Project 2025, labeled the Presidential Transition Project, is the 920-page Republican Party plan to be implemented after (not if) they “win” the presidential and congressional elections in November. It describes how Trump and his allies intend to destroy America’s democracy and create something like a monarchy or fascist political order. Independently of the 2025 Project, Trump believes he will win the election and then become the absolute leader. The federal government will then be under his control, obviating the need for elections and the rule of law. The rich and powerful will be the chief beneficiaries.
According Project 2025, opponents of Trump will be imprisoned or deported, as will millions of undocumented workers residing in the country. Thousands of Trump loyalists will be appointed to executive branch jobs. And a full-blown right-wing agenda will be instituted, involving lowered taxes on the rich, deregulation, and privatization of critical public institutions. The social safety net will be eviscerated. The production and consumption of fossil fuels will be maximized and global warming will increase.
Wikipedia provides a detailed analysis of this anti-democratic project.
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Wikipedia’s description of Project 2025
Wikipedia: “Project 2025, also known as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project,[3] is an initiative coordinated by the Heritage Foundation that aims to promote conservative and right-wing policies to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power should Donald Trump win the 2024 presidential election.[4][5] The Project asserts that the entire executive branch is under the direct control of the president under unitary executive theory.[6][7] It proposes reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers as political appointees in order to replace them with people loyal to the president.[8][9] Proponents of the project argue it would dismantle what they view as a vast, unaccountable, and liberal government bureaucracy.[10] The Project seeks to infuse the government and society with conservative Christian values.[11][12] Critics have characterized Project 2025 as an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan to steer the U.S. toward autocracy.[11][13][14][15] Legal experts have said it would undermine the rule of law,[16] separation of powers,[5] separation of church and state,[17] and civil liberties.[5][16][18]
Project 2025 envisions widespread changes to economic and social policies and the federal government and its agencies. The plan proposes taking partisan control of the Department of Justice (DOJ), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Commerce, Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and Federal Trade Commission (FTC), dismantling the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and reducing environmental and climate change regulations to favor fossil fuels.[16][19] The blueprint seeks to institute tax cuts,[20] but its writers disagree on protectionism.[21] It recommends abolishing the Department of Education, whose programs would be transferred or terminated.[22][23] Funding for climate research would be cut, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would be reformed along conservative principles[vague].[24][25] The project seeks to cut Medicare and Medicaid,[26][27] and urges the government to explicitly reject abortion as health care.[28][29] The project seeks to eliminate coverage of emergency contraception[26] and enforce the Comstock Act to prosecute those who send and receive contraceptives and abortion pills.[29][30] It proposes criminalizing pornography,[31]: 5 [32] removing legal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,[32][33] and terminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs[5][33] and affirmative action[34] by having the DOJ prosecute "anti-white racism."[35] The Project recommends the arrest, detention, and deportation of illegal immigrants.[36][37][38] It proposes deploying the military for domestic law enforcement.[39] It promotes capital punishment and the speedy "finality" of those sentences.[40][41]
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Why is Project 2025 so alarming?
Matt Cohen, a writer and researcher, addresses the question in an article published on Democracy Docket on July 9, 2024
(https://democracydocket.com/analysis/what-is-project-2025-and-why-is-it-alarming). Here’s some of what Cohen writes.
The project, designed to give Trump maximum power, is so extreme that even Trump has tried to distance himself from it.
Trump wants to “distant” himself from the project
Trump has recently tried “to distance himself from the extreme agenda of Project 2025,” claiming “I know nothing about Project 2025.” Trump added: “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
Trump’s allies are behind the project
Cohen points out that, despite his claimed ignorance of Project 2025, “numerous former Trump administration officials contributed to the nearly 1,000-page mandate, including former Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, former Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli and Peter Navarro, a former top trade advisor to Trump. Trump also has deep ties to The Heritage Foundation, the group behind Project 2025, and the dozens of conservative organizations who contributed to the plan.”
“Though The Heritage Foundation organized Project 2025, the initiative is actually a coalition made up of more than 100 right-wing groups, including notorious groups like America First Legal, the Public Interest Legal Foundation and Moms For Liberty. According to NBC News, a huge web of right-wing dark money groups connected to Project 2025, led by the Leonard Leo-connected Donors Trust, has seen a large bump in donations since the project was announced.
The chapters in the Project 2025 plan and 180-Day Playbook were written by “more than 400 scholars and policy experts from across the conservative movement and around the country,” the group says.
Implementing the project
Should Trump win the November election, he will be able to move ahead with the plan and, Cohen writes, “vastly remake the federal government most effectively to carry out an extremist far-right agenda.”
