Recently, several Jewell students have spearheaded projects critiquing aspects of life on the Hill and calling for change. In the last few years, we saw students challenge William Jewell College’s whitewashing of the history of campus buildings with the Slavery, Memory, and Justice project (SMJP), which eventually culminated in Jewell’s gesture of racial reconciliation and an examination of the role of slavery in Jewell’s past. Currently, Jewell is undergoing a lot of changes as a result of the recent declaration of financial exigency, and students have stepped up to demand openness throughout this process as well.

The focus of this article, however, is even more recent. Last semester, a group of students presented their findings of racial bias in the dorm lottery process, as well as detailing inadequate living conditions, particularly in Browning Hall. One of those students, Jacob Tetlow, has worked as an RA in Melrose Hall for several semesters. During this semester’s Duke Colloquium, he co-presented a further project about the Jewell experience, mentioning specific ways students’ lives could be improved by the college’s administration. 

This project was presented as a set with Mason Sullivan’s Black Freedom Struggle Symposium documentary, which addressed similar themes. While Mason highlighted the ability of Jewell’s small size to produce a tight-knit community, the stellar faculty we have the privilege of learning with, and the excellent academics, he found that Jewell has a need for more diversity and cultural knowledge within the student body. “I think in order for Jewell’s administration to improve on their recruitment practices and acknowledgement of different cultural groups they need to do more to have other cultures feel accepted on campus,” Mason stated in an interview with the Hilltop Monitor. “Recruiting students from different backgrounds is a good place to start, and over my last four years here I have been seeing major improvements in the amount of diversity I see on campus.” 

While the documentary maintains a mostly upbeat tone, Mason does acknowledge that it is “[a glimpse] into the reality of the school, not just what gets advertised, and … a critique and a call to action for administrators to see how the students feel on certain things and what that means for the future of the college.” As Jewell goes through changes, students have consistently stepped up to share their opinions and insights with administration, and call leadership to action on certain issues that affect the student body but may not be felt by higher-ups. Students often put themselves in a tenuous position by calling out the institution at which they are studying, so it is extremely important to maintain an accepting environment during this process. 

For the most part, Jewell has provided that accepting environment. Mason Sullivan noted that the response to his project was overwhelmingly positive, and that “the president of the college [then-interim president Susan Chambers] at that time came up to [him] afterwards to tell [him] how much she enjoyed it and asked what she could do to help” after his first presentation of the documentary at the Black Freedom Struggle Symposium. Mason also told the Monitor that Jewell faculty, staff, and students were nothing but supportive, expressing gratitude “for the support I got from faculty like Dr. Howard, [College chaplain] Rev. Dowling, and [admissions counselor] Will Palmer who were adamant to get this story to the people who needed to see it.”

Jacob Tetlow also recalls that “everybody that I’ve interacted with on the admin side that has talked to me about the presentation, it’s been like what you’d expect from critical thinking college,” denying that he faced difficulties from the college during the research and presentation process. However, academic freedom concerns have surfaced, especially within Jacob’s RA role and his ties to Student Life.

Mistakes Made, Mistakes Corrected 

On Apr. 17, the Student Life department informed Melrose RA Jacob Tetlow that he would not be returning to his position for the 2026-2027 school year.

When he scheduled an Apr. 22 meeting with Student Life asking why he was removed from his position, Student Life, represented by Greek Life coordinator Ryan West and Assistant Dean of Students Jennifer Herzog, originally gave two reasons. The first was that he had been too lenient regarding “room switching” in Melrose. Melrose is the only suite-style dorm not part of Greek row. Jacob told the Hilltop Monitor that “[t]o get into Melrose, you have to apply to be in a lottery, and these people wanted specific roommates and stuff, and so they just wanted to ensure that their team could make it into Melrose and then they sorted it amongst themselves afterwards.” Since Tetlow did not have the authority to unilaterally switch student rooms, he told the students that they needed to talk to Student Life. Tetlow confirms that this incident was not brought up to him until the meeting in which he was let go.

The second was that Student Life believed Tetlow had not followed the proper “chain of command” on the Browning Project he conducted last year. The project uncovered evidence of racial disparities in Jewell housing; the percentage of Black students living in Browning Hall, seen as one of the worst-quality dorms by residential students, was substantially higher than other dorms. (According to project data, about 30% of Browning residents are Black, compared with approximately 10% in Mathes, Eaton, Melrose, and Jones.) As part of the project, the team interviewed then-Dean of Students Ernie Stufflebean, Vice President of Marketing, Enrollment and Student Life Eric Blair, and others to obtain critical residential data for use in their project. 

