I Just Found the Police State Version of Project 2025

Project Esther cynically uses the fight against anti-semitism to encourage Trump’s darkest instincts

“The virulently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-American groups comprising the so-called pro-Palestinian movement inside the United States are exclusively pro-Palestine and — more so — pro-Hamas. They are part of a highly organized, global Hamas Support Network (HSN) and therefore effectively a terrorist support network.”

Prisoners rounded up to be prepared for insertion into their 80-200-person cell/cage by CECOT officers/thugs. Image public domain from public court documents (pdf): “J.G.G., et al., Plaintiffs, v. DONALD J. TRUMP, in his official capacity as President of the United States, et al..”; Image duotone created by author.

The opening quote for this report is derived from a formal policy document¹ by the Heritage Foundation,² the same folks who gave you the warm and fuzzy Project 2025.³

I found this policy document, called Project Esther, while doing stupid internet things. The document, released in 2024, is named after a Biblical character who helped prevent a Jewish genocide, but it has its own sinister intent.

Like its big daddy, Project 2025, the much smaller Project Esther outlines a series of autocratic policies that its anonymous authors (probably Stephen Miller) say should be implemented if a Republican takes office in 2025. Well, as you are painfully aware, a Republican, of sorts, did steal into the Oval Office with the help of a right-wing propaganda network and Elon Musk’s far-right Twitter machine.

The mad king who took over is a Republican in Name Only (aka RINO). He understands Republican policy about as well as I understand the physics behind an exploding SpaceX Starship rocket.

The only policy the mad king is interested in is how to wield power in as many unconstitutional ways as possible and settle old scores.

That’s fine with Project Esther’s authors, because all that mad grievance meshes well with the Christo-nationalism espoused by the Heritage Foundation.

A quick perusal of Project Esther’s icky innards helps explain the motivations behind some of the frenetic activity of the mad king’s minions, who are:

• Blackmailing universities⁴ to force them to eliminate DEI and intimidate Muslim students.

• Hunting down Muslims⁵ and others who profess any kind of anti-Israel stance.

• Blackmailing legal firms⁶ into providing pro bono legal services in support of the regime’s intimidation efforts.

• Earmarking funds for offshore concentration camps and significantly expanding Gitmo.⁷

• Creating an international system of gulags, the first of which, CENTO in El Salvador, has been joined by a still unknown location in Rwanda, as reported by the über-diligent Marisa Kabas.⁸

Many of the regime’s actions are derived from documents that predate the election. We now know two of them: Project 2025 and Project Esther. These documents have been on the laptop of every Christo Nationalist sycophant for some time, ready to be unleashed quickly and terribly with as little court oversight as possible.

Project Esther uses “antisemitism” as a cover to establish a Christo-nationalist police state that, in the end, will probably make Gilead of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale feel like Norway in comparison if it’s left unchecked.⁹

I’ll be quoting extensively from Project Esther for much of this article.

I began this essay with Project Esther’s introduction, which, essentially, describes everyone who protests on behalf of Palestinians as part of a terrorist support network. Referring to all Gaza protesters, the document’s introduction says:

They are part of a highly organized, global Hamas Support Network (HSN) and therefore effectively a terrorist support network.”

Project Esther’s authors made that up. There is no significant “Hamas Support Network” operating in the United States. Joe Biden’s version of the Treasury Department identified several individuals,¹⁰ front groups, and “charities” that they accused of being involved in activities related to Hamas (see this footnote¹¹ for a list). They found a few bad guys (maybe), but it was hardly a sprawling network.

It was a few guys. That’s it.

A study released by The George Washington University claims that there is a substantial Hamas terrorist presence in the United States, but details are scant. You can find the PDF here, but I can assure you that there is no meat on those bones. It names a few individuals, then concludes that they’re everywhere.

This is a little like me finding a bad leaf of lettuce in my salad and declaring war on all the world’s Romaine.

It seems reasonable to say that Project Esther’s authors peeked into the George Washington University document and the Treasury Department’s tiny arrest record of Hamas instigators, then decided that was a sufficient excuse to demand mass arrests of anyone marching with a raised fist at the Israeli consulate in New York City.

