By Sandra Storey / Special to the Gazette
Two-and-a-half months ago, I decided to do this month’s column on “Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project” (“Project 2025,” for short) back when the 922-page set of dozens of different documents and four “Pillars” published in 2023 wasn’t getting that much public attention. Four hundred scholars put together 30 chapters, after all—a lot to take in.
The politics of the right-wing guide to dismantling our government by Donald Trump when—in Republicans imaginations, he becomes a newly reelected president—has been talked about more and more as the election grows closer.
I realize I can’t describe Project 2025 accurately without resorting to what sounds like negative hyperbole. Trump, J.D. Vance and their core Republican MAGA supporters have already used far too many nasty, false descriptions of their Democratic opponents for any civilized election.
Nevertheless, after reading various Project 2025 provisions, and especially introductory and other right-wing commentary, I realize I have to tell a very negative truth myself: Trump and Vance are not just “weird,” like Kamala Harris’s running mate Tim Walz first said.
This massive mess of right-wing restrictions on freedom with instructions for the Trump administration in how to dismantle our republic during his imagined coming presidency is completely bizarre.
All of us need to become aware and alert friends and family, especially those who say they plan to vote for either Trump, a third-party candidate, or not vote at all this fall. Those choices would be equal to voting for a radical conservative take-over of our federal government operations themselves, not just policies.
Every vote not cast for Harris/Walz might as well be for Trump/Vance. And every vote not cast for the Democratic nominees is a vote for Project 2025, a plan for a strong-president form of authoritarian, right-wing government to go into effect beginning in January.
Since so many people who learned about its contents recently have reacted negatively, Trump has tried to claim that he isn’t familiar with the plan and doesn’t support it, but reporters from U.K. caught a leader involved in creating Project 2025 saying on tape that Trump likes it.
And 141 former advisors and staff from his presidency before, including lots of 2020 election insurrection supporters, put it together. Chalk Trump’s denial up to just another lie among hundreds he has told just recently. American voters this fall weren’t born yesterday or after Jan. 6, 2021.
Project 2025 is full of links to scary action recommendations for creating a narrow authoritarian regime by, for and of elites in the right-wing crowd composed of people not close to being in the majority in this country.
Go to Project 2025.org. Read “About Project 2025.” Click on any heading. You will be shocked and appalled by most everything you find. Also depressed. It’s view of the future is truly dystopian.
If the founders of this country could read the documents, they would probably shout in alarm that Project 2025 is treasonous. The actions it supports are plainly antithetical to what the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and then the Constitution of this country had in mind. Those historic figures were adamant that the position of president not be strong authoritarian one.
It is a strange shame, then, that a well-known conservative organization that calls itself “The Heritage Foundation,” along with 100 other conservative groups, would fund and oversee this project to give the president much more power and control over the federal government and the country itself than at present. But it did.
The introduction to Project 2025 lays out its purpose quite frankly. The goal is to organize the take-over and remaking of the federal government by the right. Why they think that’s a good idea, it doesn’t say, strangely enough. Their point is, apparently, for the right to just create a climate where it can score more wins—a national championship, so to speak.
“…defeat the American left,” head of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin D. Roberts, “PhD” commands in the locker-room speech, er, no, in the “Foreword” to the dense Project 2025 document.
It’s as if the openings of the Declaration and Constitution said the goal was to overthrow the British and have a government by colonists—without giving any other purposes or reasons for their recommendations.
Project 2025 never says how the country and its people would be better off if and when it’s implemented during their longed-for time when “conservatives” take over. (Could it be that their unconscious knows and therefore shows by omission that it won’t be?)
What happened to “ensure[ing] the general welfare?” What about “all men [sic] are created equal” and other lofty ideals expressed by the founders. The Heritage Foundation and its comrades don’t have any of those kinds of goals. Their focus is on plain conservative power, and they say so.
Talk about bizarre! Project 2025 is a supposedly serious document proposing huge changes in our government, but it reads like it was put together by a high school athletic department. Go Elephants (conservatives, i.e. us)! Beat the Donkeys (liberals, i.e. them)! Why? Because it’s their place/family/tradition versus another one, I guess. The authors and their organizations apparently think—immersed in privilege as many of them are—they don’t need to say any more. It’s a very long, cynical set of statements.
