We have survived a worldwide pandemic and have essentially returned to a life that had disappeared during COVID. But with all stops being pulled out by both parties aiming to win the White House, we may be entering a political moment and movement that Charles Dickens once called, ‘the best of times, the worst of times.’
There is much more to Dickens’ line, but in the view of many, these eight words come close to summarizing the reality of the 2024 Presidential Election and beyond.
One choice for the nation’s highest office is Donald Trump, the man who guided or misguided, as many allege, the nation through a virus that claimed more than a million American lives and continues to live on but far more benignly. The other, Vice President Kamala Harris, who until recently was in place to remain Joe Biden’s number two. Circumstances and fate catapulted her into the party’s standard bearer slot.
There are many issues that will inform people’s votes between now and November 5th—inflation, grocery prices, housing, rents, and more—but one that will certainly get a lot of attention is something Republicans are behind called “Project 2025.” It is a nearly 900-page blueprint for how they would like to reform and reshape government.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank and authors of Project 2025, have called the document a blueprint for “institutionalizing Trumpism.” Among its many goals, promises the think tank, are defunding the Justice Department, reordering the FBI, minimizing any efforts to fight climate change, deporting an estimated 12 million undocumented and infusing Christian nationalism into official U.S. government policy. There are many more.
While even a cursory reading of the plan seems almost Orwellian and a walk into darkness, the ex-president, paradoxically, says he knows nothing about it. Recently, he has made it a point of distancing himself from it. But the fact is that its authors include a number of people who have worked closely with him, for him and now draw paychecks from the Foundation.
“I have no idea who is behind it,” Trump said, claiming ignorance. “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” Nonetheless, he said, “I wish them luck.”
While the conservative organization is proposing an almost draconian reorganization of government, said Metropolitan State University-Denver’s Robert Preuhs, it may be only election year politics. Groups like Heritage, said the veteran political scientist, “often seek to limit government, eliminate programs or even entire agencies.” Still, on paper, the plan shocks. “The breadth and depth of the proposal is striking,” he said.
Opponents of the plan, which can be viewed with a simple Google search, say adoption of even a sliver of it could be disastrous for millions of poor, elderly disabled, LGBQT, women’s health, including access to birth control and children. Also in the crosshairs are civil rights, education, even the environment. But Project 2025, they say, would also be an economic gift in the form of new tax policy for the rich. Critics have described it as the right’s dream “for capturing the administrative state.”
This plan authored by the ideological far right has been not so much trimming of what they call bureaucratic bloat but, in medical terms, performing wholesale vivisection of a body’s vital organs leaving only a skeleton.
Condensing 887 pages into a bite-sized description might be asking too much. But even a quick glance shows a cadre of potentially ‘walking dead’ would that include the White House’s Gender Policy Council, Office of Domestic Climate Policy, the Office of Clean Energy, the EPA’s office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights. NOAA, the nation’s weather bureau would also be disassembled for no other reason than the right’s disdain for its steadfast warnings on climate change.
Project 2025 would also create new oversight on media, especially media considered too critical of conservative values. In a free society, critics argue that could be dangerous. “There is clear reason for independent agencies, and the FCC is one that should be left as independent,” said MSU-Denver’s Preuhs.
One reason for this tilt, he said, is to gain a more powerful grip on social media and what it considers “false stories which are seen as targeting conservative viewpoints even though there is really no evidence of that happening in any systematic way.”
On immigration, the Office of Homeland Security would be allowed to station active-duty military personnel and National Guard at the border to, for the first time, assist in arresting immigrants. Completion of the wall would also be accelerated. A new and novel immigration revenue stream would also be implemented, charging asylum seekers for “premium processing” of claims. The project calls it “an opportunity for a significant influx of money.”
During the recent Republican National Convention, crowds cheered wildly and held up “Mass Deportation” signs when the idea was mentioned by J.D. Vance, Trump’s new running mate and later by Trump in his acceptance speech. Deportation could affect millions.
The plan also takes dead aim at Head Start, a pre-school program that has been instrumental in the development of basic, foundational educational skills for millions of young children from low-income families. Head Start would be eliminated and free lunch programs dramatically scaled back. Each action would be a painful blow to poor families. disproportionally to minority families.
A successful implementation of Project 2025 also would mean erasing any trace of D.E.I. —diversity, equity and inclusion infrastructure—which its authors equate with racism. It would also allow the ferreting out of every official who is or has been connected to its implementation.
Piety, in this case, a reconstruction of Christian values into American life is also a central tenant of the document in the view of Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts.
“Pursuit of Happiness,” as written in the Declaration of Independence, he said, should be understood as “pursuit of blessedness.” “Pursuit of the good life,” Roberts believes, “is found primarily in family—marriage, children, Thanksgiving dinners…religious devotion and spirituality.” Because “God ordained the Sabbath as a day of rest,” he said, premium pay should be given those who must work on Sunday.
Opponents of Project 2025 say it is nothing more than unscheduled, mandated social and political surgery that takes aim at Social Security, veterans, the poor, underrepresented communities, civil servants, thousands of whom could face termination for their beliefs or perceived beliefs while reenforcing and enhancing the benefits of the wealthy and corporate interests.
It is a plan, they say, that goes well beyond the dark world that not that long ago was thought too grim, too Orwellian to ever come true. But a muscular centralizing of power in a single office, the Oval Office, has caused a serious rethinking of this once unthinkable concept.
It was the ex-president’s own words, “I am your warrior, I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” in the view of his and the plan’s critics, have brought the country perilously close to its real possibility.
