As reports about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump and concerns about Joe Biden’s ability to beat him continue to permeate headlines, we mustn’t be distracted from how Trump will govern if given another presidential term. “Project 2025” provides a roadmap for a second Trump administration to target reproductive health care, efforts to remediate the climate crisis, immigrants, unions, civil rights for LGBTQ+ people, and administrative agencies that protect our health and safety. His first administration also proved he is eager to impose huge tax cuts for corporations and the superrich.
Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, whom Trump tapped to be his running mate, favors many of Trump’s white supremacist, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, anti-climate policies.
A combination of Trump’s authoritarian character and the Supreme Court’s grant of absolute immunity to U.S. presidents for official acts will mean it’s open season on Trump’s perceived enemies should he secure a second term — and the policies he aims to implement are chilling.
The likely priorities of a second Trump administration are spelled out in the Heritage Foundation’s 920-page blueprint for a radical right-wing agenda called “Mandate for Leadership: A Conservative Promise” for 2025. Commonly known as “Project 2025,” this roadmap to fascism, sponsored by more than 100 reactionary groups and spearheaded by over a dozen former Trump officials, cost more than $20 million to produce.
“The next Administration will face a significant challenge in unwinding policies and procedures that are used to advance radical gender, racial, and equity initiatives under the banner of science,” Trump’s former Budget Director Russell Vought, president of the Center for Renewing America (CRA), wrote in one section of the blueprint. “Similarly, the Biden Administration’s climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding.”
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on July 5, “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.” Still, he went on to wish them good luck.
“The Trump campaign has tried to distance itself from the most radical aspects of Project 2025. There are no benefits — only political liabilities — to endorsing so many specifics,” Jonathan Blitzer wrote in The New Yorker.
“Trump’s supporters already know what he stands for, in a general sense. And there is the more delicate matter of the former President’s ego,” Blitzer said. A former senior White House official told Blitzer that Trump “wouldn’t want to be seen as taking guidance from any other human being. He doesn’t like to be seen as someone who doesn’t know everything already.”
But Trump’s anti-immigrant, anti-union, anti-education, pro-fossil fuel “Agenda 47” has “tremendous overlap” with Project 2025, said Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts. Trump’s attempts to distance himself from the project are “a political tactical decision,” Roberts added. Project 2025 Director Paul Dans noted in a video that Trump is “very bought in with this.”
“An Unprecedented Embrace” of Fascism
“Project 2025 is more than an idea, it’s a dystopian plot that’s already in motion to dismantle our democratic institutions, abolish checks and balances, chip away at church-state separation, and impose a far-right agenda that infringes on basic liberties and violates public will,” California Rep. Jared Huffman, who leads a Stop Project 2025 Task Force of House Democrats, said in a statement on June 11.
“This is an unprecedented embrace of extremism, fascism, and religious nationalism, orchestrated by the radical right and its dark money backers,” Huffman said. “We need a coordinated strategy to save America and stop this coup before it’s too late.”
On May 20, Trump posted a video on Truth Social characterizing his potential 2025-2029 administration as a “Unified Reich,” seemingly referencing Hitler’s Third Reich in Nazi Germany.
In their recent book, Fascism on Trial: Education and the Possibility of Democracy, Henry A. Giroux and Anthony R. DiMaggio list characteristics of fascism, including political authoritarianism, white supremacy, white nationalism, Christian nationalism, political violence and racism in education. These themes run throughout Project 2025 and Trump’s agenda.
Trump’s anti-immigrant, anti-union, anti-education, pro-fossil fuel “Agenda 47” has “tremendous overlap” with Project 2025, said Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts.
The four main prongs of the blueprint are restoring “the family as the centerpiece of American life”; dismantling the administrative state; defending U.S. “sovereignty, borders and bounty”; and securing “our God-given individual rights to live freely.”
All Executive Power Would Rest in the Hands of the President
If Project 2025 is put into practice, Trump could circumvent Congress by granting himself complete control over all administrative agencies that protect every aspect of our lives. Moreover, the Supreme Court has just ruled that a federal agency doesn’t have the last word on protecting workers, health, safety and climate. It must now defer to courts, increasingly staffed with judges appointed by Trump, when a statute is ambiguous.
Project 2025 recommends that a second Trump administration reinstitute his Schedule F, which Biden eliminated. This would reclassify 50,000 of the 2 million merit-based civil service employees as political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president without civil service protections. There would be a “massive exodus of competence,” Jacqueline Simon, policy director of the American Federation of Government Employees, told John Oliver on the June 16 episode of “Last Week Tonight.” For example, she said, scientific research on nuclear power would be done by “incompetents.”
The thrust of the blueprint to deconstruct the administrative state and implement deregulation is aimed at helping corporations earn more profit. “Positive plans for freeing the private sector from overblown government interference and regulation could, we believed, result in an explosion of entrepreneurial activity that would reassert America’s leading role in the world’s economy,” the authors of Project 2025 wrote.