According to Tetlow, Student Life stated that the project’s results made some College employees uneasy; Tetlow claimed that “[they] didn’t tell me who else, but [a Student Life staff member] did say that other people were made uncomfortable by that presentation that we gave, and it pushed buttons.” In a request for comment, College administrators confirmed to the Hilltop Monitor that “it was reported to leadership that a staff member’s personal opinion or response to Jacob’s research was shared and influenced decision-making to some extent.”

YikYak exploded with the news, to the point that peers in classes were asking about what was going on. On the night of April 21—twelve hours before Tetlow and colleagues presented a different documentary about campus community at Duke Colloquium—Jacob received a text from Eric Blair asking to meet with himself, President Drew Van Horn, and the Vice President for Academic Affairs (VPAA) Keli Braitman, who was present to resolve concerns about academic freedom. The meeting took place at noon on Duke Colloquium, and in it Tetlow was offered his position back. 

College administrators told the Hilltop Monitor that “In consultation with the President, Dr. Van Horn, VPAA, Dr. Braitman, and VPEM, Mr. Blair, Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Residence Life, Ms. Jennifer Herzog invited Jacob to stay on staff. Dr. Van Horn, Dr. Braitman, and Mr. Blair met with Jacob and a faculty advisor [who Jacob confirmed was Dr. Groninger in History] to discuss the circumstances and to assure him of his place on staff.” Dr. Braitman, vice president for academic affairs, told Jacob of her concerns that the incident represented “a violation of [his] academic integrity, and that’s one of the reasons we want to rectify it.”

Tetlow noted that he was “fired and reinstated” within the span of a week, suggesting that the College immediately recognized its error and reversed course.

Next Steps: Student Advocacy

Posts on YikYak, the anonymous campuswide social media app, were overwhelmingly supportive of Jacob and critical of the college’s decision not to rehire him as an RA. The anonymous users described him as caring, selfless and deeply committed to students. One post argued that not rehiring Jacob (JT)¹ over his study was “crazy” and accused the school of avoiding uncomfortable data. One user wrote that “[Tetlow] literally embodies who Jewell thinks they represent,” praising his service work, leadership and willingness to stand up for his beliefs. Another called him “the best RA I’ve ever had” and said he was being punished for “being a voice for the people.”One post claimed he had “done more things for Jewell than any RA has done.”

According to Jacob the YikYak reaction changed everything. “The reason that, like, I think I got this meeting … is because [of] the YikYak stuff,” he said in an interview.

The Aftermath: Academic Freedom At Jewell

This incident on its own has some disconcerting implications. However, this is not the only incident in recent Jewell memory in which the college has reacted negatively to a research organization investigating race relations on William Jewell’s campus. Back in 2020, a group of students at Jewell formed what they called the Slavery, Memory, and Justice Project (SMJP), which sought to explore the history of slavery in Clay County and how slavery shaped the early days of the college. This group, led by then-professor Dr. Christopher Wilkins, performed a deep scholarly exploration of the historical record, highlighting the lives of slaves in the community that surrounded Jewell’s campus and the pro-slavery views of Alexander Doniphan and other key figures in Jewell’s history. The SMJP received significant media and academic attention, with both the Hilltop Monitor and other KC-area news organizations discussing the SMJP’s efforts.

What made the SMJP’s work even more noteworthy is how little institutional support the SMJP had at the college. The SMJP’s official website, and many of the articles written about their work, highlight an extensive list of allegations that college leadership systematically restricted the ability of SMJP students to conduct research and discredited their work. The Pitch KC’s article on the subject portrays the relationship between the institution and the SMJP as tense, describing how the college refused to invite Dr. Wilkins or SMJP members to key meetings, refused to let the SMJP use the college archives, and used some of the SMJP’s findings without proper credit in their own historical accounts. The Pitch’s article further includes an email, sent by then-president Elizabeth MacLeod Walls, in which she asserted that “it is the sole responsibility of the Commission [a College-affiliated research team] to determine what is true.”

