The general election is still approximately four months away, and with the current polls indicating a very close race, anything may happen during that time. But that hasn’t stopped former President Donald Trump, who, in collaboration with prominent Republicans, conservative individuals, and organizations, has already devised a strategy to change the federal government in their image.
The plan is called Project 2025, and it is a compilation of policy transition recommendations outlining how, if Trump wins the November election, he might most efficiently reorganize the federal government to carry out an aggressive far-right agenda. “It is not enough for conservatives to win elections,” the project’s website claims. ”
If we are to free the country from the radical Left’s grip, we must have both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry it out on the first day of the next conservative administration.” This is the purpose of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project.
What precisely is Project 2025?
Simply put, Project 2025 is a big, 920-page paper outlining the future of the Trump administration. This entails not only recommendations for economic, educational, and immigration policies but also a vision of America that conservatives want the incoming Republican administration—whether it be Trump or someone else—to implement. The book provides a detailed framework for implementing such a vision, including proposals for key White House officials, cabinet positions, Congress, federal agencies, commissions, and boards.
The plan goes so far as to establish a screening procedure for selecting and employing the proper personnel at all levels of government to carry out this goal. The introductory article of the plan, authored by Heritage Project President Kevin D. Roberts, clearly describes Project 2025’s goal: to make America a conservative country. To do this, the next presidential administration should concentrate on four “broad fronts that will decide America’s future.”
Among the four fronts are:
- Protect our children and reinstate the family as the core of American life.
- Take down the administrative state and give the people of America their sovereignty back.
- Protect our country’s boundaries, sovereignty, and wealth against outside threats.
- Protect everyone’s freedom to live as God has given us—what our Constitution calls “the blessings of liberty.”
The remainder of the pamphlet lays out in great detail how the incoming Republican government may carry out the objectives on these four fronts. This contains detailed plans outlining the actions that the White House and every government department, including the Small Business Administration, Department of Agriculture, Department of Defense, and Financial Regulatory Agencies, should take to revamp their missions and daily operations. Project 2025 is a comprehensive roadmap outlining how each executive branch might implement an ultra-conservative agenda.
Project 2025: Why is it a cause for concern?
“A remarkably detailed guide to turning the United States into a fascist’s paradise” is what Project 2025 is, according to The New Republic. In Project 2025, the main document outlines 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,” according to the magazine.
Project 2025 paints a terrifying picture of the future of America, but the most problematic part is its blueprint for the first sixty days of a possible second Trump administration. “Conservatives need a plan, and time is short,” the playbook adds. “Work on this project will culminate in a blueprint for the incoming administration to follow in the first three months in office in order to alleviate the terrible policies enacted by the political left as soon as possible.”
The playbook lays out several disturbing ideas, one of which is a strategy to replace government employees with those who would follow the conservative values of Project 2025, thereby eliminating tens of thousands of jobs. Project 2025’s Presidential Transition Project head and former Trump administration official Paul Dans told the Associated Press that the 180-day transition plan is a “clarion call to come to Washington… They must put down their tools, abandon their careers, and declare, “This is my lifetime moment to serve.”
Department and agency chiefs should be assessing applicants according to the 180-Day Playbook, which reads like a cult’s recruitment brochure for the most part. Dans asks the reader, “Mr. Smith, Mrs. Smith, and Ms. Smith, this book is functionally an invitation for you the reader—to come to Washington or support those who can,” in the Playbook’s introduction. “On Day One, we will begin to dismantle the Administrative State by rallying a legion of conservatives who have been carefully selected, screened, and educated.”
How did Project 2025 come to be?
The Heritage Foundation, a prominent right-wing think tank in the nation for the last half-century, is responsible for conceptualizing Project 2025.
Over its almost fifty years in operation, the conservative Heritage Foundation has used its wealth, power, and influence to promote anti-LGBTQ laws, anti-climate legislation, anti-abortion lobbying, and voting suppression.
More than a hundred right-wing organizations, including infamous ones like America First Legal, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, and Moms For Liberty, have banded together to form Project 2025, formally formed by The Heritage Foundation. Donations to a vast network of right-wing dark money organizations linked to Project 2025, spearheaded by the Donors Trust, associated with Leonard Leo, have reportedly increased significantly since the project’s announcement, as reported by NBC News.
According to the organization, “more than 400 scholars and policy experts from across the conservative movement and around the country” contributed chapters to the Project 2025 plan and the 180-Day Playbook. Some of the noteworthy right-wing individuals and former Trump administration officials were Christopher Miller (acting secretary of defense), Ken Cuccinelli (deputy secretary of homeland security), and Peter Navarro (as Trump’s top trade adviser).