Project 2026 Analysis

Breaking down the language and telling you what's really being said.

Trump sleeping: because, frankly, I am not going to use anything that benefits him. Andrew Harnik Ghetty images

Before turning to a section-by-section analysis of Project 2026, it is necessary to explain why I consider myself qualified to write about it. This document does not describe a hypothetical future for me. It describes the past I was raised in.

I was born into this ideology. My parents believed it was the proper way to raise children, not as a preference but as a moral imperative. My mother emphasized the importance of being a “strong, independent woman,” but that strength was always framed as obedience: reliance on Jesus, submission to male authority, and adherence to rigid standards governing how a woman should dress, speak, and socialize. Independence existed only within approved boundaries.

James Dobson’s voice was a constant presence in my childhood. I heard his voice daily as my parents consumed his teachings, and I, along with many others, viewed him as a third parent well into early adulthood. His authority in our household was absolute. His framing of morality, family, race, gender, and nation shaped how I understood the world long before I had language to question it.

I grew up with “America First” as a moral lens, not a slogan. Welfare was understood as a system designed to reward laziness, implicitly racialized as a benefit siphoned by people of color. Divorced families were considered morally suspect. Any interaction with them was framed as evangelism, premised on the assumption that they were deficient and needed correction. The family, as Dobson defined it, was not merely idealized. It was enforced.

When I read the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and now Project 2026, there was nothing unfamiliar in it. I did not need to study it to understand it. I lived it. I was raised as part of the generation expected to implement it. In that sense, I am not analyzing this document from the outside. I am translating it from the inside.

The Family as the Foundation of the Nation

The report opens by asserting that American political legitimacy is rooted in the personal lives of the Founding Fathers, emphasizing their marriages and large families as evidence that the republic was built with future generations in mind. Liberty, in this telling, was not merely secured for the present but carefully engineered for posterity. The family is positioned as the primary institution through which ordered liberty is transmitted, with marriage and child-rearing framed as civic obligations rather than private choices.

This framing depends on a deliberate conflation of historical roles. The founders are not the same as the framers, and neither category should be mythologized as a unified moral archetype. The earliest colonists were not idealistic architects of democracy; many were religious zealots whose rigid belief systems made coexistence in Europe untenable. Their settlement of the so-called New World was inseparable from displacement, coercion, and violence against Indigenous populations, whose cultures, religions, and family systems were systematically erased.

Population growth was not incidental to this project. It was strategic. Large families were encouraged to establish dominance over land and labor. Poor teenage girls were imported as “tobacco brides” or indentured maids to accelerate reproduction. The family was treated as infrastructure from the beginning.

Marriage as a Precondition for Democracy

The report presents marriage as the essential training ground for democratic citizenship. Families, it argues, instill responsibility, cooperation, restraint, and sacrifice, virtues deemed necessary for a functioning republic. Without intact families, the nation supposedly loses its capacity for prosperity, defense, and cohesion. Marriage is described not as a cultural tradition but as a structural necessity.

At face value, this argument borrows the language of civic virtue. But beneath it lies a theological gatekeeping mechanism. Phrases like “family values” and “strong families” function as dog whistles for Christian nationalism. They do not describe families in general. They describe a very specific family: white, heterosexual, Christian, patriarchal, and biologically reproductive.

When the report refers to the family as a “training ground,” it invokes a romanticized post-Revolutionary domestic model in which men participated in public life, and women educated children at home in literacy, obedience, and patriotism. This was not universal history; it was a classed and racialized arrangement. Girls’ education was intentionally truncated. Intellectual development beyond domestic competence was discouraged. The structure being revived is not neutral. It is exclusionary by design.

Demographic Decline as an Existential Threat

Declining marriage and fertility rates are framed as a national emergency. Falling birthrates, delayed marriage, and population contraction are presented as existential threats to economic growth and institutional stability. The United States, once a nation of expansion, is portrayed as sliding into scarcity.

