Virginia's ties to Project 2025 could influence college campuses
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Virginians with ties to Project 2025, a controversial Republican plan to overhaul the U.S. government, are ending up on governor-appointed university boards.
Why it matters: These boards are powerful in shaping how colleges operate by controlling their budgets, approving curriculum changes and creating policies around firing professors.
The latest: House Speaker Don Scott wants Gov. Youngkin to remove any appointees who support Project 2025, calling them "extremists" who are "facilitating the normalization of Trump's MAGA ideology."
- In an Aug. 2 letter, Scott asked Youngkin to start with Lindsey Burke, who is on George Mason's Board of Visitors and wrote the policy agenda's 44-page section on education.
- That chapter calls for the elimination of the Department of Education, removing DEI policy requirements in higher ed, ending Title I funding for lower-income schools and ending student debt relief programs.
- It also says public school employees shouldn't be allowed to "keep secrets" about a child's gender identity from their parents.
Youngkin said no to Burke's removal because "there is no basis for doing so."
- He added that she's "a nationally recognized leader in education" whose appointment was unanimously confirmed by the legislature, including Scott, last year. The vote happened before Project 2025 was published.
- Youngkin spokesperson Christian Martinez told Axios the governor's state board appointees are "exceptionally qualified."
- "Claims to the contrary only serve to propagate unsubstantiated conspiracy theories and divert attention from the real issues Virginia families care about."
Catch up quick: Project 2025 is a 922-page plan from the conservative Heritage Foundation that zeroes in on what it wants in a hypothetical second Trump presidency.
- It includes expanding presidential power, shrinking or eliminating social safety net programs like food stamps, defunding public TV and radio stations and banning porn.
- While Trump has tried distancing himself from the policy agenda, calling it "seriously extreme," 31 writers served in the Trump administration, per Newsweek.
- Martinez didn't share whether Youngkin has read Project 2025 or what parts he agrees or disagrees with.
Of the nearly 40 Republicans listed on Project 2025, at least 11 have ties to Virginia, according to an Axios review. Among them:
- Virginia's former attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, who once backed state efforts to restrict birthright citizenship, per Politico.
- Bernard L. McNamee, a Richmond-based McGuireWoods partner who was a policy adviser to former Gov. George Allen.
- William L. Walton, who through Rappahannock Media publishes the Rappahannock News and the Culpeper Times.
Between the lines: Youngkin has also appointed people connected to the Heritage Foundation, which experts told VPM is not surprising due its role in conservative policy making.
- His George Mason appointments include at least six people with ties to Heritage, including Burke, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education.
- Kay Coles James, Heritage's former president, briefly served as Secretary of the Commonwealth and is a JMU board member.
- Youngkin appointed Ed Feulner, who co-founded Heritage, chairman of the Virginia Commission on Higher Education Board Appointments in 2022. He wrote Project 2025's afterword.
What we're watching: How these appointments play out in university board decisions in the next few years.