Press Releases
REPORT: ‘Project 2025’ Manifesto Co-Author Stephen Moore Has Toxic History of Misogynistic, Racist, and Anti-Social Security Rhetoric
WASHINGTON, DC — Serious credibility problems continue to mount for the Heritage Foundation’s extreme right-wing 2025 Presidential Transition Project, also known as Project 2025. Following Accountable.US’ report exposing Project 2025’s deep ties to the January 6th insurrection, the government watchdog’s latest report examines the controversial and troubling past of conservative pundit Stephen Moore who co-authored Project 2025’s mandate against the U.S. Treasury Department.
Moore’s involvement in Project 2025 – let alone as a major policy contributor – should give anyone serious pause before treating this effort as a credible one, given his history of racially charged and misogynist rhetoric, his personal problems with taxes, and his longtime crusade to end Social Security as we know it.
Project 2025 is all about forcing a far-right agenda onto everyday Americans – so it’s no wonder they tapped a notorious Social Security opponent like Stephen Moore to help write their policy schemes."
Accountable.US’ Tony Carrk
“Moore dedicated his career to slashing Social Security benefits and taxes for billionaires when he wasn’t busy belittling women and people of color. With extremists like Moore calling the shots, Project 2025 may not have any credibility, but unfortunately, they have limitless resources from the dark money Leonard Leo network to undermine the health and retirement security of millions of Americans,” added Carrk.
Among the lowlights from Moore’s career detailed in Accountable.US’ report and first reported by The Guardian:
- In 2019, Moore was forced to withdraw as Trump’s nominee to the Federal Reserve amid controversy over his long history of sexist comments, drawing opposition from members of his own party. Even as he was stepping down, Moore told Trump, “‘I am always at your disposal.’”
- Moore supported privatizing Social Security, has called the crucial program a “Ponzi scheme,” and even told a classroom of students that they should march on Washington and burn their Social Security cards.
- Moore wrote that white males were the “new oppressed minority on college campuses” and that if women “were so oppressed and offended,” they wouldn’t show up “in droves in tight skirts to the keg parties.”
- Moore described a bill addressing pay equality as being a “laughably bad idea,” with the real crisis being stagnated male wages—Moore even suggested women making more than men could be “disruptive to family stability” as men would become “economically expendable.”
- Moore said that Black families are replacing men with a “welfare check” and increased earnings for Black women make men “financially expendable.”
- Moore authored a parody column in which then-Senator Trent Lott begged Jesse Jackson for forgiveness and endorsed reparations for “‘every American with ‘even a drop of African Blood’” to be paid for with “‘a 20 percent ‘white-millionaire income-tax surcharge.’”
- At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2011, Moore complimented a young woman for getting into a “hard school” like UCLA, adding, “you’re not even Asian!”
Accountable.US has been documenting Project 2025 since its launch to expose the sprawling dark money network, key funders, and conservative figures behind the extreme right effort that threatens our democracy and fundamental protections for millions of Americans.
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