Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025 which was written by the Heritage Foundation. He can run but he cannot hide. Project 2025 is Trump’s policy blueprint for his next presidency. He and the MAGAs who support him will do whatever they can to make Project 2025 a reality if Trump is elected to be president again. Many of the unpopular ideas in Project 2025 are ones he talks about at his rallies (“Dictator on Day One”, rounding up millions of immigrants and putting them in camps and then expelling them, “women who get abortions must be punished”) JD Vance, his VP pick, wrote the forward for Project 2025. Many of Trump’s allies wrote Project 2025.
Project 2025 is a roadmap to remake our country from a democracy into a dictatorship with Trump dismantling our government and installing himself as the first American dictator. The country would be run by the MAGA Republicans, Christian nationalists, and Trump loyalists. It would intentionally benefit the already rich, creating a group of oligarchs like Elon Musk. The plan starts on Day One of a second Trump administration with immediate roll backs of our current rights and protections. The plan is clearly spelled out in the 920 page manifesto that is called Project 2025.
The threat level from Project 2025 for all of us living in the United States is extremely high, not just the people in Trump’s crosshairs.
- On Day One Trump, who has been given immunity by the Supreme Court for any acts as president that are criminal as long as they could be considered “official” acts, would be in the drivers seat without people around him who would restrain him. Instead, people like Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Rudy Guiliani and other awful people would be his right hand guys. There would be a sweeping purge of our government. Many of the people who work in our government currently are experts in their fields. They work on behalf of the American people- keeping us safe. Rules governing who can and cannot be fired would be vastly altered to allow Trump and his allies to fire anyone they want to get rid of and replace them with flunkies, Trump loyalists, who will do what Trump says to do. They will use something called Schedule F to accomplish this purge. Trump tried to introduce Schedule F near the end of his presidential term but he failed. If elected again he will not fail. He has learned he needs loyalists to get his orders carried out. They will be installed in government.
- Schedule F was created in Trump’s first administration to make it easy for Trump to fire government employees. Project 2025 promoters and Trump’s inner circle have already been interviewing thousands of people who have vowed that if they are hired they will be Trump loyalists. These people would replace current government officials because they are willing to be totally loyal to Trump. That would be a very dangerous move. Gutting the federal employees who protect us and replacing them with Trump toadies will put Americans’ lives and health at risk. Do you remember how Trump handled the pandemic? He told us all to inject bleach and use hydroxychloroquine. Trump has no interest in science or facts. That failure is extremely dangerous.
- Project 2025 would cut Social Security and Medicare. Seniors beware. You have a lot to lose.
- Trump would turn the Department of Justice and the FBI into his vengeance police. Those agencies would lose their independence. Instead of following the law, they would be following Trump’s vendettas. They would become enforcement arms for Trump to get that revenge and retribution he has promised. People who have told us the truth including Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, Adam Kinzinger, Michael Cohen, hosts on MNBC like Rachel Maddow, and commentators like Joyce Vance, Andrew Weissman and shows like Morning Joe, comedians like Jimmy Kimmel, Steven Colbert and anyone who points out Trump’s foibles and flaws would be subjected to lengthy investigations and possible prosecutions. That’s what dictators do. They remove anyone who does not agree with them. They use the Justice Department and FBI/police as their attack dogs.
- DONALD TRUMP has made it no secret in his campaign rhetoric for a second stint in the White House that he intends to pull the levers of government to prosecute a wide swath of his opponents. While some observers dismiss the claims as Trump’s usual bluster, there’s reason to believe the ruminations could become reality, Ankush Khardori writes for POLITICO Magazine.
- The Department of Education would be eliminated and replaced with a voucher system that would favor religious education.