This means that, by adopting Project Esther as part of its formal policy, the regime might eventually consider me part of that support network, even though I think Hamas‘s leaders are repugnant.

I also consider Netanyahu’s government a repugnant organization, which is probably where the regime will point as it collects my things and sends me to one of its foreign concentration camps. Sucks that I don’t know Spanish.¹² Or Kinyarwanda,¹³ for that matter.

Luckily, I don’t have a lot of things, and, since I had a nasty major medical event recently, I’m going to be a very demanding prisoner of war as I scream incessantly against the prison walls about my shitty health, Netanyahu’s ongoing atrocities, and Joe Rogan’s many feral guests.

Mass arrests are not yet occurring. The regime is easing the American public slowly into the concept of a police state. You don’t want to rush these things. Things seem rushed to alarmed progressives, but most Americans are fidgeting over the sudden new shipping price increases on Temu, not about some Muslim kid from Columbia University getting detained without due process.

The regime has begun the process by arresting students, usually Middle Eastern, who have voiced support for Palestinians during the Gaza carnage. It’s already blowing off the courts that are trying to enforce constitutional rights and due process. Most of us are waiting for that day in the very near future when the regime gives the Supreme Court the mad king’s royal middle finger.

Anyone who studies history knows the progression. It starts with a few arrests. A few Americans will howl, then move on to trying to figure out how to buy toys for Christmas after Chinese shipments grind to a halt.¹⁴

The next stage centers around the continued buildup of their case against Americans who protest:

The HSN’s strategic purpose inside the United States is to generate internal political pressure to compel the United States government to change its long-standing policy of support for Israel.

This sentence starts with a fallacy because it assumes a strong HSN that, in fact, has fewer members than your local JD Vance fan club. It then ends with the ridiculous and unsubstantiated claim that there is a movement afoot to end support for Israel.

There’s a substantial difference between wanting to see the genocidal leader of one of America’s closest allies meet the heavy hand of justice and wanting to see Israel and its people hurt. International support for Israel was strong immediately following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. It’s not the fault of protesters that Netanyahu killed off that goodwill by killing tens of thousands of civilians and mercilessly destroying Gaza’s infrastructure.

Project Esther’s fear-mongering continues thusly:

Within the United States, the HSN receives the indispensable support of a vast network of activists and funders with a much more ambitious, insidious goal — the destruction of capitalism and democracy.

That’s rich.

Project Esther is just getting started:

As their ends align, the HSN and its nihilist supporters indoctrinate the gullible into supporting Hamas and hating Israel to create the street mayhem that serves their ends.

Isn’t that clever? Whose ends, exactly? And if there is anyone in this world who should not be declaring someone a nihilist, it is the American jihadist lunatics who now control the levers of power and the mind of a barely there president.

Oh, one more thing. Street mayhem? What were the Vietnam protests? A civil war?

I’m sorry, but it gets even worse:

This network is nominally American…

Nope. It’s not. I just demonstrated how it’s not, but do go on:

“…but benefits from the support and training of America’s overseas enemies. Its members hope to achieve their goals by taking advantage of our open society, corrupting our education system, leveraging the American media, coopting the federal government, and relying on the American Jewish community’s complacency.”

Take a moment to review that quote. Can you now recognize what is happening as the regime has undertaken a blackmail campaign against universities and the media, including the recent multibillion-dollar lawsuit against CBS and 60 Minutes?

And what better, easier, more efficient way could there possibly be to eliminate the disadvantages of an open society than ending it?

Next, we’ll move on to Project Esther’s Mission Statement, which will look familiar to anyone who has taken a serious interest in Project 2025:

Mission Statement.

The National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism leads a coalition to dismantle the infrastructure that sustains the HSN and associated movements’ antisemitic violence inside the United States of America within 12 to 24 months to restore equal protection under the law for all Americans.