“It is not enough for conservatives to win elections,” the project’s website states. “If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration. This is the goal of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project.”
Cohen continues.
“The opening essay of the plan, written by Heritage Project President Kevin D. Roberts, succinctly summarizes the goal of Project 2025: a promise to make America a conservative nation. To do so, the next presidential administration should focus on four ‘broad fronts that will decide America’s future.’”
#1 - Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.
#2 - Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.
#3 - Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.
#4 - Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls ‘the Blessings of Liberty.’
Cohen elaborates. “The rest of the document sketches out, in detail, how the next Republican administration can execute their goals on these four fronts. That includes comprehensive outlines on what the White House and every single federal agency should do to overhaul its goals and day-to-day operations — from the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Defense, Small Business Administration and Financial Regulatory Agencies. Every sector of the executive branch has a detailed plan in Project 2025 that explains how it can carry out an ultra-conservative agenda.”
Cohen writes, “Project 2025 is ‘a remarkably detailed guide to turning the United States into a fascist’s paradise.’ The primary document of Project 2025… lays out what is essentially a ‘Christian nationalist vision of the United States, one in which married heterosexuality is the only valid form of sexual expression and identity; all pregnancies would be carried to term, even if that requires coercion or death; and transgender and gender-nonconforming people do not exist.’”
One troubling provision includes “a detailed plan to essentially purge the federal workforce of tens of thousands of workers in favor of hiring ones who will adhere to the conservative principles of Project 2025.” It speaks to just about every facet of American life, including “anti-abortion advocacy, voter suppression, anti-climate policies, and anti-LGBTQ advocacy.”
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Liz Theoharis and Shailly Gupta Barnes identify Project 2025 as “a New Pax Romana” (https://counterpunch.org/2-24/-7/30/project-2025-a-new-pax-romana).
“Although the Roman Empire described itself as being in favor of life and peace, the various Caesars and their enablers regularly dealt death and destruction in their wake. They spread the Pax Romana (the Roman Peace), including a taxation system that left the poor in debt servitude, a military that caused terror and violence across the then-known world, and a ruling authority that pitted whole communities against each other, while legislating who could associate with whom (passing marriage laws, for instance, that banned gay, inter-racial, or even cross-class marriages). The emperor in power in Jesus’s time, Caesar Augustus, was known for ushering in a Golden Age of Moral Values that went hand in hand with that Pax Romana, and it meant war and death, especially for the poor.
“Fast forward millennia and that world bears a strange resemblance to the media distractions, violence, and regressive policies that MAGA and other extremists are pushing forward in our times. Whether it’s Donald Trump’s assertion that “I alone can fix your problems”; Supreme Court and state legislative attacks on reproductive rights, same-sex marriage, and trans youth in the name of family values; cuts to welfare, healthcare, worker’s rights and other life-sustaining programs to protect corporate interests; the militarizing of endless communities by allowing guns (especially AR-15 rifles) to proliferate, while offering only thoughts and prayers to the victims of violence, the MAGA movement is promoting culture wars and extremist policies under the banner of Christian nationalism. In doing so, its leaders are perfecting a disdain for the excluded, exploited, and rejected that hurts the poor first and worst, but impacts all of society.”
The Formal Project 2025 Takeover
“The wholesale capture of the state is the ultimate goal of its Christian nationalist architects. Project 2025 simply clarifies just how they plan to implement their drive for power. Each of its sections — from ‘taking the reins of government’ by centralizing executive authority in the office of the President to securing ‘the common defense’ by expanding every branch of the military — is worth reviewing.
Theoharis and Barnes note this: “The longest section focuses on ‘general welfare’ and it should be no surprise that the Departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development are subject to significant cutbacks, including:
* Imposing yet stricter eligibility standards, work requirements, and asset tests to constrain access to Medicaid, even though more than 23 million Americans have been unenrolled from that program since 2023;
* Revisiting how the “Thrifty Food Plan” is formulated to minimize food-stamp allocations, while imposing onerous work requirements on the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), even though most of its recipients work and/or are in households with children, elderly people, or people with disabilities;
* Ending universal free school meals by removing the “community eligibility provision,” which allows school districts with high poverty rates to provide free breakfast and lunch programs to all children in need;
* Eliminating Head Start, which has served 39 million children and families since 1965 and currently serves more than 800,000 poor families with young children, while shuttering the Department of Education;
* Ending “Housing First” programs and prohibiting non-citizens, including mixed-status families, from living in low-income public housing; and
* Imposing a “life agenda” and a “family agenda” that will restrict access to abortion and reproductive rights, and otherwise curtail LGBTQ+ rights.
