Project 2025: That’s the Real Trump Agenda

With many in the media continuing to have a fixation on Joe Biden's debate performance and now the aftermath of the shooting in Pennsylvania over the weekend, there is far too little focus on and coverage of what a second Trump regime would mean in terms of (i) turning the international order upside down, leading to threats to long term American national security, (ii) gutting the federal government and giving free rein to large corporations, erasing safety regulations, and filling agency positions based on ideology rather than competence, and (iii) the white Christian nationalist attacks on the rights of minorities (racial, religious and sexual orientation minorities are all threatened) and the right to abortion and even use of contraception.  The blue print for this frightening world is laid out in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 which Trump - lying as is his norm - claims to know "nothing about it" even though he has previously praised the agenda's architect and the Project is peopled by countless former Trump regime personnel. Voters need to stop allowing themselves to be distracted from what the real Trump agenda would be in a second term and vote Democrat if they seek to preserve many of their own civil rights and religious freedom.  A column in the New York Times looks at the ominous threat of a second Trump term:

I’m not going to speculate about the effect of Saturday’s attempted assassination of Donald Trump on the 2024 presidential race. I will, however, make one observation: Some on the political right are using the attack to imply that the criticism of Trump’s past efforts to overturn the results of the last election, and any suggestion that he poses a threat to democracy, is now out of bounds.

But two things are true at the same time: Political violence is unacceptable, full stop. And the efforts by Trump and his most hard-core supporters to undermine American democracy continue to be unacceptable. As Republicans head into their convention this week, it’s important to understand the potential ramifications of both their official platform . . . . and their unofficial aspirations, embodied by Project 2025.

For anyone new to this: Project 2025 is a blueprint by and for some of Trump’s close allies, put together by the Heritage Foundation, to ensure that if Trump wins in November, MAGA will hit the ground running. It seeks to provide “both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration.” The particulars are laid out in a roughly 900-page document

How radical is the Project 2025 agenda? Earlier this month, Kevin Roberts, Heritage’s president, said that the country is in the midst of a “second American Revolution” that will be bloodless “if the left allows it to be.”

Republicans seem, however, to have belatedly realized that much of what’s in Project 2025, especially its multipronged attack on reproductive rights, is deeply unpopular. Trump has tried to distance himself from the project . . . . even though in 2022 Trump told a Heritage conference that its people were “going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”

There are many, many things to object to in Project 2025, but I’d argue that the most important thing is right at the front, in the section titled “Taking the Reins of Government.” There’s a lot in this section, but it basically calls for replacing much of the federal work force, which consists mainly of career civil servants somewhat insulated from partisan pressures, with political appointees who can be hired or fired at will.

Trump actually made a significant move in this direction near the end of his presidency, issuing an executive order that created a category of political appointee, Schedule F, which would have allowed the replacement of many career officials with partisan loyalists. President Biden rescinded that order, but Project 2025 would bring it back in some form — probably on a much larger scale.

In 1883, less than two years after President James Garfield was assassinated by a deranged and disgruntled man seeking a political appointment, Congress passed the Pendleton Act, which created a professional civil service in which most employees can’t be fired or demoted for political reasons. There were very good reasons for that reform at the time, but the case for insulating most government employees from partisan pressure is far stronger now.

Now imagine politicizing the large parts of our government that are currently relatively apolitical. It’s all too easy to imagine an unscrupulous president using the power this would give him to reward friends and punish opponents across the nation.

There’s a lot of additional stuff in Project 2025, which I’ll get to in future columns. For now, let’s just say that it’s every bit as menacing as critics report. And despite Trump’s disingenuous attempts to distance himself from the project, it gives us a very good idea of what a second Trump term could be like.