After the controversy surrounding the SMJP, Jewell created two key task forces to explore what happened between the SMJP and the college and to examine academic freedom policy at Jewell more broadly. The first was a special assignment for the Faculty Council, who were tasked with exploring the specific violations of academic freedom alleged by the SMJP. The second was the Student Academic Freedom Task Force to examine the state of academic freedom at Jewell and create a list of proposals for improving Jewell’s policies as regards student research. The student task force, which operated for around a month at the end of the 2022-2023 academic year, produced a list of proposals for amending Jewell’s policy library. 

While both of these groups generated their own conclusions on the question of academic freedom at Jewell and shared their conclusions with college administration, none of their conclusions were ever released publicly despite requests by the Hilltop Monitor and other student organizations. It is therefore unclear if any of their recommendations were actually adopted by the college or not. 

The SMJP’s case is troubling, but it is important to remember that the college’s leadership has changed substantially since 2022, and the administration’s response to the current incident has been more promising. In their comments to the Monitor, College administrators emphasized that policy changes would result from this incident. When asked what the administration learned from the incident, Dr. Van Horn told the Monitor that

In my seventeen years as a college President, I have learned that there are best practices that every college should follow. In my eight months as interim president at Jewell, I have noted that many of these best practices were not in place. I have directed these practices to be implemented at Jewell. First and foremost is the training of faculty and staff regarding behavior expectations for all Jewell employees. Thus, we are beginning a significant annual training program that all employees must complete. When an employee violates one of these expectations, we intervene, educate, and, if necessary, take corrective action. In short, the administration has learned that it has not done a good job of educating employees of these expectations and intervening as soon as possible when one has been violated. (emphasis added)

The administration’s willingness to reinstate Jacob as an RA is a good sign that college leadership is more concerned about academic freedom and research at Jewell than they have been previously. While Jewell still has work to do in order to rebuild students’ trust in their handling of academic freedom concerns, the administration’s immediate and unequivocal decision to reinstate Jacob is certainly a step in the right direction.

Conclusions

Thankfully, this incident has a happy ending. Jewell students and faculty, when we band together, have significant power to cause change, even in administrative decisions which we often think of as disconnected from the student body. In an interview, Jacob Tetlow recalled that one of the main reasons the VPAA cited for reinstating him was that it seemed like he was “wanted as an RA here outside of just that one individual’s decision.” He also noted conversations in his classes that led to student advocacy on his behalf, specifically highlighting support from peer Sara Polovina and professor Dr. Gary Armstrong. This in-person advocacy, as well as online advocacy via YikYak, influenced the decision to bring Jacob back as an RA next year. Jacob went on to say that 

I think, you know, it is that advocation from so many people around Jewell, so many people saying that’s uncomfortable, I don’t feel comfortable with that, that’s not right. This school has been pushing us for a long time, it seems like now, and we’re not gonna let them push past the fundamental values that built this school. […] I think that’s what enraged and embroiled a lot of people to actually do something.

We hope Jewell listens to student concerns and continues to take academic freedom seriously in the future. For example, the Student Life department itself is not well funded and is experiencing a lot of staff turnover. Jacob noted within the interview that “Student Life has really been trying, especially since Ryan got there, to kind of be the unit in the admin that melds … cliques, that provides an opportunity for people to meet together as a group and build a community outside their individual interests. And I think that Ryan is really, really trying hard for that. And I don’t know if she’s necessarily fully supported. And now that we’re losing a lot of RAs, she’s definitely … going to be less supported next year.”

While student advocacy still has a long way to go, we have hope that college administration will continue to act quickly and address student concerns, protecting academic freedom and providing a safe space for Jewell students to express their thoughts about their college experience.

“We’re not just going to be able to solve it overnight, if we’re going to be able to solve it at all without tearing something to the ground, like a building. For my part in the presentation and in the documentary, I really wanted to provide a framing where people could actively do stuff to make that thing better. And really, it boiled down to just being able to see, you know, it sounds corny, but like your classmates having fun and smiling around campus and it’s like, okay, well, I want to go and do that too.” – Jacob

1. YikYak does not permit names on its platform; instead, all references to names must use the individual’s initials. ︎

Media Monopolies

Fact: a small number of corporations play an outsized role in shaping what millions of Americans see, hear, and ultimately believe. While the exact list varies depending on how companies are grouped or reorganized, a commonly cited set of dominant players includes Comcast, The Walt Disney Company, Paramount Global, Warner Brothers and News Corp. Together  these corporations have controlled a substantial share of television networks, film studios, publishing houses and newspapers.

