You’ve got probably heard of Challenge 2025 however a U.S. Navy veteran is upping the ante with a brand new nationwide proposal he dubs ‘Challenge 2026’ that he believes is a step towards restoring steadiness within the American expertise.
Challenge 2025 garnered massive quantities of consideration in the course of the 2024 presidential marketing campaign when the political initiative and conservative blueprint penned by the Heritage Basis turned inherently tied to then-candidate Donald Trump’s marketing campaign, described by critics as a roadmap to protect and implement numerous insurance policies in a future Republican administration.
Trump’s 2024 opponent, ex-Vice President Kamala Harris, and Democrats persistently tried to tie Trump to the roughly 900-page playbook that touched on all kinds of American life together with Challenge 2025 proposes vital modifications throughout practically all areas of presidency together with immigration and border coverage, financial regulation, restructuring federal businesses, LGBTQ+ legal guidelines and protections, reproductive rights, social applications and extra.
Politicians and America’s ‘Roots’
Mike Bedenbaugh, who served within the Navy from 1982-87 as a Quartermaster on the USS South Carolina, is imploring Individuals to look previous partisanship and reinvigorate Individuals beliefs forward of the nation’s 250th birthday.
Naming his new mission so intently to the Challenge 2025 initiative was deliberate, he informed Army.com. Nonetheless, it was solely after he completed his personal literary draft that he turned aware about it and browse by means of “the 3-inch e-book” to search out that a lot of what the initiative lays out and what he aspires are synonymous with each other.
“They’re speaking about the identical points I am speaking about, the failures of how our republic is not functioning as nicely anymore,” Bedenbaugh stated. “However as an alternative of trying again on the foundational recipe that [George] Washington and the unique architects of our Structure set forth on have checks and balances and a free republic for people, they’re a top-down strategy that solely a powerful government may repair these issues.
“I used to be astonished that political leaders in our nation had so forgotten the roots of our American custom that they’d suppose that is the way in which to do it, and I personally suppose it’s totally harmful.”
Therefore, Bedenbaugh’s intentions contain elevating conservation and religion in liberty by means of what he describes as a bottom-up strategy, the place residents think about one another and in federalism.
“Completely different cultures, totally different of us can dwell throughout the umbrella of the Structure as we had been once we first fashioned,” he stated. “And we have to keep in mind that. In a nation of aspiration like ours, totally different folks have totally different aspirations. So long as they consider within the rule of regulation and the Structure, that is the aim of our society. And I simply needed to remind folks of that.”
‘Arduous Conversations’
Bedenbaugh jokingly analogized his personal life to the feather that floats aimlessly within the movie Forrest Gump.
He’s occupied myriad roles, from service member to heading a planning fee; metropolis council member to entrepreneur; and even working for Congress in 2024 in red-state South Carolina as an unbiased candidate, succumbing to a competitor’s marketing campaign fueled by cash from the “political get together machine.”
All that led to the self-described constitutional conservative changing into an creator, penning Reviving Our Republic: 95 Theses for the Way forward for America as a blueprint for the broader Challenge 2026 agenda.
“One thing’s going to get compromised,” he stated. “That is what I’ve seen occurring since 9/11, for the reason that assault on us within the World Commerce Heart and the Pentagon—the chance sure folks in energy used to pursue a extra world hegemonic coverage that I feel has put us in horrible hazard as a nation.
“ I feel it might be mounted however we simply want to start out having actual conversations concerning the genius of our foundational ideas and the way we will get to them comparatively simply. There’s going to be some onerous conversations.”
Wanted Reforms
A number of the reforms Bedenbaugh encourages embody:
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Time period limits in Congress to discourage profession politicians and encourage contemporary management.
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Giving residents a bigger voice over company cash to raised form public coverage.
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Curbing monopolies by means together with breaking apart concentrated energy in media, well being care and finance to revive truthful competitors.
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Reining within the military-industrial advanced which incorporates avoiding perpetual wars and returning to constitutional limits on navy engagement.
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Restoring fiscal self-discipline by means of federal spending controls and safeguarding future generations from unsustainable debt.
He additionally mentions the creation of a so-called Fulcrum Caucus, designed as a coalition of each new and independent-minded congressional members who will stand in opposition to the political duopoly. Even a caucus of 10 to twenty reformers may maintain the steadiness of energy in Congress, he stated.
“Service to the illustration of your constituents should not be a profession,” Bedenbaugh stated. “It must be a part-time job that you simply go do, identical to I did within the navy. I loved my 5 years and I got here again and left. And that is what representatives ought to do.”
‘Inspiration’ To Do Higher
He additionally feels strongly about international coverage and entanglements, as soon as extra harkening again to Washington and a view that American neutrality concerning different nations’ affairs is integral.
“Now, that completely is the alternative of isolationism,” he stated. “I’m not an isolationist as a result of the system we’ve got now—the military-industrial advanced, a lot cash going into the militarization of our society and expressing that abroad—has created a world the place we’ve got remoted ourselves from over half the world as a result of we are actually the enemies of these folks’s enemies.
“We have to discover ways to be extra impartial and an goal observer in order that our affect—our monetary affect and our commerce affect—may also help stabilize {our relationships} with nations all around the world, whoever they’re.”
All that stated, Bedenbaugh admits his e-book and plan aren’t any antidote to bigger issues except Individuals impress and push for extra impressed management and beliefs. As he put it, “There are issues nonetheless value preventing for.”
“I take that as inspiration, and the truth that we’re now on the 250th anniversary of that revolution that we had, I feel if issues get dangerous sufficient—and I’m involved that they are going to—there can be sure social programs which might be going to be compromised and civic engagement is already compromised,” he stated.
“It is going to get dangerous sufficient to the place persons are keen to go, ‘OK, it is time to actually take it significantly on repair it.’ We’re not simply going to repair it by simply electing the opposite get together once more as a result of that whiplash will not be going to work anymore. I hope this evokes that very same sense of what these early revolutionaries needed to do, combat in opposition to overwhelming odds, which is what we’re dealing with right now,” Bedenbaugh added.
