In 2016 the Republican Party removed items and wording objectionable to then-candidate Donald Trump. At their 2020 convention, Republicans didn’t even bother to write a platform or agenda on which they would run. They would endorse and support whatever President Trump wanted to do in his second term. Now, Trump and his cronies have created Project 2025, their plan of action for Trump or any other Republican president in 2025.
Trump and the Heritage Foundation have presented “The 2025 Presidential Transition Project,” to “… alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House.”
Their first order of business is to transform the civil service by removing the protections against being fired for political reasons. They claim it would only be used against poor performers and people who actively impeded the elected president’s agenda, but it could result in a partisan purge. It would replace qualified, knowledgeable, and experienced public servants with Trump loyalists, and he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department, and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified.
The Heritage Foundation has developed plan for Donald Trump or the next Republican president to take over the federal government.
The plan also brings independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency, under direct presidential control. The president would decide what information people get, how you can run your business, and what levels of pollution are acceptable for corporate profitability. He could reward supporters or ruin critics.
Congress created these agencies and gave them the authority to make rules for society, while providing the checks and balances of budget controls, by lawmakers and judicial review of agency actions. To strip them of their independence and place them solely under the president would undermine the idea of a “government for the people.”
They want to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated, for programs a president doesn’t like. It would allow the type of coercion Mr. Trump attempted with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy for anti-Biden information. After (former President Richard) Nixon used the practice to block spending on water pollution control, housing construction and other issues, Congress banned the tactic.
This plan is equivalent to the actions of Benito Mussolini in 1922. Mussolini had his Black Shirts, Hitler had the Brown Shirts and Trump has the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. The “2025 Presidential Transition Project” would destroy our democracy and replace it with a fascist regime; our fathers and grandfathers fought against.
At a recent rally in Michigan, Trump said, “We will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists, and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.” He failed to say, “and replace them with our own.”