Comcast owns:

• DreamWorks Animation
• Peacock
• NBC (including NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC)
• Universal Pictures 

The Walt Disney Company owns:

• Marvel
• Lucasfilm (owns Star Wars)
• Pixar
• ABC
• ESPN
• 20th Century Studios (formerly 21st Century Fox film assets)

Paramount Skydance owns:

• Paramount Pictures
• Paramount Television
• CBS 
• MTV
• Comedy Central
• Showtime
• Pluto TV

Warner Bros. Discovery owns:

• HBO
• Warner Bros. Pictures
• DC Comics
• Cartoon Network
• Discovery Channel
• CNN

News Corp (owned by Rupert Murdoch) owns:

• HarperCollins 
• The Wall Street Journal
• The New York Post

The Fox corporation (also owned by Murdoch)

• Fox News 

This concentration did not emerge naturally. The most important turning point was the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which dramatically loosened restrictions on how many media outlets a single company could own. Prior to this, rules limited cross-ownership (for example, owning both newspapers and TV stations in the same market) and capped the number of stations a company could control. After 1996, those limits were relaxed or eliminated, opening the door for aggressive mergers and acquisitions. Companies rapidly expanded, swallowing local outlets and consolidating control at the national level. Earlier policies like the Communications Act of 1934 had emphasized serving the “public interest,” but by the late 20th century, the policy environment shifted toward prioritizing market efficiency and corporate growth.

Paramount and Warner Bros. 

These media companies continue to consolidate. Paramount Skydance announced on February 27, 2026 that it will acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in a definitive merger agreement. Paramount is paying $31 per share in cash for all outstanding WBD shares, and the deal is expected to close in Q3 2026, pending regulatory clearance and WBD shareholder approval. More than 2,000 actors, writers, and directors signed a letter opposing the deal, warning it will result in “fewer opportunities for creators, fewer jobs across the production ecosystem, higher costs, and less choice for audiences.”

Propaganda?

The result is not just economic concentration, but informational power. This becomes especially concerning when we look at how narratives can be coordinated across platforms. An example is the behavior of Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns or operates a large number of local television stations across the country. In 2018, Sinclair drew widespread criticism when dozens of its local news anchors were required to read nearly identical scripts warning about “fake news” and media bias. The segments, broadcast in local markets that viewers often trust more than national outlets, created the impression of independent reporting while delivering a centrally produced message. 

Perhaps the most visible example of the political consequences of media power is the role of Fox News in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. The network became central to the spread of claims about election fraud, many of which were later proven false. This culminated in the high-profile Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network lawsuit, in which Fox agreed to pay a $787.5 million settlement to Dominion Voting Systems. Internal communications revealed during the case showed that some hosts and executives privately doubted the fraud claims even as they were promoted on air. In addition, in 2020, Fox News host Tucker Carlson was sued for slander by Karen McDougal after he claimed she tried to extort money from Donald Trump. Fox’s legal defense argued that Carlson’s statements weren’t meant to be taken as factual. Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil agreed, ruling that a reasonable viewer would treat his comments as opinion or exaggerated political commentary rather than literal facts. These case shows how media organizations, driven by ratings, audience expectations, and competitive pressures, can amplify misinformation with significant real-world consequences.

The consequences for democracy are significant. A healthy democratic society depends on access to diverse, independent sources of information. When most media flows through a small number of corporate channels, that diversity can be undermined. Local journalism declines as national corporations cut costs, investigative reporting becomes riskier in a profit-driven environment, and public discourse becomes more polarized as media outlets cater to specific audiences. Meanwhile, the line between news, opinion, and entertainment continues to blur, further complicating the public’s ability to evaluate information. Understanding this landscape is essential for anyone concerned with the future of democratic governance and the integrity of public discourse.

I will die on this hill: spoilers do not ruin a good story. If a single sentence can “ruin” an entire book, movie or show, then maybe it wasn’t that good to begin with. A truly great story isn’t just about what happens; it’s about how it happens. Knowing the destination doesn’t make the journey any less meaningful.  

