The Former Guy, as I like to call him, may not have heard of Project 2025, but you can bet your buttons that Project 2025 has heard of him. In fact, I have come to believe that most of the support for TFG by conservative elites is in service to Project 2025. That The Former Guy is, likely without his direct knowledge, merely the Frontman. He is being used, much like a lubricated latex glove on the hand of a proctologist, to insert a middle finger into the bowels of government. Once in office, he would bring in a host of helpers, all swearing loyalty to him, but in fact loyal to Project 2025. All of whom would dedicate themselves to convincing TFG that even the parts he might not like were actually his idea to begin with.
The job of those who have managed to get closest to him, to be seen as the most loyal, will be to tell him daily of the genius that is gutting environmental protection in favor of the oil industry. That has put the idea of the Christian family at the center of Health and Human Services. That has solved the homeless problem for all time by sending them camping in the western deserts.
This is the stuff of many a dystopian novel that I might once have devoured with relish, knowing that by the end of the book all the new rules have backfired and that the day will be saved by a few foolhardy souls who find a way to tell truth to power. But this is not a novel. Project 2025 is a real plan, put forward by real “think tanks,” with an eye to making a conservative Christian nation out of a once proud progressive secular country. And they’ve got the perfect front man to make it all happen.
This bugger, the Project 2025 paper, is long, but if you scroll to the “Personnel” section for each department you will find one constant: Political People. As deep as you can go. The plan is to fire as many career personnel as possible, replacing them with people loyal to the President and committed to implementing “his,” i.e. Project 2025’s, policies. So, okay. We’ve got them on board. What policies?
Well, for one thing, agencies must keep anti-life “benefits” out of benefit plans.
The next to go will be anyone in the military claiming to be transgender. “Gender dysphoria” P2025 calls it. Like there are people in the military wandering around in a state of confusion. They gotta go. In the service with HIV? Need an abortion? That’s your own fault. Not the job of the military to help you out. Meanwhile, we need more and better nukes. As in bombs. The more the merrier. Yee haw, etc.
P2025 just loves getting rid of stuff. The entire Department of Education, for instance. But before that goes, they (yes, Virginia, there is a “they” in this story) want to put education back in the hands of the states..back in the hands of the communities…back in the hands of parents. And if you think that sounds like a good thing, think about what actual parents in actual communities in a few actual states might want their children taught.
Two of the favorite words used in the Project 2025 report are “repeal” and “avoid.” As in repeal acts which provide subsidies to renewable energy. Repeal concern about climate change. Avoid “over-regulation.”
Other favorites are “replace,” “demand,” “prohibit,” “eliminate,” and “abolish.”
They plan to replace LGBTQ+ equity with support for traditional families, maintaining a “biblically based, social science–reinforced definition of marriage & family; demand that the CDC research and publish all risks and complications from abortions and use of the abortion pill; prohibit abortion travel funding; eliminate the week-after-pill from the contraceptive mandate as a potential abortifacient; restore* Trump religious and moral exemptions to the contraceptive mandate; and abolish research using fetal tissue obtained from elective abortions.
*Any use of the word “restore* is likely not a good thing.
Eliminate the Head Start program. Yeah. Oh, and no money for child care centers. All child care is, apparently, to be done at home. Prohibit noncitizens, including mixed-status families, from living in federally assisted housing. Eliminate regulations in regard to climate change, but add a bunch more to HUD. Because most of the homeless scum are lying scum, I suppose.
Issue guidance in the Justice Dept. to ensure that litigation decisions are consistent with the President’s agenda and the rule of law. (Ensuring that the President can pursue his perceived enemies.) Pursue aggressive enforcement of the immigration laws. (Track ‘em down and lock ‘em up.) Eliminate racial classifications. (Is anyone discriminating against minorities? Hard to tell.) Eliminate disparate impact as a valid theory of discrimination. (Hard to describe disparate impact without racial classifications.) Focus enforcement of sex discrimination laws on the biological binary meaning of “sex.” Enforce the Comstock Act. Deploy the military for domestic law enforcement.
Finally, the proposals for the Dept. of Transportation make no mention whatsoever of high speed trains. Need I say more there?
So that, I think, is the nut of the thing, although a close reading will reveal much, much more. If you love a good policy paper studded with a healthy dose of alphabet soup have at it.
The Former Guy is the perfect front man for all of this. He with his beloved MAGAs are the shock troops that will carry it forward. Does he realize that? I highly doubt it. He certainly hasn't read the thing. Policy is not his forte. Policy is what he barks at his minions. "Investigate Biden!" "Round up the aliens!" Project 2025 is how they propose to carry it out.