Fortunately, Red State Heroes Are Resisting Project 2025 Tyranny
Today, 342 million people will celebrate our country’s 250th birthday. Families will commemorate the milestone on beaches and BBQ pits, while fireworks will gloriously illuminate the evening sky. The vast majority of Americans cherish our democracy, for all its flaws, and hope their descendants will one day celebrate America’s 500th birthday.
Unfortunately, not everyone is rooting for our country to succeed. A cabal of Project 2025 extremists is actively agitating for our country’s collapse. Their demented dream is to replace our democracy with a right-wing dictator, which they call a Red Caesar. It would be easy to dismiss these conservative cranks if it weren’t for the alarming fact they have enormous power, money, and have infiltrated every level of government.
Within Project 2025, there are 114 Advisory Board organizations and multiple power centers. However, a few groups appear to be working together to transform our country into an authoritarian dystopia.
In this plot against democracy, the Heritage Foundation is the overarching organizer, the Claremont Institute is the think tank, Pete Hegseth’s fundamentalist pastor, Douglas Wilson, is the spiritual guide, and a relatively obscure organization, New Founding is their experimental “startup” working to usher in theocracy.
Alarmingly, JD Vance is the Trojan Horse, who has political power, as well as the skillset to finesse their radical and dangerous ideas into the mainstream. Vance, as well as leaders in New Founding, have deep ties to Silicon Valley money and influence. In May 2025, Politico Magazine wrote about how these Project 2025 entities are connected:
Along with another New Founding employee and NSA graduate named Santiago Pliego, Josh Clemans [NF Venture Partner 2002-25] is part of an extended social universe — dubbed the “Theo Bros” — that connects Moscow, Idaho [Where Wilson pastors his church] to various reactionary power centers in Silicon Valley and Trump’s Washington.
Nate Fischer, who is now the CEO of New Founding, is a former fellow at the Trump-aligned think tank the Claremont Institute, and the New Founding podcast, hosted by Clemans and Pliego, features a who’s who of guests from the “dissident right” and Silicon Valley reactionary circles.
When JD Vance was selected as Trump’s running mate in July, Clemans posted a picture of himself and the New Founding team smiling alongside Vance, with the caption “Our guy.”
Clemans was circumspect about Wilson’s role in this world. “He’s more like the grandpa familias. A lot of people read and respect his blog, so his opinion carries a lot of weight.”
Also enmeshed in this toxic scheme is the Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR). It is a clandestine, by-invitation-only, male-exclusive Christian fraternal organization, financed by Charles Haywood’s foundation and the Claremont Institute.
Don’t be overwhelmed by this sprawling web of whackos—you aren’t expected to memorize all these seedy players. That’s my job, as the author of “Behind the Mask: The Project 2025 Organizations Reshaping America.”
All you need to understand is there is an unpatriotic plot afoot to end the America we love and cherish—and replace it with something sinister. A deep misogyny, dressed up as biblical inerrancy, is at the heart of their belief system—as well as creating a world where LGBTQ people can’t exist.
Their pathological worldview is personified by Pastor Douglas Wilson, founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC). His mission is to create a “Christian America 2.0” and he preaches that “theocracy” isn’t a scary concept. Wilson said he believes the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote “was a bad idea.” In Wilson’s book, Father Hunger, the preacher man opines:
“A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts…true authority and true submission are therefore an erotic necessity.”
“A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts…true authority and true submission are therefore an erotic necessity.”
“Women are created by God to be helpers to their husbands, to conceive children, to bear them, to nurse them, to take care of them. They’re built by God to be domestic, and when they are, they are happy…What has feminism done, other than destroy everything?”
Wilson also advocates for the “biblical” criminalization of same-sex relations. He believes “sodomy” should be illegal and has said he would support the exileof LGBTQ people or, in cases of adultery, the death penalty.
Of course, turning America into an oppressive sectarian cesspool, where women are subservient to their husbands, LGBTQ people are criminalized, and religious pluralism is replaced by Christian dominion, is not a platform that can win many elections. That’s why this group of authoritarian misfits wants to replace democracy with a right-wing dictator.
Their devious method to seizing power is to exploit their media platforms to constantly shit on America—while hypocritically waving the American flag. Their narrative paints a deceptive portrait of an America in steep, irreversible decline, due to liberalism, immigration, and feminism. They sophistically claim to prefer democracy, while saying a Red Caesar may be necessary to break our country’s red/blue political stalemate. Of course, the impasse would be broken only by violently crushing the opposition and putting themselves in charge.
Here is a typical Casandra-like statement from New Founding, peddling foreboding messages that portray American democracy as a doomed system in need of revolutionary change:
We are at the end of a civilizational cycle. Technological change is undermining established norms and institutions. The post-Cold War international order is fracturing. Societal trust is collapsing, and political volatility is escalating. Coming years will bring turmoil and peril, but also great opportunity—perhaps the first in nearly a century—to forge new models and institutions that can shape the direction of Western civilization.
On its podcast, New Founding co-founder Matthew Peterson makes it clear what their “new model” would look like. “I have no problem saying, looking at the camera and saying, yeah, it’s time to talk about Caesarism, because that’s where we’re at.”
