Trump’s Project 2025 — What You Need to Know
We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless, if the left allows it to be.
~Kevin Roberts, president of Heritage Foundation and architect of Project 2025
What is this second revolution? Simply, it means "restructuring the country so that the right — meaning primarily straight White men, as was the case 100 years ago — can decide how power and status are allocated.”
~Philip Bump, Washington Post
Don’t be fooled by his recent disavowals. Donald Trump has a transition team working already — mapping out the course of his second administration. The MAGA Trump elite will be prepped for a Trump victory this time.
The plans — or most of them — are not secret; in fact, they’re published on the internet as Project 2025.
Critics of Project 2025 characterize it as an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan to transform the U.S. into an autocracy. Many legal experts claim it would undermine the rule of law, destroy the separation of powers, end the separation of church and state, and erode civil liberties.
Conceived by the Heritage Foundation (the former conservative think-tank turned far-right ideological tribe), aided by a large cast of former high-level Trump administration appointees and reactionary organizations, and funded to the tune of $22 million by right-wing billionaire megadonors such as the Koch brothers and Leonard Leo, Project 2025 aims to reshape American society completely.
How to accomplish this, as stated in the introduction to the document, is to:
- Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children
- Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people
- Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats
- Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely — what our Constitution calls ‘the Blessings of Liberty’
These coded dog whistles are crafted to appear innocuous, harmless, and “American,” while signaling their true intent to far-right believers.
As unobjectionable as this language appears, a close reading of the 900-page document reveals some ugly policy plans.
Highlights of Project 2025 include:
Revenge and retribution
- Prosecute Trump’s political opponents
- Pardon and free the Jan. 6 insurrectionists
- Deport protestors
- Jail journalists
- Fire federal civil servants and replace them with Trump loyalists
Expand presidential power
- Concentrate power in Trump’s hands
- Replace government experts with MAGA loyalists
- Withhold congressionally allocated funding at will
- Bring the Department of Justice and FBI under Trump’s power to prosecute his opponents
- Completely dismantle key agencies such as the Department of Education
Rip away reproductive freedom
- Enshrine law that life begins at conception
- Pass a national abortion ban
- Block national protections for IVF (in vitro fertilization)
- Restrict or prevent access to contraception
- Establish surveillance state to track women and health care providers
More handouts to the ultra-wealthy. More taxes on the middle class. Cut Social Security and Medicare
- Terminate ACA (Obamacare)
- Cut funding to Medicaid
- Cut and privatize Social Security and Medicare
- Raise retirement age
- Impose tariffs that would raise taxes on middle class families up to $8300/year
- Extend and expand Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans
Foreign Policy
- End U.S. support for Ukraine
- Curtail foreign aid through USAID
- Start dramatic build-up of nuclear bombs and weapons in excess of treaty limits
- Resume nuclear weapons testing despite international testing bans
- Transition armed forces to a “wartime footing”
More
- Insert principles of Christian Nationalism into the national government
- Reinstate Muslim ban
- Detain illegal immigrants in huge camps
- Eliminate a long list of terms from all laws and federal regulations, including: sexual orientation; diversity, equity, and inclusion; gender equality; abortion; reproductive rights
- Institute policies that support the formation of straight families
- Do away with “woke” propaganda in public schools
- Cripple public education through “school choice”
- Put more guns in schools
- Cut money from school meal programs
- Terminate college loan forgiveness programs
- Eliminate Head Start
- Roll back everything Joe Biden accomplished on climate change
As horrifying as all this is, there’s more — more monstrous stuff that hasn’t been released to the public. Earlier this year, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, said, “There are parts of the plan that we will not share with the Left: the executive orders, the rules and regulations. Just like a good football team, we don’t want to tip off our playbook to the Left.”
As word of Project 2025 spreads, public outrage has spiked. House Democrats launched a task force to fight back against the agenda. Joe Biden’s reelection campaign published a webpage explaining the contents of the plan. But it’s up to us to spread the word.
Realizing how toxic Project 2025 is, Trump is trying to distance himself from it, simultaneously disavowing knowledge of the plan and claiming to disagree with at least parts of it.
But Trump is mentioned on 190 pages of the 900-page document. Trump’s own super PAC is running ads promoting it and calling it “Trump’s Project 2025.” Trump’s campaign rallies feature many of the policies outlined in the document.
To combat criticism, the Heritage Foundation published “5 Reasons Leftists Hate Project 2025.” In it — and these are quotes — they argue that Project 2025 will:
- Restore the American family. The radical Left hates families.
- Dismantle the deep state. The radical Left needs the deep state to maintain its iron grip on power.
- End America’s border crisis. The radical Left rejects the idea of borders and national sovereignty.
- Reject climate hysteria. Billionaire climate activists use the “climate crisis” as a tool for scaring Americans into giving up their freedom.
- Stop socialism in its tracks. The radical Left hates Project 2025 because it will save America from becoming a socialist nightmare.
The implementation of this blueprint, especially in the context of the newly defined powers of presidential immunity for “official acts,” would spell the end of American life as we know it.
Only the election of Democrats up and down the ballot in November can prevent this dystopian takeover of our country.
The Founders are turning in their graves.
Jan Plotczyk spent 25 years as a survey and education statistician with the federal government, at the Census Bureau and the National Center for Education Statistics. She retired to Rock Hall.
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