For decades, Republican Party leaders have developed relationships with white supremacists, far-right organizations, and populist authoritarians that culminated in the disastrous Trump presidency and failed insurrection attempt. Rather than recognizing their mistake, those GOP leaders have been working overtime to build an apparatus to ensure that the next Republican president becomes a presidential dictator. Each week new details seem to emerge, from an “enemies list” consisting of critics who will be persecuted under a new Trump term to an executive order deploying the military on Inauguration Day to subdue expected protests.
An established conservative organization influenced both by the new fascist trend in GOP politics and Trump's personal grievances published a sweeping new initiative to seize power permanently the next time the GOP controls the government. Not only that: They are currently enlisting an entire army of unqualified but loyal MAGA cultists to take over thousands of positions in Washington, D.C. If their goals are achieved, those positions will be made available after what will be the largest government firing spree in U.S. history.
Trump, who blatantly wrote on Truth Social that he wants to “terminate the Constitution” and openly promised to become a dictator on “Day One,” is completely on board with this plan. He’s thrilled to take control over the federal workforce, where he’d be able to fire workers at will for "disloyalty," especially after he converts most of those government workers to “at-will” status (more on that later). Trump also wants to abolish tenure at schools and universities, use federal law enforcement to attack his critics, and remove NBC and MSNBC from the airwaves after charging them with treason. That’s just the beginning of the agenda, and it has a name: Project 2025.
RELATED STORY: Loyal, angry, and ready to break the law: How Trump plans to staff his Cabinet
Trump has spoken about the need to punish doctors who refuse his demands to deny treatment for procedures he disagrees with, like gender-affirming care. He also promised to bomb sovereign allied nations to go after criminal organizations, with or without their approval. He said he will eliminate anti-segregation laws, cut Medicare and Social Security, and sign a national abortion ban. Trump’s first term was marred by extreme incompetence and had at least a few people who pushed back on his worst impulses. Those people didn’t last long, and it’s a mistake Trump and his sycophants don’t plan on repeating. For those who think there’s little danger of a second Trump term, look at the polls showing Trump being neck-and-neck with Biden, including the swing states.
RELATED STORY: Trump's threat to democracy is the heart of Biden's campaign—and Trump's
One need look no further than Florida to see what a kowtowed legislature is willing to do for a strong-arming executive leader who fancies himself a fascist. Gov. Ron DeSantis was given unprecedented authority that he has wielded like a sledgehammer, from dismantling Black districts even though it violated our Constitution to firing elected Black Democrats in blue cities for no reason whatsoever. He even went after private companies that simply dared to question him. In the words of the Florida Phoenix, a nonprofit news organization, Project 2025 will “cement America as a rightwing authoritarian state,” with marginalized communities having the most to lose. Despite the looming danger, the response from Democrats to this great threat to our democracy has been completely inadequate, leaving the American people vulnerable to an authoritarian takeover.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has been publishing conservative plans for decades. When Ronald Reagan won in 1980, this newly formed conservative group published a plan called the “Mandate for Leadership: Policy Management for a Conservative Administration” to swing our government to the right as quickly as possible. It was a book series more than 20 volumes long. By the end of Reagan’s horrible presidency, 60% of the ideas in this series were implemented.
Not hiding anything: Project 2025 tent in Des Moines, Iowa.
The Heritage Foundation would go on to print updates to this plan on a routine basis, with the previous one being called Project 2020. Yet Project 2025 is unique in its audacity and complete disregard for constitutional checks and balances.
The new book calls for schools to literally ban terms in our language such as “gender equality,” “reproductive health,” and “reproductive rights.” It also calls to install “biblically-based ideologies” in all facets of our government, a clear violation of the First Amendment.
Yet at the heart of Project 2025 is an audacious attempt to reverse a century of perceived liberal encroachment in Washington. The plan literally seeks to undo the very fabric of American governance. It aims to defund major federal departments, including the Department of Justice; dismantle the FBI; eliminate the Departments of Education and Commerce entirely; and exert complete presidential control over independent agencies like the Federal Communications Commission.
