Project 2025 = Blueprint for a Dictatorship

On July 1, 2024, the conservative majority of the United States Supreme Court, the creation of Donald Trump and The Heritage Foundation, officially declared war on our constitutional republic.  They did so by declaring that contrary to our long-accepted precept that equal justice applies to all Americans and no one is above the law; Donald Trump, a convicted felon, is entitled to absolute immunity from prosecution for those criminal actions past or future, committed within “his conclusive and preclusive Constitutional authority” as president. 

This decision is momentous in that it provides carte blanche for all presidents to engage in any manner of abuse of power inviting unlimited criminality ranging from corruption to acts of personal vengeance - which candidate Trump is already planning- without fear of legal consequence or retribution so long as they are committed under the auspices of official presidential duties.  For how serious a potential threat this poses, we need only look to the atrocities committed by Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump’s idol and autocratic role model.  

So how is it that we have come to such a low point in our history whereby our government which was founded to protect individual freedoms under the principles of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” is now in jeopardy?  First and foremost, we must look to the Heritage Foundation and their Project 2025 roadmap, also known as the Presidential Transition Project.   Denials notwithstanding, it was designed specifically as a guide for a Trump presidency.

The Heritage Foundation is a recipient of dark money contributions from a network of conservative fundraising groups linked to Leonard Leo, a major donor and key figure who guided Trump’s federal judge selections.  Today, it serves as puppet master to the Republican Party and its candidates, having been quietly accruing influence since the Reagan administration; the result being that it is now the foremost power broker in GOP politics.

Their website indicates that Project 2025 is an expansive agenda specifically created as a blueprint for reshaping the federal government and consolidating executive power in a Republican president.  Critics are now referring to it as “apocalyptic” and characterizing it as an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan to transform the United States into an autocracy.  That becomes readily apparent in Project 2025’s 900+ page treatise, for which Wikipedia provides an overview.  Here is just some of what we can expect under a Trump presidency. 

• Overall, the plan’s centerpiece is a massive dismantling of the federal workforce to make it more loyal to the president which includes undermining the rule of law and doing away with the separation of church and state. First and foremost will be the immediate dismissal of Department of State employees in leadership roles as well as the purging of thousands of long-term non-political civil-service employees in favor of those who can pass Trump’s “loyalty test.” 
• The plan proposes taking partisan control of the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Commerce, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and doing away with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Federal Reserve.
• Environmental and climate change regulations will be sharply reduced to favor fossil fuel production.
• It recommends the arrest, detention, and deportment of hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
• It promotes capital punishment along with the speedy “finality” of those sentences.
• This blueprint seeks to reduce corporate federal tax rates from 21% to 18%.
• It plans to abolish the Department of Education and eliminate free school meals and Head Start programs.
• Access to any form of reproductive-related health care, abortion whether surgical or medical, and contraceptives deemed “abortifacients” will be explicitly rejected.  
• Legal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity will be removed.  

As the New Republic Notes:  Project 2025 is “a remarkably detailed how-to guide for turning the United States into a fascist’s paradise.”   As the magazine explains, it lays out a vision in which married heterosexuality is the only valid form of sexual expression and identity; all pregnancies would be carried to term, even if that requires coercion or death; and transgender and gender non-conforming people do not exist.” 

So the primary question for voters on November 5, 2024, will be:  Do we wish to remain a nation respectful of the rights, democratic principles, and the rule of law provided under our Constitution or prefer to become a country ruled by an amoral, despotic dictator with king-like ambitions and a hunger for unbridled wealth and power.   One would assume this to be an easy choice.

Chloe Cerutti

Murfreesboro, TN