Instead of Project 2025’s mandate to dismantle the infrastructure of government, Project Esther aims to dismantle the infrastructure of protest. The coalition to accomplish this, of course, is the new regime, now just a tiny bit more than 100 excruciatingly long days old, as it lays waste to American norms of justice.

As you can see, there’s a specific goal: 12 to 24 months. This means we really only do have 12–24 months to stop them from turning the United States into an authoritarian state.

Don’t believe me? Let’s check in some more with our friends and their Project Esther document:

Our intent is to organize and guide all willing and able partners in a coordinated effort that employs all available resources to combat the scourge of antisemitism in the United States. Our hope is that this effort will represent an opportunity for public–private partnership when a willing Administration occupies the White House.

The last sentence is the same kind of language used by the creators of Project 2025.

This is not a coincidence.

Project Esther shamefully disguises itself as a challenge to anti-Semitic groups. It isn’t much different than a Hamas terrorist using Gaza hospitals for cover:

HSOs have infiltrated their ideology into the U.S. education system across all levels. It is pervasive.

No, it’s not, but, sigh, go on with your blathering, dearest Esther:

The U.S. education system fosters antisemitism under the guise of “pro-Palestinian,” anti-Israel, anti-Zionist narratives across universities, high schools, and elementary schools, often under the umbrella or within the rubric of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and similar Marxist ideology.

Yes, you read that right, even elementary schools! The pro-Hamas hordes are everywhere. Action is needed, and the current regime is happy to oblige.

The Project Esther document eats up several pages of anti-education diatribes as it builds its case that there are legions of Hamas-adjacent terrorists at the gates. Stuff like this:

In short, these “professors” in universities and colleges, often insulated in the comfortable halls of social sciences departments and Middle East/North Africa or Islamic studies programs, are decidedly antisemitic and hostile to Israel. The result is that additional professors and teachers, social activists, and other “experts” across all professional fields are indoctrinated into Hamas’s antisemitic ideology, which then trickles down and permeates our elementary and secondary education systems, proliferating their toxic tropes throughout curricula — and the minds of American youth.

Yes. Indeed. Just the other day, my third-grade nephew launched into an anti-Israel soliloquy that I thought would never end. I patted him on the head, then told him not to talk that way at school if he wants to avoid prison time.

I’ve been studying writing styles since I was in third grade, when I first read Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.¹⁵ Here’s my quick take on much of Project Esther: It was lifted directly off Stephen Miller’s¹⁶ laptop.

Stephen Miller, who is now the mad king’s deputy chief of staff, is sure to have had a hand in these types of paragraphs belching out of Project Esther:

“It should be obvious at this point even to the casual observer that there is an active cabal of Jew-haters, Israel-haters, and America-haters in Washington — all apparently aligned with the far left, progressive movement. Given their leftist orbit, they are likely funded and supported by the same backers that support the HSN and its HSOs,”

It’s easy to make fun of people who talk about cabals in this way, but there’s real danger here. The authors declare that the massive Hamas terror network is aligned with leftists and the entire progressive movement.

Since I despise Hamas but consider myself a progressive, do I have a defamation case? These guys sue everybody. Why can’t I? If you’re a hungry young lawyer who is sick of this shit, give me a call. We’ll do lunch, but you’re buying.

The connections Project Esther’s authors make are inherently dangerous. It wouldn’t mean much if this were a manifesto of a crazy man hiding in his mother’s basement. It would mean something to the people he subsequently guns down with an automatic weapon, but he’d be relegated to the history of outraged lunatics.

Instead, these people have access to the red button that can launch hundreds of thermonuclear weapons. So I think we should read more of their manifesto, don’t you?

The HSN and HSOs have made prolific and unchecked use of social media platforms, such as TikTok, across the entire digital ecosystem to spout antisemitic propaganda.