What makes this agenda particularly worrisome is the desire to populate the bureaucracy with loyal MAGA conservatives. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, the architect of Project 2025, decided a more authoritarian approach was needed after civil servants thwarted multiple attempts by Trump to implement unconstitutional practices (Muslim travel ban, installation of a new attorney general to overturn 2020 election, shooting George Floyd protesters, etc.). Project 2025 goes directly after the federal civil service.
To get rid of “the Deep State” and ensure a radical transformation of our government, Project 2025 has a disturbing plan for a long-term sustainable, albeit unpopular, fascist government filled with right-wing lackeys. This has been the dream for Christian conservatives for a long time.
Laws were put in place decades ago to prevent the federal workforce from being a political spoils system. Current civil servants have extensive experience within their respective government agencies and possess valuable insights into federal policies and laws, enabling them to effectively serve. The federal civil service stands as a critical pillar of democracy. Yet this Republican plan is to purge as many as 50,000 civil service employees and have their replacements swear their loyalty to a Republican president, like Trump, instead of the Constitution or the American people. Lest you think this goes too far, even for Republicans, it’s important to note that Trump rushed to do just this at the end of his failed presidency by having a new category of civil service created through executive order called Schedule F. This would have removed all protections for government workers and made them “at-will” employees.
The Heritage Foundation isn’t waiting around. They are currently scouring social media accounts to determine who is loyal and who isn’t, and recruiting people they are calling "conservative warriors" to occupy key positions in the federal bureaucracy.
The Project 2025 team is scouring social media accounts to replace dissidents in the civil service.
They have even launched courses to turn MAGA people into bureaucrats who will implement their vision without question. They don’t want to squander another opportunity like they had in 2017 when they controlled all branches of government before people wised up in 2018 and started throwing them out.
Mary Guy, a professor of public administration at the University of Colorado Denver, is sounding the alarm that our federal civil service would be ruined by turning the federal government into a political patronage system: “It frightens me. We have a democracy that is at risk of suicide. Schedule F is just one more bullet in the gun."
Because of a dedicated civil service, along with the Trump team's basic ineptness, his most racist initiatives, such as the Muslim travel ban or his cruel family separation policy, were foiled. Unfortunately, this has led many people to believe that America would survive a second Trump term because his first one was marred by so much failure. Yet Project 2025 is seeking to ensure that radical change is implemented quickly by currently training and developing a vast network of right-wing bureaucratic loyalists who are willing to do anything to execute their extremist agenda.
The heart of Project 2025's dangerous plan lies in its interpretation of the "unitary theory" of the Constitution. This fringe theory asserts that Article II grants the president emperor-like, unchecked authority over the federal bureaucracy, obliterating the crucial checks and balances designed to preserve the democratic system. Trump fully embraced this theory. While addressing a crowd of teenagers at a conservative summit in Washington, he said:
That’s the irony of the phony right-wing outrage over the recent Colorado Supreme Court ruling as well as the Maine secretary of state’s decision to keep Trump off the ballot due to his engaging in an insurrection. The Constitution is designed to keep dictators from seizing power, and those decisions were applied correctly. Yet while Trump and his allies melt down over the ruling, he has every intention of abusing Article II.
Project 2025 signifies a pivotal moment in the conservative movement aligning with Trump's personal agenda, which has become the party's overarching goal. It intends to resurrect and reimagine the Reaganite assault on the federal government, emphasizing "accountability" as its core mission. The architects of Project 2025 acknowledge that governance and process have not traditionally been their strong suits but are determined to rectify this shortcoming. However, their newfound emphasis on accountability appears to be a guise for dismantling and consolidating power.
Project 2025 goes beyond the Reaganite view that the government has grown too big, but rather that the government is weaponized against conservatives. This initiative seeks to completely dismantle the government and the institutional protections in a quest to destroy what they call the deep state.
