By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 11, 2024 ~

Last week, Wall Street On Parade published an article with this title: The Supreme Court Crowns a King, Immunizing Future Criminal Acts Under Project 2025 – a Right Wing Manifesto. We began the article with this:

“In the span of two business days, six of the nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court have radically altered American democracy. On Friday, those six right-wing justices gutted the ability of federal government agencies to protect the waters Americans drink, the air they breathe, their ability to impose food and drug safety rules and worker protections. On Monday, the same six effectively crowned the President of the United States a king by immunizing the President from criminal prosecution for any conduct that can be construed as official acts.”

This unprecedented action by six of the right-wing Supreme Court Justices appears to be laying the groundwork for the rollout of a 900-page playbook called “Project 2025” that would oust tens of thousands of government workers and replace them with “trained” conservatives vetted by the ultra-right Heritage Foundation, the creator of Project 2025. Three notable parts of the playbook are to put the next U.S. President (whom it expects to be Donald Trump) in direct charge of the U.S. Department of Justice and other key federal agencies, gut environmental protections, and make things a lot friendlier for the fossil fuel industry.

Trump is denying involvement in the creation of Project 2025. Journalist Judd Legum has published a listing of “the 31 authors and editors of Project 2025” that held positions in or had formal ties to the first Trump administration.

This is not the first time that the Heritage Foundation has handed a large bound volume of marching orders to a new President of the United States. In 1984, the then head of the Heritage Foundation, Ed Feulner, sat for an interview with C-SPAN. During the interview, C-SPAN host Brian Lamb holds up a fat bound volume with the title: “Mandate for Leadership II.” Feulner explains that this is the volume for the second term of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. The first “Mandate for Leadership,” says Feulner, was handed to Reagan’s key people “one week after the election” in 1980. Feulner adds: “It had a couple thousand very specific recommendations in there: this is what you can do by Executive Order, Mr. President. This is what a [cabinet] Secretary can do with the stroke of a pen. This is how we ought to reorganize his department. This is what a new tax bill ought to look like.”

According to people who have seen the 1980’s version of “Mandate for Leadership,” it included loyalty programs and domestic spying.

During the C-SPAN interview, with a proud smile on his face, Feulner shares that one year after the “Mandate for Leadership” was handed to the Reagan administration in 1980, “we were able to say that the Reagan administration had either begun or completely initiated and put in place more than 62 percent of the recommendations we had made.”

Feulner was President of the Heritage Foundation from 1977 to 2013 and remains on its Board of Trustees.

For just how subservient to the power brokers Reagan was, see this famous video in Michael Moore’s movie, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” where Treasury Secretary Donald Regan whispers in President Ronald Reagan’s ear while he is delivering a speech, and barks at him to “speed it up” — like President Reagan is merely a paid actor. The President doesn’t seem surprised or annoyed. He acts like he is accustomed to taking orders from his Treasury Secretary. Donald Regan had been the Chairman and CEO of Merrill Lynch, the largest Wall Street brokerage firm in terms of stockbroker headcount throughout much of the last century.  Regan first became Reagan’s Treasury Secretary and then his Chief of Staff. Regan was viewed by many as the Acting President of the United States.

According to Feulner in the C-SPAN interview, in 1984 the Heritage Foundation had a budget of $10 million. Its latest public 990 tax filing for 2022 shows that it had revenues of $106 million – making it exponentially more dangerous today than at the time Reagan was President.

The money from two branches of the billionaire Mellon banking/Gulf Oil fortune are moving this Heritage Foundation agenda along its dangerous path.

According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records, Timothy Mellon has given the astonishing sum of $75 million since July of last year to the Super PAC supporting Donald Trump, MAGA Inc.

Timothy Mellon, who will turn 82 on July 22, is the grandson of Andrew Mellon, who served as U.S. Treasury Secretary under three Presidents from 1921 to 1932 – a period that allowed a wild casino to take shape at Wall Street investment banks, culminating in the 1929 stock market crash, which ushered in the Great Depression. Today, Mellon Bank is known as BNY Mellon and trades publicly.

Another major source of Mellon family wealth came from its holdings in Gulf Oil and related companies. Gulf Oil was purchased by Chevron in 1984 for $13.3 billion.

According to Forbes, the Mellon family is currently worth $14.1 billion.

The Mellon family money has also poured into the Heritage Foundation, creators of the 180-day playbook for Trump, “Project 2025.” From 1985 through the latest public tax filing in 2022, the Sarah [Mellon] Scaife Foundation has contributed $35.765 million to the Heritage Foundation. Ed Feulner, the Heritage Foundation chief in the C-SPAN interview referenced above, has served as a Trustee on the Sarah [Mellon] Scaife Foundation for decades.

Sarah Mellon Scaife was the niece of former U.S. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. Her son, Richard [Mellon] Scaife, served as Vice Chairman on the Board of the Heritage Foundation for 29 years, from 1985 until his death on July 4, 2014. At the time of his death in 2014, Forbes put his net worth at $1.45 billion.

The Sarah Scaife Foundation has also funded many of the same climate-denial and fossil fuel-friendly groups as the Charles Koch network of billionaires.

For a look at how the climate-change deniers were emboldened by Trump’s election in 2016, see this rundown of remarks at the Heritage Foundation’s 2016 “Climate and Energy Policy Summit.”