A guest on that podcast, Michael Anton of the Claremont Institute added, “Caesarism is a Gordian Knot solution…it’s possible that Caesarism offers a worthwhile solution…Caesarism, in which I think of as an authoritarian reconstructor of a society’s quality, is something that would solve, at least potentially, the problems that we face.”
In 2023, New Founding’s Josh Abbotoy said, “Basically, America is going to need a Protestant Franco.”
To prepare—and expedite—America’s collapse, New Founding has created a “start-up” venture. It is partially funded by tech billionaire Marc Andreessen. The puritanical plan—which is in motion—is to purchase large parcels of land in rural Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia. On that property, insular right wing Christian villages are being built, which they call “aligned communities”. It is part of what they call “the Highland Rim Project,” a multimillion-dollar effort that began in the Upper Cumberland region about 90 minutes northeast of Nashville. One local called the plan, “right-coded gentrification.”
On June 14, 2026, Politico Magazine wrote about the controversial venture:
The ethos of the Highland Rim Project…rejects that live-and-let-live mentality; its stated aim is to use public and private power — whether channeled through a government agency or a gas station — to promote a conservative and Christian way of life.
“English farming village-in-Appalachia feel,” NF’s Josh Abbotoy said of his desired look.
There are currently four charter communities. Abbotoy claims the project, which kicked off in 2024, has “purchased or contracted to purchase over 4,000 acres of land,” which it has subdivided into 200 lots of varying sizes. “About half of those lots have already been purchased or are currently under contract.”
The final piece of this problematic puzzle is Vice President JD Vance, whose grubby fingerprints are all over Project 2025. His shallow, new memoir, “Communion”, is strategically designed to launder Project 2025’s backward and unpalatable views into a softer philosophy Americans can digest.
He’s pushing many of the same bigoted beliefs spewed by Rev. Wilson, The Claremont Institute, The Heritage Foundation and New Founding—all organizations he is linked to. However, Vance is pretending his divisive views are in the service of unifying the country.
In an uncritical July 3 puff piece, written by Washington Post religion editor Matthew Schmitz, Vance said:
“I do think in a very foundational sense the country is a Christian nation…The United States is becoming more divided against itself. And I think, again, this is the fruit of secular liberalism.”
“If an ideology was advertised as promoting unity and openness and tolerance, and in fact it has created division and discord, maybe we should try something else. And I think that something else is to return to the Christian foundation of the country.”
Vance is an enigmatic figure. His wife Usha is Indian and Hindu. Yet, the crowd he embraces is racist, undemocratic and intolerant. They hold narrow-minded beliefs like those peddled by New Founding resident and podcaster Andrew Isker: “Jew and Gentile as categories of people has ceased to exist. There are now only Christians and unbelievers.” Isker also said,“Foreigners out, foreigners out, America for Americans, foreigners out.”
Where does JD Vance’s family fit into this hateful, exclusionary world? Does he think Usha and his children will get a special pass?
Vance and his wife are educated professionals. Does Vance secretly agree when New Founding resident and podcaster Jay Engel spews, “People who call me racist are innately incapable of comprehending the extent to which I detest the specific impact of college educated white women on the culture of the world around me.”
What gives me hope this July 4th are the proud patriots resisting New Founding’s efforts of Christian dominion. In a 2024 podcast, New Founding co-founder, Nate Fischer said, “Our goal is something where we actually have the concentration where we can control the town – or, in this case of the people there, it’s a town that’s already values aligned.”
Fortunately, even in rural Jackson County, Tennessee–which voted 81-percent for Trump in 2024–there is a revulsion to New Founding’s values.
On America’s 250th birthday I salute Phil Williams, a News 5 Nashville reporter who aired a devastating exposé on New Founding’s Christian colony. When the thugs at New Founding tried to smear his work, Williams didn’t back down. “Almost all of my reporting was based on their own words. They have one public message for most of America. There’s a whole different message in their podcast environment.”
Tonight, I’ll launch a few fireworks for Linda McNew, who resides near the Gainesboro, Tennessee colony. Describing herself as, “an absolute full-force conservative Christian woman,” she bravely said of New Founding, “They’re antisemitic, anti-Black, anti-Native American. They don’t want anything except what they think. It’s about moving here and finding power. They’ve got big bucks behind them.”
I’ll toot a July 4th horn for the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce, which Politico Magazine described as, “not exactly a bastion of woke progressivism.” The Chamber rejected New Founding’s bid to join the organization, citing “public statements [that] are incongruent with the mission, vision, and values of the chamber.”
Finally, I’ll applaud the many business owners who have placed signs in their windows reading, “Gainesboro: You belong here,” to highlight their opposition to what they see as the colony’s exclusionary vision.
These heroes may not agree with me on everything, but they do represent the America I love. It’s why Project 2025’s intolerant vision will eventually falter, and JD Vance’s divisive career will ultimately collapse.
Most of us still want to vote for our leaders, embrace personal liberty, choose our own beliefs, select our own family, free of government harassment and interference, and ultimately mind our own damn business.
Happy Independence Day! May the American experiment thrive another 250 years!