“Such proposals would undoubtedly be deeply unpopular. In fact, as people learn more about Project 2025, opposition is growing, even across party lines. Most Americans want a government that would provide for the down-and-out, who are a growing segment of the population and the electorate, as well as one that supports abortion rights, voting rights, and the freedom of expression. At least 40% of us — 135-140 million people — are either poor or one emergency away from economic ruin, including 80 million eligible voters. Project 2025’s social welfare cuts would, in fact, push significant numbers of people across the poverty line into financial ruin.”
“Today, tens of millions of poor people in this country are on the front lines of our failing democracy and increasingly militarized society. They are the true canaries in the coal mine, already living through the violence of a society that has prioritized war and profits over addressing the pain and toll of low-wage jobs, crushing debt burdens, polluted water and land, and lives cut short by poverty, the police, and the denial of basic human rights. They can undoubtedly also foresee the drive toward an ever-deeper warfare state and the possible fallout from Project 2025 if Donald Trump and J.D. Vance win this year.”
The Supreme Court smooths the way for Project 2024
“From its recent rulings, it’s clear that the Supreme Court is hastening Project 2025’s agenda judicially, both in terms of specific future policies and the executive power grab at the heart of that mandate (and now of that court’s rulings). In June, for instance, it ruled in favor of the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, which enacted a law to fine, jail, and ultimately expel its unhoused residents. That precedent will only exacerbate the already hostile terrain confronting unhoused people, seeding firm ground to 2025’s plan to eliminate even more housing projects.
Worse yet, as the Nation’s Elie Mystal recently made clear, in just a few weeks of rulings, the court “legalized bribery of public officials, declared the president of the United States absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for ‘official acts,’ and made the power to issue regulations subject to the court’s unelected approval.”
As Mystal warns, “There’s no legislative fix for the problems the court has created… [and] they will continue to do all the things Republicans want that nobody elected
“In addition, in the legislative arena, Congressional debates around the Farm Bill echo Project 2025’s plan to cut food assistance by limiting updates to the Thrifty Food Plan, the current formula that determines SNAP allocations. For example, at the state level, a Republican supermajority in Kansas voted last year to override the governor’s veto and enact work requirements for older recipients of SNAP benefits.
“Overall, various Project 2025 priorities are already being implemented at the state and local level, with reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, public education, social welfare programs, and unhoused people under serious threat in Republican-run states across the country. Since the Supreme Court decision in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade, 21 states have enacted full or partial bans on abortion.”
“There is also a multi-state strategy underway to preempt community-led efforts to implement guaranteed income programs. At least 10 states have challenged basic income programs with legislative bans, funding restrictions, constitutional challenges, and court injunctions, while four Republican-led states — Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, and South Dakota — have already completely prohibited such programs.
And in lockstep with Project 2025’s call for military expansion, Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker recently released a report proposing that $55 billion be added to the Pentagon’s already humongous budget in fiscal year 2025 while raising military spending by hundreds of billions of dollars in the next five to seven years. The report, “Peace Through Strength,” revives the false idea that spending ever more on war preparations makes us safer. Not only is Wicker distorting Cold War history, but his prescriptions ignore our experience of the past 20 years of military buildup and the disastrous Global War on Terror. According to the Costs of War Project and the National Priorities Project, this country’s post-9/11 wars have cost at least $8 trillion, taken millions of lives, and displaced tens of millions of people globally, while precipitating climate chaos through their polluting emissions. If implemented, Wicker’s plan would only increase the risk of yet more destabilizing conflicts, offering a modern Pax Romana promise for yet more war and death.”
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Trump tells supporters there will be no need to vote anymore after he and other Republicans win their elections in November.
Edward Carver reports on this in an article published in Common Dreams on July 27, 2024 (https://commondreams.org/news/it-ll-be-fixed-trump-tells-supporters-no-need-to-vote-in-the-future). On July 23, 2024, Trump “told rally-goers at a far-right Christian event in West Palm Beach, Florida that they needed to vote ‘just this time’ and wouldn't need to do so after four more years…”
“‘Christians, get out and vote!’ the former president told attendees of the event, hosted by the far-right youth advocacy group Turning Point Action. ‘Just this time. You won’t have to do it any more, four more years, you know what? It'll be fixed! It'll be fine. You won't have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians.’"
“‘Get out–you gotta get out and vote,’ he added. ‘In four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good, you're not gonna have to vote.’"
Carver cites Katie Phang, an MSNBC host, who interpreted Trump's remarks to mean that he would try to remain in power indefinitely, if reelected.
