You have likely heard of Project 2025 but a U.S. Navy veteran is upping the ante with a new national proposal he dubs ‘Project 2026’ that he believes is a step toward restoring balance in the American experience.
Project 2025 garnered large amounts of attention during the 2024 presidential campaign when the political initiative and conservative blueprint penned by the Heritage Foundation became inherently tied to then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign, described by critics as a roadmap to preserve and implement various policies in a future Republican administration.
Trump’s 2024 opponent, ex-Vice President Kamala Harris, and Democrats consistently attempted to tie Trump to the roughly 900-page playbook that touched on a wide variety of American life including Project 2025 proposes significant changes across nearly all areas of government including immigration and border policy, economic regulation, restructuring federal agencies, LGBTQ+ laws and protections, reproductive rights, social programs and more.
Politicians and America's 'Roots'
Mike Bedenbaugh, who served in the Navy from 1982-87 as a Quartermaster on the USS South Carolina, is imploring Americans to look past partisanship and reinvigorate Americans ideals ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday.
Naming his new project so closely to the Project 2025 initiative was deliberate, he told Military.com. However, it was only after he finished his own literary draft that he became privy to it and read through “the 3-inch book” to find that much of what the initiative lays out and what he aspires are synonymous with one another.
“They are talking about the same issues I'm talking about, the failures of how our republic isn't functioning as well anymore,” Bedenbaugh said. “But instead of looking back at the foundational recipe that [George] Washington and the original architects of our Constitution set forth on how to have checks and balances and a free republic for individuals, they're looking at a top-down approach that only a strong executive could fix these problems.
“I was astonished that political leaders in our nation had so forgotten the roots of our American tradition that they would think that's the way to do it, and I personally think it's very dangerous.”
Hence, Bedenbaugh’s intentions involve elevating conservation and faith in liberty through what he describes as a bottom-up approach, where citizens have faith in each other and in federalism.
“Different cultures, different folks can live within the umbrella of the Constitution as we were when we first formed,” he said. “And we need to remember that. In a nation of aspiration like ours, different people have different aspirations. As long as they believe in the rule of law and the Constitution, that's the purpose of our society. And I just wanted to remind people of that.”
'Hard Conversations'
Bedenbaugh jokingly analogized his own life to the feather that floats aimlessly in the film Forrest Gump.
He’s occupied myriad roles, from service member to heading a planning commission; city council member to entrepreneur; and even running for Congress in 2024 in red-state South Carolina as an independent candidate, succumbing to a competitor’s campaign fueled by money from the “political party machine.”
All that led to the self-described constitutional conservative becoming an author, penning Reviving Our Republic: 95 Theses for the Future of America as a blueprint for the broader Project 2026 agenda.
“Something's going to get compromised,” he said. “That's what I've seen happening since 9/11, since the attack on us in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon—the opportunity certain people in power used to pursue a more world hegemonic policy that I think has put us in terrible danger as a nation.
“ I think it could be fixed but we just need to start having real conversations about the genius of our foundational principles and how we can get to them relatively easily. There's going to be some hard conversations.”
Needed Reforms
Some of the reforms Bedenbaugh encourages include:
Term limits in Congress to discourage career politicians and encourage fresh leadership.
Giving citizens a larger voice over corporate money to better shape public policy.
Curbing monopolies by means including breaking up concentrated power in media, health care and finance to revive fair competition.
Reining in the military-industrial complex which includes avoiding perpetual wars and returning to constitutional limits on military engagement.
Restoring fiscal discipline through federal spending controls and safeguarding future generations from unsustainable debt.
He also mentions the creation of a so-called Fulcrum Caucus, designed as a coalition of both new and independent-minded congressional members who will stand against the political duopoly. Even a caucus of 10 to 20 reformers could hold the balance of power in Congress, he said.
“Service to the representation of your constituents shouldn't be a career,” Bedenbaugh said. “It should be a part-time job that you go do, just like I did in the military. I enjoyed my five years and I came back and left. And that's what representatives should do.”
'Inspiration' To Do Better
He also feels strongly about foreign policy and entanglements, once more harkening back to Washington and a view that American neutrality regarding other nations’ affairs is integral.
“Now, that absolutely is the opposite of isolationism,” he said. “I am not an isolationist because the system we have now—the military-industrial complex, so much money going into the militarization of our society and expressing that overseas—has created a world where we have isolated ourselves from over half the world because we are now the enemies of those people's enemies.
“We need to learn how to be more neutral and an objective observer so that our influence—our financial influence and our trade influence—can help stabilize our relationships with countries all over the world, whoever they are.”
All that said, Bedenbaugh admits his book and plan are no antidote to larger problems unless Americans galvanize and push for more inspired leadership and ideals. As he put it, “There are things still worth fighting for.”
“I take that as inspiration, and the fact that we're now at the 250th anniversary of that revolution that we had, I think if things get bad enough—and I am concerned that they will—there will be certain social systems that are going to be compromised and civic engagement is already compromised,” he said.
“It's going to get bad enough to where people are willing to go, ‘OK, it's time to really take it seriously on how to fix it.’ We're not just going to fix it by just electing the other party again because that whiplash is not going to work anymore. I hope this inspires that same sense of what those early revolutionaries had to do, fight against overwhelming odds, which is what we're facing today,” Bedenbaugh added.
