Project 2025 was loud. Blunt. Almost reckless in how openly it laid out a vision for rolling America backward. It was the kind of document that made people sit up, screenshot pages, and say, wait…what? That reaction mattered—especially when Taraji P. Henson used the BET Awards stage to warn Black audiences that what was being proposed wasn’t abstract policy—it was a direct threat to how we live, vote, learn, love, and survive.

Project 2026 is worse precisely because it doesn’t need shock value anymore.

Released by the same Heritage Foundation, Project 2026 isn’t a pivot away from 2025—it’s a refinement. The language is cleaner. The framing is calmer. The ambition is broader. And the danger lies in how familiar it all sounds. This version assumes you’ve either forgotten the outrage or made peace with it.

That’s not an accident.

Take immigration. Project 2026 doubles down on “national integrity” and “law enforcement” rhetoric while explicitly committing to aggressive systems and messaging designed to normalize constant enforcement. This isn’t about border security—it’s about conditioning the public to see certain communities as perpetual suspects. History tells us exactly which communities those are.

On voting, the strategy is even more telling. While efforts to require proof of citizenship for voter registration have already faced legal setbacks, Project 2026 keeps pushing. It also targets ranked-choice voting—a system shown to increase participation and representation, particularly for women and people of color. When a policy agenda consistently narrows who gets to participate in democracy, it’s not about trust. It’s about control.

Education is next. The push to eliminate the Department of Education entirely isn’t just ideological—it’s structural sabotage. Federal oversight exists because states have repeatedly failed Black, brown, disabled, and low-income students. Removing it would strip away protections that took generations to secure, all under the guise of “local control” and fighting “radical influence.” The result would be deeper inequality dressed up as freedom.

Then there’s the obsession with “traditional family values.” Project 2026 makes its position clear: the nuclear family—defined narrowly as a married mother and father—is the only model worth protecting. That framing isn’t nostalgic; it’s exclusionary. It signals hostility toward LGBTQ+ families and reinforces policies aimed at restricting reproductive autonomy. Black women, who already face disproportionate risks around healthcare, childbirth, and economic stability, would once again absorb the fallout.

Even the tech section reveals the sleight of hand. Project 2026 claims it wants to fight Big Tech’s power while simultaneously championing deregulation, rapid AI expansion, and consolidation in the tech sector. It’s a familiar trick: perform outrage over “elites” while quietly ensuring that power remains concentrated and unaccountable. The concern isn’t about free speech—it’s about who gets to define it.

And let’s not ignore the global framing. Warnings about falling behind in a “new Cold War” with China are used to justify economic isolation, surveillance, and expanded government power. Those policies never stay overseas. They come home—often in the form of increased policing, reduced civil liberties, and heightened scrutiny of already marginalized communities.

This is why Taraji’s warning mattered—and still matters. She wasn’t speaking as a politician or a pundit. She was speaking as someone who understood that policy language eventually becomes lived reality. Project 2026 is betting that people won’t connect the dots this time. That fatigue will replace fear. That normalization will do what outrage once prevented.

Project 2025 made people angry. Project 2026 wants people quiet. And silence has always been the most useful tool for rolling back progress.