People act like hearing one detail completely destroys the experience. But think about it: we rewatch movies all the time. We reread books. We replay games. And somehow they’re still enjoyable, even when we know everything that’s coming. In fact, sometimes they’re more enjoyable. The second time around, you’re not scrambling to keep up with the plot; you’re paying attention to everything else: the dialogue, the pacing, the small choices that build toward the ending you already know.

That’s because the value of a story was never just in the surprise. Surprise is cheap. It’s easy to shock an audience once. What’s hard (and what actually makes something good) is earning that moment. A twist only works if the story has quietly been preparing you for it all along. And spoilers, weirdly, can reveal just how well a story does that. When you know what’s coming, you start noticing the foreshadowing, the subtle hints, the structural precision. You see the craft instead of just reacting to the outcome.

There’s also a difference between knowing what happens and understanding why it happens. A spoiler can give you the bare fact—this person dies, they betray someone, they end up together—but it can’t replicate the emotional experience of getting there. Context matters. Timing matters. Performance, writing, atmosphere all of that is what actually makes a moment hit. And honestly, half the time the so-called “spoiler” is so out of context that it barely means anything anyway. You might know a major event, but you don’t know how it fits into the narrative, what it costs the characters, or how it reshapes everything around it. 

Now, I’m not saying you should go around intentionally spoiling things for people. That’s chaotic, a little inconsiderate, and mostly just annoying. There’s a difference between arguing that spoilers don’t ruin stories and ignoring that people like experiencing things fresh. But if your entire enjoyment of a story depends on not knowing anything beforehand, then maybe what you actually enjoy is the feeling of surprise, not the story itself.

A good story can survive being known. In fact, it should. It should hold up under repetition, under analysis, under familiarity. It should reward you for coming back to it, not punish you for it.

What is the Heritage Foundation? 

The Heritage Foundation is a powerful conservative think tank founded in 1973 that writes ready-made policy blueprints for Republican lawmakers and presidents. It promotes Christian conservative social values and aggressive executive power. Though it is a private organization, it has outsized influence in shaping federal policy—most recently as the architect of Project 2025. Its influence during the second Trump presidency has been especially direct; an analysis by DeSmog found that more than 50 high-level Trump administration officials had links to the organization. 

What is Project 2025? 

Project 2025 is a sweeping conservative policy blueprint created by the Heritage Foundation to prepare for a Republican presidency after the 2024 presidential election. The project calls for limiting abortion access, rolling back LGBTQ+ protections, eliminating diversity and equity programs, weakening the Department of Education, and redefining federal policy around a traditional, heterosexual model of family and marriage.

Since Trump took office, significant portions of this agenda have been implemented; in fact, most estimates say more than 50% of the project has been completed. Initiatives proposed by Project 2025 include:

• Issuing a series of executive orders dismantling Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives across federal agencies
• Instructing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to scale back investigations into race- and sex-based discrimination, weakening federal enforcement of civil rights protections
• Terminating tens of thousands of federal employees, significantly reducing the size and capacity of the federal workforce
• Using law enforcement agencies to aggressively target immigrant communities, expanding surveillance, detention, and deportation efforts
• Barring Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds, restricting access to reproductive healthcare for low-income individuals
• Eliminating more than $800 million in federal funding dedicated to research on LGBTQ+ health, undermining efforts to understand and address disparities within the community

What Comes Next?

While much attention has focused on how the Trump administration implemented substantial portions of Project 2025, those actions now function primarily as context. The more pressing issue is what comes next.

In Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years, published by The Heritage Foundation argues that the restoration of the traditional heterosexual family is essential to national renewal. Framed as a pro-family policy blueprint, the report proposes sweeping reforms to welfare, tax policy, family law, and cultural institutions. The most distressing element of the report is its willingness to restructure social welfare around a single normative vision of marriage.

A New (Old) Understanding of Family

The report situates family support as central to national survival, claiming, “The family is the foundation of civilization, and marriage — the committed union of one man and one woman — is its cornerstone.” By positioning one family model as morally and politically superior, these proposals expand government influence into private life and legitimize intrusive interventions into intimate decisions.

The Heritage Foundation advances a deeply regressive vision of American life by arguing that marriage (not personal growth, education, or professional achievement) should be the primary marker of adult success. The report laments that modern culture encourages young people to delay marriage in favor of career development, complaining that

“For most previous generations, marriage was the foundation of adulthood. In contrast, today’s cultural narrative teaches young people to delay marriage and focus on career and personal achievements first. Many now consider marriage a capstone to adult life, something only to be accomplished once career and other personal goals have been achieved.”