The success of Project 2025 is inextricably linked to former President Donald Trump's political future. His conviction that he has been victimized by elements of the "deep state" continues to shape the party's direction. Trump's public career has been marked by a relentless belief in conspiracy theories and unfounded claims of deep state interference. His current campaign officials openly acknowledge that Project 2025 aligns well with Trump's personal "Agenda 47" for his second term. It’s a laundry list of authoritarianism and cruelty:
Project 2025 wisely steers clear of politically delicate entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Even though their surrogates have made it very clear that they want these liberal programs to end, they know that attacking them directly is political suicide. Instead, they aim to target the agencies that could undermine them. This includes the Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the health programs that Republicans hate: Medicaid, the ACA Marketplace, Medicare, and the Children's Health Insurance Program.
Most likely the first agency that gets a hatchet taken to it will be the Department of Justice, and in particular the FBI, because Trump has a personal animosity toward them for arresting his criminal accomplices and raiding his home to recover the nuclear secrets he stole, not to mention whatever classified intel he likely gave the Russians. However, Health and Human Services won’t be far behind.
What’s most alarming is that after all the attention that was paid to this initiative after it came out, the Heritage Foundation didn’t walk back any of it. They are yelling from the rooftops about their plan to turn this country into a Christo-fascist nation, and the media is treating it just like another political platform.
Former Trump official Paul Dans was positively gleeful. “We need to flood the zone with conservatives. The president on Day One will be a wrecking ball for the administrative state.”
Jeffrey Clark is leading the work on the Insurrection Act under Project 2025.
Project 2025 includes associates of the former president, and the person leading the work on the Insurrection Act under Project 2025 is none other than Jeffrey Clark, the criminally indicted co-conspirator who tried to seize power at the Department of Justice when Trump tried to stay in office after his election loss. When Clark was told that there would be mass protests if Trump overthrew the election, his response was, “That’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”
This is particularly disturbing since the blueprint includes using U.S. troops to put down protests and acts of civil disobedience across the U.S. resulting from a Trump election victory. Clark refused to comment to The Washington Post about his work on the project regarding the Insurrection Act.
While Democrats and Trump adversaries love to talk about his crimes, his mental deterioration, his being unfit for office, and his colossal stupidity, Trump’s actual plans for what will happen if he seizes power are something his critics aren’t talking about enough. If we lose next year, we won’t just lose an election—we will lose our nation as we know it.
Even if we win, Project 2025 doesn’t go away: It’s designed to be implemented for any Republican presidential candidate with authoritarian inclination. And that is the most frightening, and sadly, realistic issue that we are facing today.
RELATED STORY: The media may be waking up to the threat of Donald Trump
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An established conservative organization influenced both by the new fascist trend in GOP politics and Trump's personal grievances published a sweeping new initiative to seize power permanently the next time the GOP controls the government. Not only that: They are currently enlisting an entire army of unqualified but loyal MAGA cultists to take over thousands of positions in Washington, D.C. If their goals are achieved, those positions will be made available after what will be the largest government firing spree in U.S. history.
Trump, who blatantly wrote on Truth Social that he wants to “terminate the Constitution” and openly promised to become a dictator on “Day One,” is completely on board with this plan. He’s thrilled to take control over the federal workforce, where he’d be able to fire workers at will for "disloyalty," especially after he converts most of those government workers to “at-will” status (more on that later). Trump also wants to abolish tenure at schools and universities, use federal law enforcement to attack his critics, and remove NBC and MSNBC from the airwaves after charging them with treason. That’s just the beginning of the agenda, and it has a name: Project 2025.
RELATED STORY: Loyal, angry, and ready to break the law: How Trump plans to staff his Cabinet
Trump has spoken about the need to punish doctors who refuse his demands to deny treatment for procedures he disagrees with, like gender-affirming care. He also promised to bomb sovereign allied nations to go after criminal organizations, with or without their approval. He said he will eliminate anti-segregation laws, cut Medicare and Social Security, and sign a national abortion ban. Trump’s first term was marred by extreme incompetence and had at least a few people who pushed back on his worst impulses. Those people didn’t last long, and it’s a mistake Trump and his sycophants don’t plan on repeating. For those who think there’s little danger of a second Trump term, look at the polls showing Trump being neck-and-neck with Biden, including the swing states.