If Trump follows the blueprint laid out in Project 2025, his new administration would strictly limit access to abortion. Congress wouldn’t have to make abortion medication unlawful because Trump’s Food and Drug Administration could just withdraw its approval. Project 2025 advocates the creation of a “Department of Life” to further the “health and well-being of all Americans ‘from conception to natural death.’” The new administration would explicitly state that abortion is not health care. Planned Parenthood would be prohibited from receiving Medicaid funds.
Project 2025 would also have Trump abolish the Department of Education, which Vought calls the “department of critical race theory.” The plan says, “The noxious tenets of ‘critical race theory’ and ‘gender ideology’ should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country.”
The blueprint calls for the abolition of Head Start, the child development program that helps break the cycle of poverty by assisting preschool children of low-income families. It would fund private school vouchers and ban curricula that teach about slavery. It would prohibit noncitizens from living in federally assisted housing and “oppose any efforts to weaken single-family zoning.”
Christian Nationalism
“Religious devotion and spirituality are the greatest sources of happiness around the world,” Project 2025 states.
Vought’s CRA drafted a document with priorities for Trump’s second term. It cites “Christian nationalism” as crucial to its vision for the administration. The criteria for immigrants to enter the United States, Vought says, should be whether that person “accept[ed] Israel’s God, laws and understanding of history,” citing biblical teachings.
“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors,” Project 2025 reads. “This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (‘SOGI’), diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”
The blueprint states that “those with gender dysphoria should be expelled from military service.” It would “Reverse policies that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military.”
Climate, Trade and Immigration
Under Project 2025, Trump’s new administration would carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, deploy active-duty military personnel and the National Guard to police the border, and complete construction of the border wall.
Project 2025 Director Paul Dans noted in a video that Trump is “very bought in with this.”
When the attorney general issues a warrant for an undocumented immigrant, Title 8 USC 1226 says the immigrant may be arrested and detained. The blueprint would change “may” to “must” and require arrest and detention.
Project 2025 also recommends eliminating all initiatives to combat climate change, including dismantling the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which tracks hurricanes, weather, oceans, climate and fisheries science.
It would eliminate offices in the Department of Energy dedicated to renewable energy and climate and energy technology research. The blueprint calls for reducing proposed fuel economy levels, and would enlist Congress to eliminate energy efficiency standards for household appliances.
Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance who co-wrote the Interior Department section of the blueprint, told The Hill that this section is “all about increasing [oil and gas] development and production from federal lands.” She said the proposals are intended to reverse the policies of the Biden administration that restrict fossil fuel development.
The chapter on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) urges an “update” to the EPA’s 2009 finding that greenhouse gas emissions constitute a threat to human health and the environment.
Project 2025 urges that the U.S. withdraw from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.
A virulent anti-China theme runs throughout Project 2025, which calls China an “existential threat.” The blueprint says, “By far the most significant danger to Americans’ security, freedoms, and prosperity is China.” It makes the astounding statement, “Economic engagement with China should be ended, not rethought.”
Project 2025 advocates increased spending on the military and expansion and modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The U.S. “needs to make the design, development, and deployment of new nuclear warheads a top priority,” it says.
Project 2025 also takes aim at U.S. treaty obligations, the United Nations and the European Union. It says that the U.S. must be removed “from any association with U.N. and other efforts to push sustainable-development schemes connected to food production.” It would also require an “immediate freeze on all efforts to implement unratified treaties and international agreements.”
The blueprint says there should be “an immediate stand-down on enforcement of any treaties that have not been ratified by the Senate.” Such action would violate the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which the U.S. considers customary international law and thus part of federal common law. The convention says that when the U.S. signs a treaty, even if not ratified, it cannot take actions inconsistent with the object and purpose of the treaty. Moreover, the U.S. routinely violates treaties to which it is a party.
“Target List” of 350 People to Be Arrested in a Trump Administration
On June 30, consistent with his history of seeking revenge against his perceived enemies, Trump called for the prosecution by televised military tribunals of people on his hit list. They include Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, Jamie Raskin, Pete Aguilar, Zoe Lofgren and Bennie Thompson.
Ivan Raiklin, self-described “future secretary of retribution” in a Trump II administration, has prepared a “target list” of 350 public officials and journalists he considers traitors. “This is a deadly serious report,” U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) told Raw Story. “A retired U.S. military officer has drawn up a ‘Deep State target list’ of public officials he considers traitors, along with our family members and staff. His hit list is a vigilante death warrant for hundreds of Americans and a clear and present danger to the survival of American democracy and freedom.”
Given the Supreme Court’s recent immunity decision, Trump could get away with his retribution if he convinces a court that they were official acts. Under the court’s new test, it will be very difficult to prove an act is unofficial.
The writing is on the wall: If Trump is elected president, he may well be emboldened to institute a fascist state.
Trump is busy getting ready for Day One of his presidency – but so is Truthout.
Trump has made it no secret that he is planning a demolition-style attack on both specific communities and democracy as a whole, beginning on his first day in office. With over 25 executive orders and directives queued up for January 20, he’s promised to “launch the largest deportation program in American history,” roll back anti-discrimination protections for transgender students, and implement a “drill, drill, drill” approach to ramp up oil and gas extraction.
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