Project 2025: The Radical Blueprint for a Second Trump Presidency

It says the dictator stuff out loud

Right-wing think tanks and GOP leaders – essentially the vanguard of the Trump movement – have developed a radical plan for a second Trump presidency. At 960 pages, Project 2025 attacks nearly everything the government does. You’d think Donald Trump would be thrilled. He is not.

One key element of the blueprint is a ban on the abortion drug mifepristone, which is causing Trump significant concern. When judges he appointed overturned the right to abortion, the “a-word,” as Trump calls it, became a toxic issue for his presidential campaign. This is because a majority of voters favor abortion rights. Women who obtain legal abortions would also lose the right to keep their medical records private.

What else is in Project 2025? The main proposal would throw about 50,000 federal workers out of their jobs and replace them with political appointees who have passed a Trump loyalty test. Their main task would be to dismantle agencies that, for example, protect the environment from pollution. Forget that these nonpartisan professionals are experts with the institutional knowledge to keep things running. They are, in the words of 2025 activists, the “Deep State,” and they must go.

As it would destroy and replace the bureaucracy, Project 2025 would also consolidate power in the presidency, removing the checks and balances that allow Congress to slow down or even cancel controversial projects. For example, Project 2025 would authorize the president to sell arms to any state and deprive Congress of the right to overrule him. There goes the Constitution.

Other defense policies would include a massive buildup and testing of nuclear arms in violation of the test ban treaty, withdrawal of most American support for Western Europe’s defense against Russia, and canceling conventional weapons programs. If you think all of this would end U.S. support for Ukraine in its fight against Russian invaders, you are right.

What about health care? Here, Project 2025 would give a gift to drug manufacturers by ending Medicare’s ability to negotiate prices. Many projects at the National Institutes of Health would be canceled because, according to Project 2025, many NIH scientists and doctors are not Trumpists.

Under Project 2025, America’s broken immigration system would be fixed by deporting millions of immigrants who perform much of the labor that keeps the economy running. This policy calls for "arresting, detaining, and removing immigration violators anywhere in the United States." Those who have applied for permanent status would be required to pay exorbitant fees, which the document notes would produce a “revenue stream” for the government. States that fail to cooperate with the plan would become ineligible for federal aid that typically follows natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes.

On the culture war front, Project 2025 calls for deleting the terms gender, gender equality, abortion, reproductive health, and reproductive rights from every government document and policy. In a statement released to counter criticism, Project 2025’s leaders explained that they intended to fight Leftists who supposedly hate families and would create a society similar to authoritarian states like North Korea.

The problem, of course, is that Project 2025 promotes an agenda that would make Trump a kind of dictator, giving him the power to govern without the assent of the pesky Congress. For four years he would rule by fiat, which you’d think he would like. The problem is that Project 2025 declares, out loud, all the things Trump would do, most of which run counter to public opinion. This is why Trump recently said, “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying, and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”

This week, the committee that will write the GOP platform, setting the agenda Trump will be expected to follow, meets to hammer out the details. They will be pressured by Project 2025’s advocates. If they cave – and many are expected to – the policies Trump said are “abysmal” will become party doctrine. And since he is the party, they will become the ball and chain he will have to drag along with him as he campaigns. I say, good luck with that, Donald.