RELATED STORY: Trump's threat to democracy is the heart of Biden's campaign—and Trump's
One need look no further than Florida to see what a kowtowed legislature is willing to do for a strong-arming executive leader who fancies himself a fascist. Gov. Ron DeSantis was given unprecedented authority that he has wielded like a sledgehammer, from dismantling Black districts even though it violated our Constitution to firing elected Black Democrats in blue cities for no reason whatsoever. He even went after private companies that simply dared to question him. In the words of the Florida Phoenix, a nonprofit news organization, Project 2025 will “cement America as a rightwing authoritarian state,” with marginalized communities having the most to lose. Despite the looming danger, the response from Democrats to this great threat to our democracy has been completely inadequate, leaving the American people vulnerable to an authoritarian takeover.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has been publishing conservative plans for decades. When Ronald Reagan won in 1980, this newly formed conservative group published a plan called the “Mandate for Leadership: Policy Management for a Conservative Administration” to swing our government to the right as quickly as possible. It was a book series more than 20 volumes long. By the end of Reagan’s horrible presidency, 60% of the ideas in this series were implemented.
Not hiding anything: Project 2025 tent in Des Moines, Iowa.
The Heritage Foundation would go on to print updates to this plan on a routine basis, with the previous one being called Project 2020. Yet Project 2025 is unique in its audacity and complete disregard for constitutional checks and balances.
The new book calls for schools to literally ban terms in our language such as “gender equality,” “reproductive health,” and “reproductive rights.” It also calls to install “biblically-based ideologies” in all facets of our government, a clear violation of the First Amendment.
Yet at the heart of Project 2025 is an audacious attempt to reverse a century of perceived liberal encroachment in Washington. The plan literally seeks to undo the very fabric of American governance. It aims to defund major federal departments, including the Department of Justice; dismantle the FBI; eliminate the Departments of Education and Commerce entirely; and exert complete presidential control over independent agencies like the Federal Communications Commission.
What makes this agenda particularly worrisome is the desire to populate the bureaucracy with loyal MAGA conservatives. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, the architect of Project 2025, decided a more authoritarian approach was needed after civil servants thwarted multiple attempts by Trump to implement unconstitutional practices (Muslim travel ban, installation of a new attorney general to overturn 2020 election, shooting George Floyd protesters, etc.). Project 2025 goes directly after the federal civil service.
To get rid of “the Deep State” and ensure a radical transformation of our government, Project 2025 has a disturbing plan for a long-term sustainable, albeit unpopular, fascist government filled with right-wing lackeys. This has been the dream for Christian conservatives for a long time.
Laws were put in place decades ago to prevent the federal workforce from being a political spoils system. Current civil servants have extensive experience within their respective government agencies and possess valuable insights into federal policies and laws, enabling them to effectively serve. The federal civil service stands as a critical pillar of democracy. Yet this Republican plan is to purge as many as 50,000 civil service employees and have their replacements swear their loyalty to a Republican president, like Trump, instead of the Constitution or the American people. Lest you think this goes too far, even for Republicans, it’s important to note that Trump rushed to do just this at the end of his failed presidency by having a new category of civil service created through executive order called Schedule F. This would have removed all protections for government workers and made them “at-will” employees.
The Heritage Foundation isn’t waiting around. They are currently scouring social media accounts to determine who is loyal and who isn’t, and recruiting people they are calling "conservative warriors" to occupy key positions in the federal bureaucracy.
The Project 2025 team is scouring social media accounts to replace dissidents in the civil service.
They have even launched courses to turn MAGA people into bureaucrats who will implement their vision without question. They don’t want to squander another opportunity like they had in 2017 when they controlled all branches of government before people wised up in 2018 and started throwing them out.
Mary Guy, a professor of public administration at the University of Colorado Denver, is sounding the alarm that our federal civil service would be ruined by turning the federal government into a political patronage system: “It frightens me. We have a democracy that is at risk of suicide. Schedule F is just one more bullet in the gun."
Because of a dedicated civil service, along with the Trump team's basic ineptness, his most racist initiatives, such as the Muslim travel ban or his cruel family separation policy, were foiled. Unfortunately, this has led many people to believe that America would survive a second Trump term because his first one was marred by so much failure. Yet Project 2025 is seeking to ensure that radical change is implemented quickly by currently training and developing a vast network of right-wing bureaucratic loyalists who are willing to do anything to execute their extremist agenda.