The right-wing drafters call their nefarious plans for the first 180 days “the playbook” of the imaginary Trump presidency and describe the first plays that need to be run after a Trump inauguration. After I wrote the previous sentence, I saw that what they call this “fourth Pillar” is actually illustrated in the document with a pen-and-ink drawing with x’s and o’s of a football play that might be found in a locker room. They’re not even embarrassed.
The header of the shallow introduction to the whole thing says, more coach-like than Walz, who actually was a coach at one time: “Building now for a conservative victory through policy, personnel, and training.”
Prescriptions for more specific policy changes, the first Pillar of Project 2025, takes up 887 pages. Below in italics are some of the hundreds of them—the few it chooses to highlight in the introduction—followed by my “translations” based on reading them and descriptions of them elsewhere. For other policy topics, check the website. Warning: Some are hidden under chapter headings only vaguely related to them. Reading reliable sources about them is a good idea, too.
• Secure the border, finish building the wall, and deport illegal aliens Trump killed a bipartisan bill that would have done the former, and now he says he will organize the biggest deportation ever seen in this country. What to do about all the immigrants whose labor we need? None of the Republicans, including Project 2025, say.
• De-weaponize the Federal Government by increasing accountability and oversight of the FBI and DOJ. Put those agencies under direct control of the president. Don’t let them prosecute Republicans or anyone else the Republican president doesn’t want prosecuted. Do let them prosecute those the president wants prosecuted. “Issue guidance to ensure that litigation decisions are consistent with the President’s agenda and the rule of law,” the document orders.
• Unleash American energy production to reduce energy prices, “Drill, baby, drill.” The heck with the environment. Note: Also, in a murder/suicide advocacy move, climate is to be ignored in policy nationally with effects here and around the world, according to the Republican platform.
• Make federal bureaucrats more accountable to the democratically elected President and Congress. Get rid of the what Republicans call the “deep state,” that is, thousands of skilled, experienced, knowledgeable federal administration employees, and replace them with political appointees answerable to the president. And Congress? They mention it maybe until the right manages to completely discredit the legislative branch and.or lets it only investigate non-Republicans and not really consider much legislation. See Project 2029 (just kidding, for now, at least) for the fate of an elected Congress.
• Improve education by moving control and funding of education from DC bureaucrats directly to parents and state and local governments. Get rid of the Education Department and all national supports for education at all levels.
• Ban biological males from competing in women’s sports. I told you Project 2025 is written fundamentally from a sports values and management perspective.
“Want to be considered for positions in a presidential Administration? Submit your resume today to be included in the personnel database.” This is the introductory header of second Pillar of Project 2025. They are offering a questionnaire to fill out and a Plum book describing jobs in the imaginary future Trump administration. They continue with the sports values metaphor: “With the right conservative policy recommendations and properly vetted and trained personnel to implement them, we will take back our government.”
Training at the “Presidential Administration Academy” is the third Pillar, called “Preparing Political Appointees to be Ready on Day One.” Currently offered online, Project 2025 says, “…get credentialed, and BE PREPARED to serve the next President and the American people by advancing conservative policy at the federal level.”
Language is critically important when it comes to political come-ons like Project 2025. It’s no accident that Project 2025 always capitalizes “President” even when it’s not used as someone’s title. The Constitution itself and most things written in correct English don’t normally do that.
Please note the phrase “the next President and the American people” often used by the authors to describe the key entities in the right-wing notion of government. Congress, courts and the administration are not mentioned much or positively for a reason. Three equal branches offering checks and balances that are key to our republic’s functioning aren’t mentioned, that I could find.
Also note that they say the Project 2025 goal is “advancing conservative policy at the federal level” under a single conservative leader.
Thousands of recycling bins and more trash cans on people’s desktops (along with some college libraries, probably), may well be the final resting places for the garbage that is Project 2025 this coming winter. During the next two months, people who do not want to see Project 2025 enacted need to take action to help make sure it and its would-be political beneficiaries fail to take control of this country.