What the report frames as cultural decline is, in reality, the expansion of opportunity, particularly for women, who now have the ability to pursue education and financial independence before entering marriage. By portraying career ambition and self-development as threats to social order, the report romanticizes a past in which economic dependence and rigid gender roles were the norm.

The document goes further, openly villainizing online dating, pornography, sexual freedom, abortion, and no-fault divorce as drivers of family breakdown. It blames the social transformations of the 1960s, arguing that 

“The disruptions to American family life caused by bad public policy in the 1960s were exacerbated by cultural upheavals that radically changed social norms around sex, sexuality, marriage, children, and gender roles. Second-wave feminism and the sexual revolution promoted an individualistic, child-free, marriage-free, sexual ‘liberation’…”

In this telling, feminism and expanded sexual autonomy are not historic advancements in civil rights but catastrophic mistakes. The report treats women’s independence, reproductive choice, and the ability to leave unhappy marriages as social decline rather than progress. By condemning no-fault divorce and abortion alongside “casual sex,” it reveals a broader desire to reinstate moral and legal pressures that would make exiting marriage or avoiding it altogether more difficult.

Perhaps most telling is the report’s hostility toward higher education. It claims that college represents “extended adolescence” and argues that “[m]ore education correlates with later marriage, fewer children.” Rather than acknowledging that economic instability, student debt, and labor market changes shape young adults’ timelines, the report implies that education itself is the problem. In effect, it frames intellectual development and economic mobility as obstacles to the “natural” order of early marriage and childbearing. The logic is clear: independence delays marriage, and delayed marriage is treated as a national crisis.

Welfare and Economic Reform

The report also calls for eliminating marriage penalties in state welfare, arguing that current programs discourage marriage by financially disadvantaging married couples compared with single parents. As the report states:

“All children conceived deserve to be born to their mothers and fathers in a committed marriage who will love, guide, and protect them throughout their lives. Therefore, at a minimum, policies should not discourage or penalize marriage. Policy should instead affirmatively support and privilege marriage as directly and explicitly as possible.”

While framed as a means to promote social and economic stability, this approach distorts the reality of poverty: it reduces support for single parents (disproportionately low-income women) and assumes that marital status is the primary driver of economic insecurity, oversimplifying the systemic issues that contribute to financial hardship. 

Similarly, the report advocates reforming alimony and spousal support by capping payments to the length of the marriage and favoring lump-sum settlements. Though presented as fairness reform, this policy would disproportionately harm stay-at-home spouses, often women, who sacrificed careers to provide caregiving and often face difficulty in re-entering the workforce.

The report also promotes support for stay-at-home parenting through Home Childcare Equalization (HCE) credits, intended to encourage one parent to remain at home. This policy reinforces traditional gender roles and limits flexibility for modern work-family arrangements, potentially pressuring parents into unpaid caregiving to qualify for benefits. Beyond economic incentives, the report seeks to influence reproductive behavior, emphasizing policies that encourage childbearing within marriage and framing declining birth rates as a national problem. As the report asks, “What happens to a nation when its citizens largely stop having children?… These questions are not theoretical,” illustrating its view of fertility as a matter of national urgency.

Taken together, the report constructs a narrative in which sexual freedom, feminism, reproductive rights, educational attainment, and personal autonomy are to blame for social decline. It does not merely advocate for supporting families—it seeks to discipline modern life back into a narrow, heteronormative and marriage-centered model. What it labels “saving America” is, in practice, an attempt to roll back decades of expanded freedom, particularly for women and LGBTQ+ individuals. Rather than addressing structural economic inequality, stagnant wages, childcare costs, or healthcare access, the report chooses to scapegoat cultural progress and personal autonomy. Its vision of restoration depends not on expanding opportunity, but on constraining it.

Why the New Phase Feels Different

The earlier implementation of Project 2025 policies demonstrated the feasibility of large-scale administrative shifts via executive action. That track record amplifies concern about the Heritage Foundation’s new proposals. The central shift is not merely about abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, or DEI programs individually. It is about whether the federal government adopts a singular, officially endorsed definition of family and social order and structures funding, civil rights enforcement and educational policy around that definition.