“Unchecked” is a concerning word when it comes to the media, social or otherwise. After all, this article is as unchecked as one can be.¹⁷

Project Esther has a more serious and dangerous intent than its battle with free speech, however:

“The “Hamas Caucus” in the House of Representatives consists of a core group of roughly a dozen of the more “progressive” Members. They include Rashida Tlaib (D–MI); Ilhan Omar (D–MN); Cori Bush (D–MO);15 Jamaal Bowman (D–NY);16 Summer Lee (D–PA); Ayana Pressley (D–MA); Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–NY); Greg Casar (D–TX); Andre Carson (D–IN); Hank Johnson (D–GA); Jan Schakowsky (D–IL); Mark Pocan (D–WI); and Pramila Jayapal (D– WA).”

Now, they’re naming names of people they consider part of the terror network that they claim is threatening America.

The “Hamas Caucus” has support in the Senate from Bernie Sanders (I–VT); Chris Van Hollen (D–MD); Elizabeth Warren (D–MA); and, to varying degrees, several others.

The dummies had a chance to throw Senator Van Hollen into an El Salvadoran gulag when he visited the political prisoner, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, but I guess we’re not quite there yet.

Project Esther’s stated goals begin with what it calls a strategic objective:

— Dismantle the pro-Hamas support network’s infrastructure across America, including but not limited to propaganda, organizations, funds, access, communications, platforms, and people.

I don’t know how you dismantle people without the help of a villain from a Coen Brothers movie, but it sort of gives me a shudder to think about it. The document then lists eleven desired end states:

ES1:HSO propaganda eradicated from the U.S. education system at all levels.
ES2: HSOs unable to disseminate propaganda inside the United States.
ES3: HSOs no longer have access to U.S. open society.
ES4: HSOs no longer have access to the U.S. economy.
ES5: HSN loses access to Congress.
ES6: Executive branch confronts, pursues, and prosecutes HSO legal and criminal violations.
ES7: HSOs’ communications disrupted.
ES8: HSOs rendered unable to conduct or sustain demonstrations and protests.
ES9: U.S. Jewish community (and allies) unified against HSOs.
ES10: American public broadly united against HSN/HSOs.
ES11: Critical vulnerabilities exploited.¹⁸

Project Esther next lists a series of “Necessary Conditions.” I won’t list those because they’ll eat too much into the official and carefully recorded Substack reading time of this story, but here’s the darkest one:

Potential demonstrators fear affiliation with HSOs.

That also reads like a goal, but these guys aren’t the sharpest tools in their MAGA granddad’s shed. It’s a goal that we should take as seriously as the regime is taking Project 2025. They want to instill a fear of protesting.

Remember, Project Esther and Project 2025 are both written by the same organization. The Heritage Foundation has a history of seeing policy proposals accomplished, including the early editions of Obamacare, which was originally proposed by the Heritage Foundation a couple of decades ago (long story, see footnotes¹⁹).

Project 2025 rolled out almost the moment the misfit of Mar-a-Lago denuded the Resolute desk.

Project Esther has been rolling out, too, with more to come. According to the AP,²⁰ Republican goals for the upcoming fiscal year budget are:

1 million deportations, 100,000 detention beds — including for families and children. It calls for 10,000 more Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and investigators.

Much of this will be directed toward migrants from south of the border. But Project Esther makes it clear that there will be an associated effort to harass, remove, and possibly incarcerate people for their political beliefs. Today, Gaza. Tomorrow, who knows? Lovers of paper straws, perhaps.

The regime has already established one concentration camp in El Salvador. Military contractors are queuing up at Mar-a-Lago castle to encourage the mad king to let them in on the exciting new concept of foreign-based concentration camps.²¹

Everyone thought Project 2025 was a bluff, too. But the truth is, both Project 2025 and Project Esther are being implemented now. Even worse, Project Esther reads like a Stephen Miller frenzy of fear, even though it is based on fiction. Project Esther is a working document being implemented by those lurking within the halls of power.

And these are not normal people. These are people who wear Christo-nationalist tattoos, kill their dogs, share military plans on Signal, encourage the spread of measles and other communicable diseases, and worship a man who worships himself.

Most of them probably have a shortcut to Project Esther next to a picture of Jesus on their smartphones.

Ignore it at your peril.

Notes

The obvious question you may have is, “Wait. Are there more of these things?” The short answer is probably yes. I’m sifting through the Heritage Foundation’s archives. When I have something to report, I’ll push out another article.

