Project 2025

Project 2025 is a plan to reshape the Executive Branch of the U.S. federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 United States presidential election.[1][2] Established in 2022, the project seeks to recruit thousands to come to Washington, D.C., to replace existing employees to restructure the Executive Branch of the federal government as to further the agenda and policies of Donald Trump.[3] The plan would perform a quick takeover of the entire U.S. federal government under a maximalist version of the unitary executive theory – a theory proposing the president of the United States have absolute power of the executive branch – upon inauguration.

Project 2025
PurposePlan to reshape the U.S. federal government to support the agenda of a second Trump term
Headquarters214 Massachusetts Avenue Northeast, Washington, D.C., U.S.
Location
Director
Paul Dans
Websitewww.project2025.org

The development of the plan is led by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative U.S. think tank. It includes widespread changes across the entire government, particularly with regard to economic policy and the role of the federal government and federal agencies.

Background
Main article: The Heritage Foundation

Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts established Project 2025 in 2022 to provide the 2024 Republican Party presidential nominee with a personnel and ideology framework[4] after civil servants refused to support Trump during his attempt to institute a Muslim travel ban, effort to install a new attorney general to assist him in attempting to overturn the 2020 election, and when he called for lethal force against George Floyd protestors.[5] In April 2023, the Heritage Foundation published a 920-page blueprint written by hundreds of conservatives, most prominently former Trump administration officials. This report argued for the expansion of presidential powers, installation of conservatives into offices within the executive branch via the unitary executive theory, and implementation of conservative policies.[4]

Overview
Project 2025 is shaped by Trumpism, Donald Trump's ideology.

Expansion of presidential powers
See also: Unitary executive theory

Project 2025 seeks to place the entire Executive Branch of the U.S. federal government under direct presidential control, eliminating the independence of the Department of Justice, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission and other agencies. The plan bases its presidential agenda on a maximalist version of the unitary executive theory, arguing that Article Two of the United States Constitution vests executive power solely to the president.[4] While Trump is not the first president to consider policies related to unitary executive theory,[6][7] the idea has seen a resurgence and popularization within the Republican party following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.[8] Donald Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, stated in 2019 that Article Two of the United States Constitution granted him the "right to do whatever as president", a common claim made by supporters of unitary executive theory. A similar remark was echoed in 2018 when he claimed he could fire special counsel Robert Mueller.[4]

Personnel

Project 2025 establishes a personnel database shaped by the ideology of Donald Trump. Throughout his presidency, Trump was accused of removing individuals whom he considered disloyal regardless of their ideological conviction, such as former attorney general William Barr. In the final year of Trump's presidency, White House Presidential Personnel Office employees James Bacon and John McEntee developed a questionnaire to test potential government employees on their commitment to Trumpism; Bacon and McEntee joined the project in May 2023.[9] Project 2025 is aligned with Trump's plans to fire more government employees than allocated to the president using Schedule F, a job classification established by Trump in an executive order in July 2020. Although the classification was rescinded by Joe Biden in January 2021, Trump has previously stated that he intends to restore it. The Heritage Foundation plans on having 20,000 personnel in its database by the end of 2024.[4] Russell Vought, a former Trump administration official and Project 2025 advisor, stated that the project's goal of removing federal workers would be "a wrecking ball for the administrative state".[10]

Climate policy

Project 2025 does not provide strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change; Heritage Foundation energy and climate director Diana Furchtgott-Roth has suggested Americans should use more natural gas, a cleaner burning fossil fuel. Project 2025's blueprint includes repealing the Inflation Reduction Act—a landmark law that offers US$370 billion to clean technology, shuttering the Loan Programs Office at the Department of Energy, eliminating climate change from the National Security Council agenda, and encouraging allied nations to use fossil fuels. The blueprint supports Arctic drilling and declaring that the federal government has an "obligation to develop vast oil and gas and coal resources". Notably, Project 2025 would reverse a 2009 finding from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that determined that carbon dioxide emissions are harmful to human health, preventing the federal government from regulating greenhouse gas emissions. The climate section of the report was written by several authors, including Mandy Gunasekara, the former chief of staff of the EPA who considers herself principal to the United States's withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Agreement. The role of the Department of Energy was drafted by Bernard McNamee, who has advised several fossil fuel companies. Four of the top authors of the report have publicly engaged in climate change denial.[11]

LGBTQ+ rights and pornography

President Kevin Roberts, in a section of Project 2025's manifesto, claims that under the Biden administration:[12]

"children suffer the toxic normalisation of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries... Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualisation of children … is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to first amendment protection."

