There’s not much incentive to post a blog about politics when you fear that no one wants to read it. So, why bother? Well, I feel compelled to highlight ominous political developments because ignoring these threats just exacerbates them. Unquestionably, America’s democratic institutions will experience some existential challenges in the coming months but they could get much worse after the 2024 election. And Project 2025 is a major reason why.
Media focus on former president Trump’s criminal indictments is obscuring the fact that some powerful, private conservative groups are hatching radical plans to guide the next Republican president. Under the leadership of the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, 70, yes seventy, of these organizations are working on Project 2025, a back-to-the-1920s, deep red “battle plan.” The contributors to this effort are committed to dismantling the “rogue administrative state,” according to Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts.
They want to strip the federal government of the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and repeal efforts to slow global warming. The proposals they are championing, however, go far beyond that and mirror positions held by Trump, including his desire to establish a de facto “unitary executive.” This would give him near autocratic authority, weaken the separation of powers established by the Constitution and decimate the career federal workforce.
Funded by $22 million, Project 2025 has produced a nearly 900-page proposal, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, to guide the next Republican president’s transition strategy and is vetting a database of up 20,000 conservative operatives that it will train to help implement it. The Mandate calls for:
- Repealing President Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, which are creating good-paying jobs, overwhelmingly in red states,
- Dismantling the Department of Homeland Security,
- Eliminating the Department of Education,
- Promoting the exploration and use of fossil fuels, while limiting the access of wind and solar power to the nation’s electrical grid.
- Protecting the fundamental right to life from conception,
- Reforming the Department of Justice,
- Cutting federal individual income taxes with two rates, 15 and 30 percent,
- Reducing the corporate income tax rate to 18%, and much, much more.
Project 2025 participants don’t care which Republican becomes the next president. But former president Donald Trump is well positioned to be the 2024 Republican nominee and has a realistic chance to stay out of jail by getting elected again. I believe only a serious health issue will deter him from these quests, even if he is convicted of serious crimes.
Trump’s criminality apparently doesn’t concern his fiercely loyal base, which is 37% of the likely Republican electorate, according to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll. But this is not the extent of his Republican support. Only 25% of Republicans definitely oppose him; the GOP’s remaining voters are categorized as “persuadable,” according to this poll.
Every GOP politician knows that Trump’s base is a loaded gun at the head of anyone who dares criticize their leader and those who have risked its wrath have paid a price. The best example is probably former Wyoming Representative Liz Chaney. She has long been a staunch conservative, yet that bona fide didn’t matter. Her U. S. House Republican colleagues ousted her from a leadership position in 2021 for criticizing Trump and she lost in the primary election to an upstart backed by him.
Like Ms. Cheney, many of the more reasonable Republicans have been steadily weeded out of the party. I’m not sure that even a handful remain. But let this sink in: Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), currently second in line for the presidency, appears to be mostly under Trump’s control. I don’t think McCarthy cares about our democratic institutions or the rule of law so long as he can retain this lofty position. The majority of House Republicans also support Trump and I count maybe three Republican Senators who definitely oppose the former president, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney being the most prominent of these.
So, don’t assume that GOP threats to American democracy are temporary. This isn’t just a cycle where in a decade or so, calmer, more moderate voices will prevail in the party again. Its far-right wing is firmly entrenched and seem to get stronger and more radical by the day. Trump’s ardent MAGA followers may just want to “own the libs” but Trump, his congressional supporters and Project 2025 backers are planning to own the government.
New York Times’ journalists that were reporting on Project 2025 asked those running in the GOP presidential primary to comment on its proposals, but none chose to do so. At an event in New Hampshire, however, candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis said that as president, he would “start slitting throats” in the federal bureaucracy and during a Fox News interview vowed to eliminate the Departments of Education, Commerce and Energy and the IRS.
Candidate Nicky Haley responded to a question about Trump’s indictments by saying that Republicans should instead be focused on reversing Bidenomics. Apparently, she has the same objectives that will kill jobs in Republican-controlled states as the Project 2025 proposals.
Sadly, I believe the Republican Party has concluded that it can no longer win in a democracy and that numerous, powerful conservative organizations have similar beliefs. Borrowing from Trump’s insurrection inciting words on January 6 – if democracy-loving Americans don’t fight like hell in 2024, we won’t have a country anymore.
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Thank you for keeping us all informed
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We all have to work to keep ourselves to what is going on. I’m going to meeting next week of Democratic Women of Landfall.
I still believe good over evil will prevail, but not on its own!!!
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Hello Mr.Davis,
Excellent Post! Please continue writing them. “Knowledge is Power!” Americans need to be encouraged to pull their head out of the sand in order to fight for our democracy.
I have forwarded your post to a number of people and asked them to forward it to people they know. One friend is chair of our local county Democratic Party and knows many politicians.
Here in Vermont ( a Democratic state), we actually have a Republican governor, who I like. He hates Trump. Unfortunately, the Democrats in Vermont concentrate more on Gay and Lesbian rights and school lunches than Health Care and gun control (my big concern), etc. They are big on carbon zero issues, but not knowledgeable on how to implement them other than taxing everyone to death. That will lose them votes both.
My old homeland,Germany has an excellent plan in place to accomplish this.
Keep writing and I’ll Lee forwarding.
Brigitta Lawrence
Bristol,Vermont
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Heard on cnn. The arepublican party has become a religious cult. So true…and so dishartening to think as a race we have come no farther then this. The agenda you outlined is a perfect example. Keep writing….I’ll keep reading and forwarding. Jacky Pomponio (jacpomp@bellsouth.net) (Ron Reid’s cousin…)
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Very informative – and chilling – analysis of news that has definitely been under reported so far. I still keep hoping that moderates (of which I consider myself one) will exert their influence on the parties, particularly the GOP, and drag them back to the center with their votes. Ditto for old-school conservatives – where are they when core American democratic institutions are essentially under assault? It is about than just one election cycle or one individual. Trump’s shelf life is pretty limited at this point, due to his advanced age alone. But we need to stand up for separation of powers, strong Federal institutions, non-partisan courts, etc. Thanks for shining a spotlight on Project 2025!
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Hi Ron,
Thanks for the post. Im sad to say that I honestly believe that we have come to the end of the viability of the US Constitution. It is obvious to any serious observer that there is no separation of powers anymore, and that is precisely why we can’t ever get to the bottom of anything. It has been this way for a long time and both parties share the blame. There has been no satisfactory resolution to the most critical events going back to the assinations of JFK, MLK, RFK, the WMD and the Iraq War, 9/11, $21 trillion missing from the US Treasury, the Ukraine War, the Jeffrey Epstein case, Black Lives Matter summer of violence in the middle of lock down, Sam Bankman Freid, the Hunter Biden Laptop, the FBI calling the laptop Russian misinformation just before the election, the Jan. 6 insurrection, and the Covid 19 investigation, clearly lab created. Nothing is difinitive, why? Because any “thorough” scrutiny would show that all three branches and both political parties are involved in the corruption, and each branch is weaponized to protect itself and the other two lest the entire enterprise collapses. This shows that the separation of powers is a charade and the entire Apple is rotten to the core. Anyone who can’t recognize the truth of what is happening is in pure denial. When there is no separation of powers there is no democracy, no justice, no truth and no correction. The vote can never correct this kind of corruption and 50% of US citizens don’t even trust the election process. It’s basically over. And to top it all off we continue to act hollier than every other country. Sorry for the tirade.
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