You can find the original Project Esther PDF here. They can try to make it disappear like they do our awesome immigrants, but don’t worry. I uploaded it to a cloud server. The internet never forgets.

As a final affront, Project Esther dares to quote Martin Niemoller’s famous poem at the end of their document:

“First they came for the socialists,
and I did not speak out
— because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I did not speak out
— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I did not speak out
— because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me —
and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Here’s a proper update of that poem:

First they came for the Central Americans,
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Central American.

Then they came for the Muslims,
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Muslim.

Then they came for the resisters,
and I did not speak out
because I was not a resister.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak for me.

Don’t be fooled into thinking all of this is new. Americans support the detention of immigrants, or the preexisting infrastructure for doing so would not be in place:

https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/countries/americas/united-states

This attitude needs to change.

More on Project 2025

See my progress report on Project 2025. It’s already woefully outdated because it was written a little more than a month ago:

Most of the content of this article has also been published on Medium’s This America publication.

Thanks for reading!

Elbows 🇨🇦 Up!

This one’s important. If you got this far, please, restack it, then restack it again.

Footnotes

1. “Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism.” 2019. The Heritage Foundation. 2019. https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/report/project-esther-national-strategy-combat-antisemitism.

2. “Progressivism | the Heritage Foundation.” 2019. The Heritage Foundation. 2019. https://www.heritage.org/progressivism.

3. Ruminato. 2025. “A Progress Report on the Destruction of America.” Ruminato.com. Ruminato. April 2025. https://www.ruminato.com/p/a-progress-report-on-the-destruction.

4. “U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights Sends Letters to 60 Universities under Investigation for Antisemitic Discrimination and Harassment.” 2025. U.S. Department of Education. March 10, 2025. https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-educations-office-civil-rights-sends-letters-60-universities-under-investigation-antisemitic-discrimination-and-harassment.

5. Sandoval, Polo, and Gloria Pazmino. 2025. “A Columbia Student Detained by the Trump Administration at a Naturalization Appointment Has Been Freed on Bond.” CNN. April 30, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/30/us/vermont-judge-orders-release-of-mohsen-mahdawi/index.html.

6. “Trump’s Executive Orders against Law Firms.” 2025. The Free Speech Center. April 21, 2025. https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/trumps-executive-orders-against-law-firms/.

7. Zimmer, Cassandra, and Cassandra Zimmer. 2025. “The Offshore Detention Gamble: A Billion-Dollar Shift to Gitmo - Niskanen Center.” Niskanen Center - Improving Policy, Advancing Moderation. February 5, 2025. https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-offshore-detention-gamble-a-billion-dollar-shift-to-gitmo/.

8. Marisa Kabas is in the early stages of uncovering a deeply Orwellian new catch phrase: “third-country-nationals” (TCNs), who will be exported to other nations, including El Salvador, but less famously, so far, Rwanda, which she reports to have accepted ten TCNs sent by the United States. The U.S. payed a “resettlement” fee, of course.

Marisa Kabas. 2025. “US ‘Relocates’ Iraqi Refugee to Rwanda via New Diplomatic Arrangement.” The Handbasket. 2025. https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/us-rwanda-relocates-iraqi-refugee-omar-ameen.

9. That means, dear reader, more protests by you. The good news is that this burgeoning protest movement is proving to be like the flash mobs of not so long ago: spontaneous, exciting, and hey, a great way to meet people. They’re happening all over the place, protesting everything everywhere all at once.

10. “Treasury Targets Significant International Hamas Fundraising Network.” 2024. U.S. Department of the Treasury. October 7, 2024. https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2632.

11. List of Hamas organizations identified by the Biden administration’s Treasury Department as fronts for promoting Hamas and/or Hamas terrorist activities:

• Al Ahmar Trading Group, based in Yemen.

• Al Ahmar Oils Supply and Distribution, based in Yemen.

• Sama International Media, based in Yemen.

• Al Salam Trading and Agencies General Establishment, based in Yemen.