- When it comes to reproductive freedom, no matter what Trump says now to get elected, the religious right extremists would compel Trump to enact a 50 state abortion ban probably using the Comstock Act (see p. 459 of Project 2025), and also by putting a Trump loyalist into power to head the Food and Drug Administration who would ban medication for abortions, limit or ban contraceptives, and limit access to birth control. Abortion would not be permitted without exception for rape or incest in all 50 states. Health care providers would risk punishment and could lose their licenses if they try to save the life of a pregnant woman. Pregnant women and women of childbearing age would be monitored, tracked and criminally charged along with anyone who tries to help them if they seek abortions. Planned Parenthood would be defunded. Pregnancy in the United States would become extremely risky and many more women would die from complications of pregnancy or lose the ability to get pregnant in the future. IVF would be banned because the rabid religious right thinks that even fetal protoplasm is an unborn children even though many other religions do not share that philosophy including the Jewish faith which requires putting the life of the woman first. The rabid religious right ideology about abortion runs counter to other religious faiths and the requirement that doctors take an oath to save the lives of their patients
- Trump and the MAGAs would round up “immigrants” and use concentration camps to house them and then they would expel them from the country. There is no way to “round up immigrants” without also rounding up Americans who have dark skin but are not illegal immigrants. The human suffering from this kind of activity would be not only be shocking and un- American, but it would also devastate our workforce. Right now in our country immigrants take low paying jobs that Americans don’t want such as picking fruit, paving bridges at night, and working repetitive, rote factory jobs. Those jobs would be extremely hard to fill.
- If you live in a blue state don’t think Trump as president would not wreck your life too. Trump is out for himself and his rich friends as well as oligarchs or other wealthy guys from other countries who might make Trump richer. Americans seem to have forgotten how badly Trump handled crises and disasters from the pandemic to forest fires. Trump will hold back relief money after storms or fires from states that are not loyal to him as he began to do when he was president before. No matter what he says now, there will be a national abortion ban causing more women to die or be physically damaged from complications in their pregnancies. Women of childbearing age will not get good medical care out of fear in the medical community of being prosecuted by their government. The Dept of Education will be abolished and vouchers for Christian schools and Christian education will become the norm. The military, DOJ, and FBI will all have to be loyal to him as the dictator-in-chief. American citizens, Dreamers, who have lived all their lives in the United States and are contributing members of our country would be rounded up and expelled or put into concentration camps, creating upheaval and chaos in our economy and damaging our business world resulting from a lack of reliable rules and an acceptance of diversity. Trump’s tariffs will create inflation and damage the economy.
- Project 2025 will encourage discrimination against people who are outside what Christian nationalists think should be the norm. That includes people who are LGBTQ and people do not pray like they do or stay in marriages even if they are abusive.
- Project 2025 calls for slashing FEMA’s budget and returning disaster responses to states and localities which are not able to provide costly and strategic resources to respond to the kinds of climate disasters we are already seeing and will be experiencing more as the world continues to heat up. Hurricane Helene is a recent case in point. It was a category 4 storm that wreaked havoc in southern states. There will be more hurricanes like Helene because of our failure to address climate change. Project 2025 also calls for dismantling the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and either eliminating its functions, sending them to other agencies, privatizing them, or putting them under the control of states and territories. It complains that NOAA, whose duties include issuing hurricane warnings, is “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”
- The plan includes cutting taxes for the rich and restructuring the tax code so that middle class families pay more. The tax code would be restructured to benefit wealthy families. A middle class family with two children would pay $2600 more annually in federal income tax. A married couple with two children earning $5 million or more would get a $325,000 federal tax cut.
- Overtime would be cut or eliminated according to Project 2025.
- Crippling student debt would be reinstated and there would be no loan forgiveness.
This list is not even a complete list of the way Project 2025 would turn our country into a hot mess culturally, economically and ethically. It would hurt working people and the middle class directly. Wealthy people might think a Trump presidency would be great for them, but they forget that when people are unhappy or feel discriminated against that creates chaos, resentment and anger.
Living in a dictatorship is not only bad for people who upset the dictator, it is terrible for everyone else just trying to live their lives.
