Mackinac Center asks for name to be pulled from Project 2025

The south side of the White House is photographed from the South Lawn, Monday Aug. 29, 2022. (Official White House Photo by Cameron Smith)

A Midland-based, free-market think tank that is listed as a contributor to the controversial Project 2025 says it asked that its name be removed from the planning document.

The left-leaning Progress Michigan organization issued a release Thursday explicitly linking the Mackinac Center for Public Policy to Project 2025, an authoritarian blueprint for a second President Donald Trump term in the White House created by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. 

Project 2025 offers a set of detailed plans to broadly enhance executive authority including deploying the U.S. military to quell domestic protests, dismantling the FBI and Departments of Homeland Security and Education, as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), removing sexual and gender protected discrimination, and implementing a national ban on abortion.

A check of the project’s 922-page “Mandate for Leadership” policy document shows that Jason Hayes, the director of energy and environmental policy for the Mackinac Center, appears as a contributor. 

When questioned about their participation, Mackinac Center spokesperson Holly Wetzel sent the Michigan Advance a statement.

“The Heritage Foundation asked the Mackinac Center to contribute expertise to a project and we sent over some of our policy ideas. We are happy to work with diverse groups on public policy (we’ve collaborated in the past with everyone from the Heritage Foundation to the ACLU). We offered ideas on labor and energy policy, which are publicly available on our website. Project 2025 contains some idea (sic) we do not endorse and others outside of our scope. We do not sign our names to things we do not fully endorse and requested that our name be removed from this project, which it has been,” said Wetzel.

Wetzel declined to tell the Advance which specific Project 2025 proposals the organization did not endorse.

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While the Mackinac Center is not listed among the project’s official advisory board of more than 100 conservative organizations, Jason Hayes, the think tank’s director of energy and environmental policy is a contributor.

As it has gained attention, Project 2025 has proven to be a political hot potato for Trump, who posted to social media on July 5 that he had “no idea who is behind it,” and that “some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” That’s despite the fact that at least 140 former Trump administration members, including six cabinet secretaries, had a hand in creating it.

Progress Michigan Executive Director Sam Inglot told the Advance on Thursday that the Mackinac Center’s involvement with Project 2025 is clear. 

“It seems like now that the kitchen is on fire and more people know about Project 2025, the Mackinac Center wants to act as if they had nothing to do with this dangerous policy platform,” said Inglot. “The fact remains, the Mackinac Center contributed to a platform that seeks to erode our freedoms, endanger our communities and fundamentally alter the face of our democracy for the worse. Whether they contributed to one idea, five, or all of them; the Mackinac Center is complicit.”

Progress Michigan says the Mackinac Center’s connections to the Heritage Foundation run deep, noting that both are members of the State Policy Network, described by the Center for Media and Democracy as “the tip of the spear of far-right, nationally funded policy agenda in the states that undergirds extremists in the Republican Party.” Additionally, Progress Michigan noted that the Mackinac Center receives funding “from a variety of conservative and corporate sources, including the DeVos family of West Michigan. 

Progress Michigan has been sharply critical of Project 2025.

“Just like they are chipping away at our freedom to decide if and when we want kids, they plan to dictate our futures for us according to a Christian and white nationalist agenda,” Inglot said. “Their plan includes taking over our schools, attacking protections for LGBTQ+ and Black and brown Americans, and sacrificing our right to a livable planet  to make rich oil corporations richer. We must come together to fight for a future where we all have freedom over our healthcare decisions and everyone, including LGBTQ+ Americans, immigrants, people of color, and people with different religious beliefs will all be treated equally.”

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