouchy-Woo, who'd written on budget and spend,
Now headed the OMB — power without end —
The "nerve center" of all that the government does,
Where every department's funding and policy was.
Brendan Carr-Carr, who'd written on what the FCC
Should regulate and censor and oversee,
Now chaired the very commission he'd planned to reform —
His chapter now policy, standard and norm.
Peter Navy-Navvy on trade and on tariffs?
Now Senior Counselor — no more fine print.
The author of Chapter on Commerce and trade
Now ran the trade policy he'd himself made.
Russell Vought (Project 2025 principal author) became OMB Director. Brendan Carr (wrote the FCC chapter) became FCC Chair. Peter Navarro (wrote the trade chapter) became Senior Counselor for Trade. Tom Homan (border policy contributor) became "border czar." CIA Director John Ratcliffe was a contributor. At least 14 contributors were appointed to senior administration roles.
Part Seven
The Erasures
Project 2025's vision of a "biblically based" America, implemented
Now buried deep in the nine hundred pages
Were plans for the culture and all of its stages:
A vision of families — mother, father, child —
With federal funds redirected, compiled
To support a "biblically based" definition,
Excluding all others from any condition.
The CDC's pages on LGBTQ health?
Deleted by order — removed from the shelf.
Trans Americans' passports with their chosen name?
Revoked. The X marker? Gone. What a shame.
The Pentagon reversed all trans healthcare protections.
Nondiscrimination orders faced swift rejections.
Gender-affirming clinics across the land closed,
Even as judges ordered some policies transposed.
Federal equity programs? Ended by decree.
Diversity data collection? No longer free.
The nine-hundred-page book had a vision most clear:
A certain kind of Bumbloo-Wee, year after year.
By end of 2025, Trump had implemented or initiated roughly half of Project 2025's goals. Federal websites purged LGBTQ health data; trans passport gender markers were revoked; Pentagon reversed trans healthcare; federal nondiscrimination protections were reversed. Project 2025 explicitly called for "biblically based" family policy and federal funds redirected accordingly. Clinics providing gender-affirming care closed across the country.
Part Eight
The Scoreboard
at Halftime
The Center for Progressive Reform, keeping score
Now organizations most diligent kept
A running tally as each chapter crept
From blueprint to policy, page after page —
And by February of the first year's stage:
283 / 532
Project 2025 recommended actions initiated or completed as of February 2025
53% of the domestic agenda implemented in the first 13 months
More than half of the five hundred and thirty-two
Recommended actions had started to brew.
The remaining half waited in various stages —
Some blocked by the courts, some still turning pages.
What remained undone? Some goals more extreme:
The defense budget at five percent of GDP's seam,
Stronger abortion restrictions with state penalties,
And a few proposals too far even for these.
But the scoreboard was running. The clock hadn't stopped.
The nine-hundred-page book hadn't yet been dropped.
And Vouchy-Woo at OMB kept the nerve center humming
With the full four-year term of implementation coming.
The Center for Progressive Reform found the Trump administration had initiated or completed 53% of Project 2025's domestic agenda (283 of 532 actions) by February 2025. By year end, trackers estimated roughly half of the full 920-page agenda had been implemented. Vought called the OMB the "nerve center through which a president can exert their influence across the federal government."
Part Nine
Reading the Book
Before It's Finished
Citizens, with the book open, reading the remaining chapters
Now here is the thing about nine-hundred-page plans:
They're readable. They fit in citizens' hands.
Unlike the vague promises of campaigns and trails,
A nine-hundred-page document spells out details.
You can read what comes next — Chapter Twenty-Six:
Education Department to abolish and fix.
Chapter Eighteen on the EPA's great role:
Scale back. Defund. Reduce. Take control.
The Social Security chapter has plans of its own.
The Medicare chapter has seeds to be sown.
The chapters on labor, on health, on the law —
All readable, traceable, available to all.
And courts have blocked chapters. And journalists traced
Each policy to its page — nothing has been erased
From the public record of what this book said
And what has been done and what lies ahead.
The nine-hundred-page plan is unusual in this:
It told you exactly what it was going to do.
It's still doing it. You can still read ahead.
The remaining four hundred and thirty-seven pages
Are not a surprise. They were always the stages.
Unless someone cares — really, truly, a lot —
The Bumbloo-Wee world will keep going to rot.
— THE END —
(of this chapter — the book has 437 pages still to go)
This is a work of political satire. All Project 2025 proposals, appointments, implementation figures,
and quotes are drawn from public record, published journalism, and official documents.
"Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise" is a real 920-page document
published by the Heritage Foundation in April 2023 and available at mandate.com.
The Seussian framing is fictional. The plan is not.
The author maintains no personal grudge against think tanks, only their footnotes.