This argument has a long and dangerous pedigree. In the 1920s, similar claims fueled the Johnson-Reed Act, which drastically restricted immigration and formalized racial hierarchy by privileging white Protestant populations. Lawmakers cited census data to argue that “undesirable” populations were outproducing the preferred class. Immigration was framed as demographic sabotage. Interracial marriage was outlawed. Forced sterilizations were justified as public good.

Adolf Hitler did not invent demographic panic. He studied it.

Children as the Primary Casualties

The report portrays children as the primary victims of family decline, emphasizing nonmarital births and single-parent households as sources of instability, poverty, and poor educational outcomes. Marriage, it argues, no longer anchors childhood.

This narrative traces directly to James Dobson, whose work consistently framed cultural change as an attack on children. Dobson’s admiration for his mentor, eugenicist Paul Popenoe, shaped his belief that certain families were inherently superior and others inherently deficient. His proposed solutions rarely included structural reform or expanded social support. Instead, they emphasized moral correction, early marriage, and exclusion.

In this framework, children are not protected through investment. They are protected through control.

Policy and Cultural Origins of the Crisis

The report attributes family decline to two forces: government policy and cultural liberalization. Welfare programs are accused of discouraging marriage and work. Feminism and the sexual revolution are blamed for promoting autonomy, sexual freedom, and childlessness. The authors frame the present moment as a moral crossroads between self-fulfillment and sacrifice, arguing that only the latter can sustain the nation.

What this framing omits is material reality. Financial stress is one of the most consistent predictors of marital breakdown. The mid-century economy these authors idealize required neither advanced education nor dual incomes to sustain a household. Housing was accessible. Employment was stable. Women’s entrance into the workforce was not an ideological rebellion; it was economic necessity and personal survival.

Christian nationalism opposes women’s agency because autonomy disrupts control. Restricting access to banking, healthcare, and education is not about family stability. It is about ownership.

Rejection of Technological Pronatalism

While alarmed by demographic decline, the report rejects technological solutions such as IVF, surrogacy, and genetic screening, arguing that they commodify children and detach reproduction from marriage. Only children raised by married biological parents are deemed legitimate.

In practice, this position would legalize discrimination in reproductive healthcare, reserving access for married couples with financial means. Existing Christian health-sharing ministries already exclude birth control, immunizations, and fertility care, which violates doctrinal boundaries. The moral language of protection conceals a system of exclusion.

The Proper Role of Government

The authors argue that government intervention destabilized families, but they must now intervene to restore them. The proposed role of government is corrective rather than managerial, focused on removing barriers to marriage.

This is not limited government. It is selective government. State power is rejected when it restrains dominant groups and embraced when it disciplines marginalized ones. Freedom is preserved for some by regulating others.

Policy Vision and Cultural Infrastructure

Policy recommendations emphasize removing marriage penalties, redirecting education toward trades, and reshaping cultural institutions. Education is treated cautiously, framed as a threat rather than a public good.

This is not accidental. Christian nationalist movements have long understood that higher education correlates with ideological departure. Limiting access is not about workforce readiness. It is about containment.

A Call for National Mobilization

The report concludes with a call for a national mobilization akin to the Manhattan Project. Political, religious, cultural, and economic institutions are urged to act in concert to restore marriage as a central social institution.

This is dominion theology rendered bureaucratic. It mirrors the Seven Mountain Mandate, which seeks control over religion, education, government, media, business, arts, and entertainment. It is not merely cultural conservatism. It is a governing vision rooted in hierarchy and eugenics.

Bottom Line

Project 2026 frames declining marriage and fertility as existential threats and redefines heterosexual marriage as a civic duty rather than a personal choice. It attributes social instability to cultural liberalization, rejects technological reproduction, and calls for coordinated intervention to restore a narrowly defined family structure.

This is not about strengthening families. It is about deciding which families count.

If you appreciated my breakdown of Project 2026, please consider subscribing to this publication. It is reader-supported, and to keep it running, I depend entirely on the generosity of readers. Independent journalism faces challenges in this country; please support this and other independent journalists.