The heart of Project 2025's dangerous plan lies in its interpretation of the "unitary theory" of the Constitution. This fringe theory asserts that Article II grants the president emperor-like, unchecked authority over the federal bureaucracy, obliterating the crucial checks and balances designed to preserve the democratic system. Trump fully embraced this theory. While addressing a crowd of teenagers at a conservative summit in Washington, he said:
That’s the irony of the phony right-wing outrage over the recent Colorado Supreme Court ruling as well as the Maine secretary of state’s decision to keep Trump off the ballot due to his engaging in an insurrection. The Constitution is designed to keep dictators from seizing power, and those decisions were applied correctly. Yet while Trump and his allies melt down over the ruling, he has every intention of abusing Article II.
Project 2025 signifies a pivotal moment in the conservative movement aligning with Trump's personal agenda, which has become the party's overarching goal. It intends to resurrect and reimagine the Reaganite assault on the federal government, emphasizing "accountability" as its core mission. The architects of Project 2025 acknowledge that governance and process have not traditionally been their strong suits but are determined to rectify this shortcoming. However, their newfound emphasis on accountability appears to be a guise for dismantling and consolidating power.
Project 2025 goes beyond the Reaganite view that the government has grown too big, but rather that the government is weaponized against conservatives. This initiative seeks to completely dismantle the government and the institutional protections in a quest to destroy what they call the deep state.
The success of Project 2025 is inextricably linked to former President Donald Trump's political future. His conviction that he has been victimized by elements of the "deep state" continues to shape the party's direction. Trump's public career has been marked by a relentless belief in conspiracy theories and unfounded claims of deep state interference. His current campaign officials openly acknowledge that Project 2025 aligns well with Trump's personal "Agenda 47" for his second term. It’s a laundry list of authoritarianism and cruelty:
Project 2025 wisely steers clear of politically delicate entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Even though their surrogates have made it very clear that they want these liberal programs to end, they know that attacking them directly is political suicide. Instead, they aim to target the agencies that could undermine them. This includes the Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the health programs that Republicans hate: Medicaid, the ACA Marketplace, Medicare, and the Children's Health Insurance Program.
Most likely the first agency that gets a hatchet taken to it will be the Department of Justice, and in particular the FBI, because Trump has a personal animosity toward them for arresting his criminal accomplices and raiding his home to recover the nuclear secrets he stole, not to mention whatever classified intel he likely gave the Russians. However, Health and Human Services won’t be far behind.
What’s most alarming is that after all the attention that was paid to this initiative after it came out, the Heritage Foundation didn’t walk back any of it. They are yelling from the rooftops about their plan to turn this country into a Christo-fascist nation, and the media is treating it just like another political platform.
Former Trump official Paul Dans was positively gleeful. “We need to flood the zone with conservatives. The president on Day One will be a wrecking ball for the administrative state.”
Jeffrey Clark is leading the work on the Insurrection Act under Project 2025.
Project 2025 includes associates of the former president, and the person leading the work on the Insurrection Act under Project 2025 is none other than Jeffrey Clark, the criminally indicted co-conspirator who tried to seize power at the Department of Justice when Trump tried to stay in office after his election loss. When Clark was told that there would be mass protests if Trump overthrew the election, his response was, “That’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”
This is particularly disturbing since the blueprint includes using U.S. troops to put down protests and acts of civil disobedience across the U.S. resulting from a Trump election victory. Clark refused to comment to The Washington Post about his work on the project regarding the Insurrection Act.
While Democrats and Trump adversaries love to talk about his crimes, his mental deterioration, his being unfit for office, and his colossal stupidity, Trump’s actual plans for what will happen if he seizes power are something his critics aren’t talking about enough. If we lose next year, we won’t just lose an election—we will lose our nation as we know it.
Even if we win, Project 2025 doesn’t go away: It’s designed to be implemented for any Republican presidential candidate with authoritarian inclination. And that is the most frightening, and sadly, realistic issue that we are facing today.
RELATED STORY: The media may be waking up to the threat of Donald Trump
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