If you have not read the published document, Project 2025, or possibly even heard of it, know this. Project 2025 is one of several think-tank proposals suggesting actions and/or policies for the next conservative president; most believe it to be generated in support of a Donald Trump second term, and Trump has referenced the document multiple times in his speeches.
Project 2025, produced by the Heritage Foundation, lays out a blueprint, in 920 pages, for changes to the workings of the U.S. government moving forward with a conservative president. The U.S. Constitution was written in four pages (admittedly, they are large pages) but now it takes 920 to fix it.
The document calls for the firing of thousands of civil servants and enhancing the power of the presidency, while diminishing, or in some cases dismantling, other federal agencies and functions.
I want to encourage everyone, from far-left progressives to MAGA-right conservatives, to read Project 2025, to be aware and informed, as an existential election draws near. If you can’t be bothered to understand the direction we are headed, consider the message in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (written in 1865):
Alice: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where,” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
While it is common for Washington think tanks to propose policy wish lists for potential future government teams (The Center for American Progress was referenced as Barack Obama’s “ideas factory” during his presidency), the Project 2025 proposal may go a step, or three, further than most.
In response to the publishing of Project 2025, Congressperson Jared Huffman (D-CA) announced a Stop Project 2025 Task Force, claiming that “Project 2025 is more than an idea, it’s a dystopian plot that’s already in motion to dismantle our democratic institutions, abolish checks and balances, chip away at church-state separation, and impose a far-right agenda that infringes on basic liberties and violates public will.”
OK, is it really? We all know that partisanship today is the most important trait in Congress (ironically, that seems to be the one thing both sides agree upon), so let’s look at a few of the Project 2025 “recommendations.”
Project 2025 outlines four main goals:
· Restore family as the centerpiece of American life.
· Dismantle the administrative state.
· Defend the nation’s sovereignty and borders.
· Secure individual rights to live freely.
That, at first glance, doesn’t seem to be too dystopian. But there are 920 pages, written by multiple former Trump appointees and accepting input from more than one hundred conservative organizations. You have to read the detail, and here are a few of the proposed actions:
· The entire federal bureaucracy, including independent agencies such as the Department of Justice, will be placed under executive branch (presidential) control.
· Job protections for thousands of government employees will be eliminated and those individuals could be replaced by political appointees.
· The FBI is listed as a “bloated, arrogant, increasingly lawless organization” and will experience a drastic overhaul.
· Other federal agencies could be investigated and/or targeted, and the Department of Education is selected for elimination; parental control over schools is key and “woke propaganda” will be eliminated,
· Federal funding for research and investment in renewable energy will be slashed and carbon-reduction goals to deal with climate change will be eliminated.
· Corporate and income taxes will be slashed, and the Federal Reserve will be abolished.
· A nationwide abortion ban is not in the plan at this time, but the abortion pill, mifepristone, is projected to be removed from the market.
· An extensive list of terms will be removed from all laws and federal regulations, including “sexual orientation”, “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” “gender equality.” “abortion” and “reproductive rights.”
There is much more. This column is 800 words, and Project 2025 is 900+ pages, so please read it (if you email me a request, I’ll happily send you a return email with an attachment of the Plan). Be aware of the changes that it proposes. And, while we may agree with some of the concepts within, consider the overall prospect of altering the structure and the distribution of power between our three branches of government.
Consider the concentration of such enhanced power in the executive branch, for a single individual (the President) to wield. And project those changes out for not just the next four years, but for all presidents in the future.
Consider the checks and balances our founders implemented specifically to limit the power of any one branch of government or any one individual.
This stuff is important, so please be informed, and make your own informed decision — unless you don’t care where we are headed; then it won’t matter which path you take.
Curt MacRae is a resident of Coldwater, MI, and publishes opinion columns regularly.
Tweets @curtmacrae — comments to rantsbymac@gmail.com
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