"In other words, Trump won’t ever leave the White House if he gets reelected," she wrote on social media.”
“He has in the past expressed admiration for strongmen around the world, and has framed his 2024 campaign as one of retribution, even calling his opponents ‘vermin.’ He and his allies have threatened to prosecute their political enemies—political figures and bureaucrats—if they take power in 2025.”
“‘I love you, Christians, I’m [unclear word or words] Christian, I love you.’
Many Christians seem to love Trump back. A Pew poll from April showed that more than 80% of white evangelicals support the Republican nominee.
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Using the Military and police to enforce obedience to the anticipated fascist order
The ACLU reports on July 19, 2024 that “Trump Promises to Militarize Police, Reincarcerate Thousands, and Expand Death Penalty” (https://aclu.org/news/criminal-law-reform/trump-promises-to-militarize-police-reincarcerate-thousands-and-expand-death-penalty).
“Donald Trump has long identified himself as the candidate of ‘law and order’ but, during the Trump administration, ‘law and order’ translated to a severe approach to criminal punishment and policing that failed to make us safer.
“Today, his proposed policies for a second term promise to double down on these ineffective tough on crime tactics. If reelected, a second administration threatens to accelerate mass incarceration and roll back decades of progress by encouraging aggressive policing practices, enacting draconian sentencing regimes, and expanding the use of the death penalty.”
Trump on the Criminal Legal System
“Specifically, Trump’s law enforcement policies call for further protections for abusive police, including condoning the use of force against protesters, which he once described as a ‘beautiful thing to watch.’ This rhetoric risks encouraging state actors to take a similarly brutal approach. Beyond rhetoric, however, Trump is also likely to immediately rescind President Joe Biden’s 2022 executive order on policing. Doing so would eviscerate one of the most substantial federal actions on police reform since George Floyd’s murder and roll back important changes to use of force standards, including restrictions on chokeholds and carotid restraints.
“These expected policies will have an outsized impact on marginalized communities, especially the Black community, which is far more likely to experience police abuse. We also know that a second Trump administration intends to deputize local law enforcement to aid an unprecedented mass deportation effort that would decimate communities.
“Additionally, Trump has promised that, if reelected, his administration will accelerate mass incarceration efforts by directing federal prosecutors to seek the most serious charges and maximum sentences, pressuring local prosecutors to take a similarly draconian approach, and re-incarcerating thousands of people on home confinement. His administration will also expand the use of the death penalty – despite Americans’ increasing opposition to capital punishment – by broadening the category of crimes punishable by death, sentencing more people to die, and killing every person on federal death row.
“While Trump will have a singular impact on the federal system, ultimately, state and local governments control most of the substantive parts of state criminal legal systems, including policing, prosecution, sentencing, and conditions in prisons and jails. Today, there are over 1.6 million people in state and local jails and prisons, compared to just over 200,000 in federal jails and prisons. But even without direct control of state systems, Trump will play an important role in setting the tone for state policies and many of his plans will have a ripple effect across the country.”
“Trump’s time in office also underscored the need to continue to hold his administration accountable for its unlawful actions. From 2017-2021, the ACLU filed more than 430 legal actions against the administration, including lawsuits aimed at defending the right to protest against police brutality, protecting the health and humanity of incarcerated people during the Covid-19 pandemic, and stopping mass surveillance by law enforcement.
“Our Roadmap: If Trump returns to office, he can expect that he will be met with the same fierce response the ACLU brought during his last administration.
Specifically, we will use the courts to halt the Trump administration’s attempt to carry out one of, if not the largest, carceral events in our nation’s history: the senseless return to prison of nearly 3,000 individuals released on federal home confinement during the pandemic. Additionally, we will use litigation to challenge any efforts to return to unconstitutional methods of execution, and expose the racism and cruelty inherent in the death penalty, as we continue to seek its total abolition.
“The ACLU will also advocate for Congress to constrain the funneling of military equipment to local police, fight for legislation to end sentencing disparities, and, under any administration, continue to push for the full implementation of the First Step Act. Importantly, we’ll use our expertise and resources to advise and assist members of Congress on how to prevent a future Trump administration from manipulating our legal system.”
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Concluding thoughts
US democracy, the rule of law, the protections provided by the US Constitution, all will be at unprecedented risk again. Trump, his MAGA base, and his many powerful backers seem all too willing to follow him down a fascist path.
Will American voters defeat him and the other extremist Republicans? It comes down to whether a majority of voters oppose his candidacy and whether the popular vote is not negated by the Electoral College.
