From the Business Plot to Project 2025

The Depression Era: Direct Action

1929Crash

The Great Depression Begins

1 in 4 Americans unemployed. Families in shantytowns. The wealthy see their power threatened by a restive, desperate public — and by a government that might finally side with workers.

Context

1933Plot

The Business Plot

Wall Street financiers allegedly recruit Marine General Smedley Butler to lead 500,000 veterans in a march on Washington and install a fascist-style puppet government. Butler refuses and reports the plot to Congress. Key figures named: Grayson M.-P. Murphy (Morgan banker), Irénée du Pont, John W. Davis (J.P. Morgan's chief counsel), John Jacob Raskob (former DNC chairman). No one is prosecuted.

Coup AttemptDu Pont · Morgan · Raskob

Plot fails → same cast pivots to "respectable" opposition

1934League

American Liberty League Founded

Same financiers found the Liberty League — a "constitutional" organization to fight the New Deal. Du Pont family funds ~30% of its budget. Distributes 5 million+ publications, builds 345 college chapters, mounts legal challenges to the Wagner Act arguing it violates property rights. Mission: "defend and uphold the Constitution... foster the right to work, earn, save and acquire property."

Liberty LeagueDu Pont 30% fundingWagner Act challenges

1936Defeat

Roosevelt Wins in a Landslide

FDR wins 46 of 48 states. The Liberty League dissolves within months. But the donor network does not. The same funders quietly redirect money into new vehicles.

Turning Point

Building the Infrastructure: 1946–1971

1946FEE

Foundation for Economic Education

America's first free-market "think tank." Trustees drawn from the executive ranks of General Motors, Chrysler, and DuPont. Liberty League veterans Jasper Crane (DuPont VP) and J. Howard Pew join its board. The academic wrapper begins here.

FEEGM · Chrysler · DuPont

1943AEI

American Enterprise Institute Founded

Founded as the Liberty League collapses. Carries the same anti-New Deal agenda in a more academic wrapper. Later investigated by Congress in 1950 as a "big business pressure organization." Pivots to think tank framing to avoid lobbying registration. Still operates today — board members have chaired both BIO and PhRMA (Big Pharma trade groups). Purdue Pharma donated $800,000+.

AEIPharma funding

1958JBS

John Birch Society Founded

Charter members include Fred Koch (father of Charles and David), Harry Bradley (whose foundation becomes one of conservatism's largest funders), and Pierre S. du Pont III — a direct family link across three decades of organizations. Fred Koch had built refineries for both Stalin and Hitler before becoming a fierce anti-communist.

John Birch SocietyKoch · Bradley · Du Pont

1971Powell

The Powell Memorandum

Lewis Powell's confidential memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lays out a blueprint: corporations must systematically fund think tanks, law schools, and media to shift public opinion and the judiciary. "You don't need an army. You need a system." Two months later, Nixon appoints Powell to the Supreme Court.

BlueprintUS Chamber of Commerce

Donor threads — same families across 90 years

Du Pont Family

Business Plot (1933)
Liberty League 30% funder
FEE trustee (Jasper Crane)
John Birch Society (Pierre III)

Mellon-Scaife

Andrew Mellon: Liberty League
R.M. Scaife: Heritage founding
$23M+ to Heritage by 1998
$340M total conservative giving

Koch Family

Fred Koch: JBS charter member
Charles: JBS member to 1968
Koch Fndn: Heritage + Fed. Society
Tens of millions in giving

Bradley / Olin

Harry Bradley: JBS founder
Bradley Fndn: Heritage funder
Olin Fndn: Federalist Society
Tens of millions in giving

The System Is Built: 1973–2000

1973Heritage

Heritage Foundation Founded

Richard Mellon Scaife contributes ~$900,000 in the founding year — a 42% share of Heritage's entire budget. Koch, Bradley, and Olin foundations add tens of millions more over the following decades. By 1998, Scaife's foundations alone have given Heritage $23 million.

Heritage FoundationScaife · Koch · Bradley · Olin

1979Mandate

Mandate for Leadership — First Edition

Heritage publishes the first "governing manual" for a conservative president: a department-by-department plan for deregulation, tax cuts, and shrinking federal agencies. Reagan hands a copy to every cabinet member on Day One. His administration adopts nearly two-thirds of its 2,000 recommendations. Reagan later calls Heritage "a vital force" in his presidency.

Heritage FoundationReagan — Day One

1982Fed. Soc.

Federalist Society Founded

Funded by Koch, Bradley, and Olin foundations. Begins placing "originalist" law clerks and judges across the federal judiciary. Over 40 years, moves originalist constitutional theory from the legal fringe to the Supreme Court majority. Today, all six Republican-appointed justices — Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, Roberts — have Federalist Society ties.

Federalist SocietyJudicial pipelineKoch · Bradley · Olin

Execution: 2021–2025

2022P2025

Project 2025 Launched

Heritage coordinates 45+ conservative organizations to produce a new 900-page Mandate for Leadership — a department-by-department manual for dismantling the federal administrative state, written by 350+ former officials. Simultaneously, Heritage builds a database of 10,000+ pre-vetted loyalists to fill ~4,000 administration appointments. The America First Policy Institute prepares 298 additional draft executive orders.

Heritage · AFPI · ClaremontPersonnel is Policy

2025Day One

Schedule F Reinstated — Day One

Trump's first executive order reinstates Schedule F, reclassifying ~50,000 career civil servants as at-will employees. DOGE begins eliminating positions. Heritage's personnel database activates. Federalist Society-vetted judges — including a Supreme Court majority — provide the legal backstop. The structure built over 90 years is now operational.

OperationalSchedule F · Unitary Executive

From the Business Plotto Project 2025

From the Business Plot
to Project 2025