• Saba, Trade & Investment S.R.O., based in Czechia.

• Sabafon International SAL (Offshore), based in Lebanon.

• Sabaturk Dis Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, based in Türkiye.

• Vivid Enerji Yatirimlari Anonim Sirketi, based in Türkiye.

• Investrade Portfoy Yonetimi Anonim Sirketi, based in Türkiye.

Also, according to the Treasury Department, the following individuals were considered targets for prosecution (descriptions are in the words of the Treasury Department, not mine):

• Mohammad Hannoun (Hannoun) is an Italy-based Hamas member who established the Charity Association of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, or Associazione Benefica di Solidarietà con il Popolo Palestinese (ABSPP), a sham charity in Italy which ostensibly raises funds for humanitarian purposes, but in reality helps bankroll Hamas’s military wing.

• Majed al-Zeer (al-Zeer) is the senior Hamas representative in Germany, who is also one of the senior Hamas members in Europe and has played a central role in the terrorist group’s European fundraising. .

• Adel Doughman (Doughman) is in charge of Hamas activity in Austria and is another one of the most prominent Hamas representatives in Europe.

The Treasury Department has also identified at least one bank in Gaza for prosecution:

Hamas uses unlicensed banks, like Al-Intaj Bank (Al-Intaj), to continue to fund internal operations and to skirt international sanctions by operating outside the international financial system.

None of the Treasury Department targets are based in the United States.

“Treasury Targets Significant International Hamas Fundraising Network.” 2024. U.S. Department of the Treasury. October 7, 2024. https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2632?source=post_page-----306957402fe7---------------------------------------.

12. Like all good keyboard warriors against the regime, I am furiously making my way through Duolingo Spanish lessons so I can converse with my El Salvadoran captors about my favorite episodes of “Naked and Afraid.”

13. “Kinyarwanda in Rwanda.” 2023. UNESCO WAL. 2023. https://en.wal.unesco.org/countries/rwanda/languages/kinyarwanda-2.

14. Darmiento, Laurence. 2025. “Traffic at the Port of Los Angeles Already Dropping amid Tariffs.” Los Angeles Times. April 24, 2025. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-04-24/traffic-at-the-port-of-los-angeles-set-to-plunge-amid-tariffs-disruption.

15. I wasn’t a prodigy. Starting at the earliest imaginable age, I have always loved reading and writing. Luckily for me, old classic hardcovers littered my parents’ home. What lured me in were the illustrations. Then the words. I’m confident I see Miller’s words in Project Esther.

16. For more on Stephen Miller, read my article here on Ruminato:

Meet Stephen Miller — the Last Man Standing

17. Y’all think I can afford an editor? I don’t even make you pay to read this stuff.

18. The “ES1,” etc., is their original formatting. Someone should teach these clowns that most modern software creates numbered lists as soon as you type “1.”

19. The Heritage Foundation proposed an early version of Obamacare that was later adapted as RomneyCare in Massachusetts. The original plan included a ban on patient rejections based on pre-existing conditions. The plan’s original mandate required all Americans to participate or face a tax penalty (the Supreme Court declared that part unconstitutional when the plan came to life as the Affordable Care Act).

The Heritage Foundation abandoned the plan, then turned against it when a brown-skin man proposed it as a peace offering to Republicans instead of a larger ideal of nationalized healthcare, which has long since disappeared. This was in those early, heady Obama days when he still dreamed of a purple nation. He was unable to grasp (like me, to be honest) the level of white backlash against his presidency.

20. Mascaro, Lisa. 2025. “Republicans Want to Pour Billions into Trump’s Mass Deportation Plan.” AP News. April 29, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/trump-tax-cuts-bill-deportations-asylum-fee-68e358a73e01941af50984de8c85ea31.

21. Burns, Dasha, and Myah Ward. 2025. “Military Contractors Pitch Unprecedented Prison Plan for Detained Immigrants.” POLITICO. Politico. April 11, 2025. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/11/military-contractors-prison-plan-detained-immigrants-erik-prince-00287208.

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