If Donald Trump is elected president, in 2024, most of us will experience time travel in real-time. Right straight back to Nazi Germany in the 1930s all the way up through World War II. Nope, this is not a joke. It’s something that Trump and many extremist right-wingers want to bring to fruition.
Launched in 2022 by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 is a dream for strict right-wingers and a nightmare for progressives. The Project’s flagship publication, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, a 900-page doorstop, takes a hatchet to the standards of government that we have all become used to.
As The Conversation notes, this is the wet dream of the wealthy, and its aim according to Heritage Foundation president Kevin D. Roberts, is to “defeat the anti-American left — at home and abroad.”
The Mandate includes worrisome recommendations that include completely abolishing the U.S. Federal Reserve to let a system of “free banking,” rule the country. It also recommends the complete reversal of all the climate policies enacted under the Biden administration. This includes a dramatic uptick in fossil fuel extraction. This would be tragic because as noted by The World Resources Institute, the Biden administration has made real progress when it comes to climate action. The Mandate also goes so far as to recommend expanding the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal and a “comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of U.S. participation in all international organizations.” Among them are the UN and its agencies.
Oh, and it also recommends the U.S. end its economic engagement with China. Our relations with China are already on shaky ground so this sounds like a colossally bad idea.
It’s not the least bit unusual for presidential candidates to develop transitional plans, but this is completely off the rails. The interesting part is that this Project is not completely aligned with Trump’s campaign. It has, in fact, in some cases angered the campaign for being too presumptuous. If Trump is reelected, he’s not under any obligation to adopt any of the Project’s plans. But there’s a boatload of former Trump officials and loyalists within the Project, and its devotion to ensuring Trump returns to office is frightening. That’s especially true because Trump’s plan to get his revenge on those he feels have wronged him is also woven into the fiber of the Project, which is really a glorified manifesto.
But this isn’t just a nightmare for environmentalists, anti-nuclear activists, and other members of the left who wound up on Trump’s wrong side, it’s also a nightmare for people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, and poor people.
As Brandon Tensley, writing for Capital B notes, this project will roll back policies that have Black communities economically and socially. He writes that this past year, Trump has been on a “revenge tour” He’s using language that recalls Der Fuhrer to excite his followers who are too dim to understand he plans to plunge all of us back into a dangerous time.
“i am your warrior. i am your justice. for those who have been wronged and betrayed, i am you retribution,” trump BELLOWED at one gathering.
Since Trump is a virulent racist, we can safely assume he’s going to cause real pain here. It’s what he does best. I’ve never seen anyone who can inflict such cruelty with ease as Trump does. And a report from Axios earlier this month proves that one of Trump’s main goals, if he is reelected, is to divert the federal government’s focus to what he and his brown-nosers believe is the real problem in the U.S: “anti-white racism.” H60se and his goons plan to erode 1960s-era policies that have provided economic opportunities for Black Americans, and opportunities to encourage diversity, equity, and inclusion in programs that, Tensley, “have flowered since the 2020 murder of George Floyd.”
Project 2025 also fully intends to squash women’s reproductive rights by excising the term “abortion” from pretty much all things government — all federal rules and regulations. It also aims to deny federal funds to any providers who offer reproductive care. Also in the works: the Comstock Act, a 151-year-old law that would criminalize the abortion pill.
This nonsense leaves Black women completely vulnerable, now that there is such anti-abortion hostility. They receive roughly one-third of all abortions in the U.S. and they are far likelier than their white women counterparts to die from pregnancy-related complications. Of course, the white male jackbooted thugs at the head of this probably could care less. I’m sure their mindset is “the fewer Black people the better” and I am thoroughly disgusted that this country is sliding back through time.
In some ways, Trump is a small cog in this massive wheel, and while I know our government performs a system of checks and balances, I’m hoping Republicans who hate Trump join with Democrats and that both parties grow a spine. Because if he is reelected, whether this nasty Project comes to fruition (and let’s hope it doesn’t), they are going to need one.
GOP Deep State
Yup.
He’s Got NOTHING..He Knows NOTHING, His haggard follower Flake’s HAVE NOTHING….”LOSER’S ‼️”
People including media bosses should be terrified. The whole point of Project 2025 was Trump was incompetent to do what they wanted done last time. So powerful people are set up to have everyone who actually knows how to execute their plan gets it done – in SPITE of Trump’s incompetence.
Trump is really little more than a puppet to these people.
Project 2025 is really “Project 1825” since that’s the REAL year they want to return to.