Roberts goes on to claim that those who produce and distribute pornography and LGBTQ+ content "are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women" and should face jail time. This includes educators and librarians being registered as sex offenders, and the closing down of telecommunication and technology firms that "facilitate its spread". When discussing the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Roger Severino, the Heritage Foundation's vice-president on domestic policy, calls for the rescinding of regulations "prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, sex characteristics, etc."[12]

Reactions

Chauncey DeVega of Salon.com and Spencer Ackerman in The Nation have characterized Project 2025 as a plan to install Trump as a dictator, warning that Trump could prosecute and imprison enemies or overthrow American democracy altogether.[13][14] The Atlantic's Tom Nichols considered the project a threat to democracy but expressed hope that it might still be defeated.[15] David Corn, writing in Mother Jones, described it as "an authoritarian danger that threatens American democracy", which if undefeated "would place the nation on a path to autocracy."[16]

Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, the author of Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity, criticized Project 2025 in an MSNBC article for appealing to Christian nationalism. In particular, Graves-Fitzsimmons critiques Roger Severino's chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services and his opposition to the Respect for Marriage Act, a landmark law that repealed the Defense of Marriage Act and codified the federal definition of marriage to recognize same-sex and interracial marriage.[17]

Project 2025 has been criticized by LGBTQ+ writers and journalists for its removal of protections for LGBTQ+ people and declarations to outlaw pornography by claiming it as an "omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children".[12] Brynn Tannehill, for Dame magazine, argued that the 902-page document "The Mandate for Leadership" in part "makes eradicating LGBTQ people from public life its top priority", while citing passages from the playbook linking pornography to "transgender ideology", arguing that it related to other anti-transgender attacks in 2023.[18] In September 2023, Ari Drennen, LGBTQ program director for media watchdog group Media Matters for America, tweeted out the passage and similarly argued that "[t]hey’ve put it quite vividly – declare trans content porn, imprison those who make it, put teachers who discuss it on the sex offender registry, and force companies that host it to close."[19][20]

Republican climate advocates have disagreed with Project 2025's climate policy. Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy president Sarah Hunt considered supporting the Inflation Reduction Act crucial, and Utah representative John Curtis stated it was vital that Republicans "engage in supporting good energy and climate policy". American Conservation Coalition founder Benji Backer noted growing consensus for human-induced climate change among younger Republicans and called the project wrongheaded.[11]

References
  1. Shah, Areeba (2023-09-05). ""Dark" right-wing network recruits MAGA "army" to replace 50K federal workers Trump plans to purge". Salon. Retrieved 2023-09-24.
  2. Swan, Jonathan (22 July 2022). "Inside Trump '25: A radical plan for Trump's second term". Axios. Retrieved 2023-09-24.
  3. Mascaro, Lisa (2023-08-29). "Conservative groups draw up plan to dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump's vision". AP News. Retrieved 2023-09-21.
  4. Swan, Jonathan; Haberman, Maggie (April 20, 2023). "Heritage Foundation Makes Plans to Staff Next G.O.P. Administration". The New York Times. Retrieved September 9, 2023.
  5. Aleem, Zeeshan (July 17, 2023). "Trump's vision on executive authority is growing more organized and ambitious". MSNBC. Retrieved September 9, 2023.
  6. Barilleaux, Ryan J.; Maxwell, Jewerl (January 2017). "Has Barack Obama Embraced the Unitary Executive?". PS: Political Science & Politics. 50 (1): 31–34. doi:10.1017/S1049096516002055. ISSN 1049-0965. S2CID 157225045.
  7. Rozell, Mark; Stollenberger, Mitchell (November 2011). "The Unitary Executive Theory and the Bush Legacy" (PDF).
  8. Heer, Jeet (2023-07-21). "Why Trump 2.0 Would Be Much Worse". ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved 2023-09-27.
  9. Samuels, Brett (May 2, 2023). "Ex-Trump aide John McEntee joins Heritage operation as senior adviser". The Hill. Retrieved September 9, 2023.
  10. Mascaro, Lisa (August 29, 2023). "Conservatives are on a mission to dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump's vision". Associated Press.
  11. Friedman, Lisa (August 4, 2023). "A Republican 2024 Climate Strategy: More Drilling, Less Clean Energy". The New York Times. Retrieved September 9, 2023.
  12. Pengelly, Martin (September 15, 2023). "US hard-right policy group condemned for 'dehumanising' anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric". The Guardian. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  13. DeVega, Chauncey (September 7, 2023). "Trump plans to become a dictator: It's time to get real about Project 2025". Salon.com. Retrieved September 10, 2023.
  14. Ackerman, Spencer (August 3, 2023). "This Is How Trump Becomes a Dictator". ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved September 10, 2023.
  15. Nichols, Tom (September 6, 2023). "American Democracy Perseveres—For Now". The Atlantic. Retrieved September 10, 2023.
  16. Corn, David. "How right-wing groups are plotting to implement Trump's authoritarianism". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2023-09-21.
  17. Graves-Fitzsimmons, Guthrie (September 8, 2023). "The right's Project 2025 wants to make faith the government's job". MSNBC. Retrieved September 9, 2023.
  18. Tannehill, Brynn (August 14, 2023). "The GOP Has a Master Plan to Criminalize Being Trans". damemagazine.com. Dame Media LLC. Retrieved September 10, 2023.
  19. Hansford, Amelia (September 8, 2023). "Republican presidential Project 2025 plans to define trans people as 'pornographic'". thepinknews.com. PinkNews. Retrieved September 10, 2023.
  20. Owen, Greg (September 8, 2023). "New far-right "vision board" outlaws trans people and imprisons all pornographers". lgbtqnation.com. LGBTQ Nation. Retrieved September 10, 2023.
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