Following Donald Trump’s recent presidential victory, many speculate if the former president has plans to implement the controversial Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Despite his adamant denial of participating or even being aware of the document, around 50 percent of its contributors have previously worked under his administration. Many online political talking heads, such as Matt Walsh and Nathan Dahm, have come forward fully embracing the potential of Project 2025. It is ignorant to assume Trump is unaware of Project 2025, its contributors or its policies.
Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership” is a 992-page document with a detailed plan highlighting the importance of promoting Republican values, how the next Republican president can reshape the government and a list of potential policies to enact. The document contains but is not limited to harmful policies regarding classroom censorship, government surveillance on protesters, gutting abortion access, using the military to assist in mass deportation, limiting voting access, the violation of transgender rights, abolishing programs such as the Department of Education and terminating up to a million federal workers. Almost all of these policies have already begun to take their course in the Trump administration. Most concerningly, Project 2025 serves as an easily accessible tool guide for establishing authoritarian control in American democracy.
Through a constitutional interpretation known as “unitary executive theory,” Donald Trump, under Project 2025’s plan, intends to have full unchecked authority over the executive branch, removing any checks and balances. The document explicitly states the executive branch’s need for “aggressive” action. By increasing the executive branch’s power, the balance within our system of government is interrupted.
Project 2025 proposes the Trump administration create “portfolios” of potential staffers so the president can ensure that his staff members are Republican loyalists who will blindly allow him to implement his agenda without pushback. The document emphasizes this numerous times and claims that the fate of America depends on his appointees stating: “Their agenda must… be the president’s agenda.”
Recently, the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, stated he is “ecstatic” with Trump’s current appointments, especially Tom Homan as the new border czar (a fellow Project 2025 contributor). Additionally, in July of this year, Roberts said Republicans are in the process of an American Revolution that will be peaceful, “if the left allows it to be.” These threatening remarks, as well as the continued support the Heritage Project has given Donald Trump, continue to show the intended direction of the Republican Party.
Additionally, Trump’s recent rhetorical shifts toward authoritarianism continue to raise concerns about how the President-elect intends to use his presidency. His promise to be a dictator on his first day back in office, exterminate the “enemy from within” by deploying the National Guard, calling his opponents “vermin” and the dehumanization of the left are strategies used by former and current dictators.
Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, recalls alleged comments where the former president not only said that Hitler “did some good things,” but also said he needed “German (Hitler’s) generals” to prevent opposition. Trump himself has plans to pass an executive order that will replace military generals who don’t share his ideals. He intends to follow through with his previous comments and surround himself with a politically-right military who would carry out all of his orders. Without having the guard rails of moderate Republicans, Trump will be given full reign over the executive branch and the military to destroy the “enemy from within”.
As to whether or not this is a feasible plan, his recent Supreme Court win that expanded the precedent of executive authority serves as a stepping stone for further uses of extreme force. This landmark case gave the president-elect immunity following the January 6, 2021 insurrection stating that the president cannot be prosecuted on actions that are considered “core constitutional powers”, therefore giving him full immunity.
Going into his second term, Trump is unequivocally allowed to exercise his core constitutional powers, including pieces of Project 2025’s proposals. Regardless of his differing stances on certain policies within the document, he has proudly embraced the role of expanding presidential power that the document provides.
These statements are not empty threats. The American people chose their president. Whether his voters are complicit or ignorant, they voted for a president who intends to run an autocracy by any means necessary. The rest of the American populace and government need to be wary of the potential power Donald Trump may seek to obtain and how he intends to use force to get there. The insurrection was a warning sign for his second term, and Project 2025 provides a clear plan for Trump to destabilize the government for his own interests.
