From 2005-2020, now-retired Austin Chronicle News Editor Michael King wrote about city and state politics from a progressive perspective in his weekly column, “Point Austin.” We’re pleased to bring back his column whenever he’s inspired to tackle the state we’re in.
I can’t in good conscience recommend that normal folks attempt to read the Heritage Foundation’s 920-page Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership.” That’s for aging, obsessive nerds like me, whose appetite for reactionary nonsense is akin to Emile Zola’s counsel to immunize yourself against poison by consuming a toad each morning before reading the news. There are plenty of Project 2025 cribs handy now for those who want to bone up quickly, and every voter does need to know at least this: the “Project” is a blueprint to undermine democratic government, reinforce authoritarian presidential power, and reverse much of our decades-long and far from complete progress toward a more just and equitable country.
If you know just that, you’ll be well prepared for Nov. 5.
Beyond that premise, despite all the defensive posturing by the Project authors and the Donald Trump campaign (laughably threatening critics, “it will not end well for you”), the plan, compiled largely by sycophants who worked with and for the Trump Administration, coincides at grandiose scale with Trump’s reflexive dictatorial ambitions: It’s the manifesto for which he is the bullhorn.
Trump himself doesn’t give two shits about what conventional campaign reporting refers to as “policy,” except insofar as it lines his grifting pockets or keeps him out of prison. Trump’s “policies” are most vividly expressed as “what sounds good for me today” – e.g., today a total ban on abortion, tomorrow only limited restrictions, tomorrow a ban again, today a lecture to women to “stop thinking about it” … On the stump, Trump has essentially three unwavering “policy proposals”: Mass, vicious deportation of millions of people; idiotic “tariffs” on imported goods; and most importantly, wreaking “revenge” upon his political enemies.
Those enemies include not only political opponents but any other officials, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, etc. etc., who have dared to disagree with him. Trump’s ever-expanding enemies list also explicitly includes journalists as “enemies of the people” – and he’s also vowed vengeance on late-night comedians.
Those are the “policies” that fuel his rallies and keep him up all night venting his rages on his effectively bankrupt Truth Social.
The Big Hits
The result is that Project 2025 functions as the unacknowledged transition plan for the installation of a second Trump regime. Consider just a few lowlights:
• Massive federal assaults on minorities, especially Hispanics, but also any “foreigners” Trump and his supporters deem to have arrived from “shithole” countries (the current headline target is Haitians, but there are plenty of other candidates).• Women would not only be deprived of basic rights to reproductive healthcare but subject to federal surveillance programs aimed at preventing or punishing any private deviation from the theocratic principle of forced birth.
• In an expansion of the ongoing Republican assault on public education, the U.S. Department of Education would be targeted for elimination – also only one partial aspect of Trump’s declared intent to replace tens of thousands of nonpartisan civil service employees with Trump loyalists.
• The Project bureaucratically reiterates Trump’s persistent threat to “Drill, Baby, Drill!” that would fulfill his promise to fossil fuel lobbyists (and other corporate polluters) to eliminate as many environmental regulations as possible, as well as the civil service employees who monitor and enforce those regulations.
Beyond these selected, venomous details, the entire Project 2025 agenda is anchored by the program’s plan for a “unitary executive”: the reactionary notion that all executive power rests entirely in the president’s hands, turning Trump into a default dictator over federal policy.
Planning for Tyranny
The unveiling of Project 2025 earlier this summer had the happy result of damaging Trump’s campaign brand – so much so that he’s spent the following months loudly denying he knows anything about it or the people who wrote it. But a couple of years ago, Trump applauded the work-in-progress at a Heritage Foundation event: “This is a great group,” he told his audience, “they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do … when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”
Moreover, Trump’s running mate (and heir apparent), J.D. Vance, wrote an introduction to the forthcoming Dawn’s Early Light, by Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, who is considered the “architect” of Project 2025. Vance approvingly summarizes Roberts’ “offensive conservatism,” that will require the movement to “circle the wagons and load the muskets” to fight the “wolves” of liberalism.
But it doesn’t require detective work to connect Trump to the vile plan for tyranny that is Project 2025. Beyond his personal obsessions, Trump would be happy to consign all that exhausting “policy” detail to his returning minions, who remain intent on using him to enact their authoritarian “vision”: a Christian Nationalist, one-party state. Trump’s lust for personal power and legal immunity drearily coincides with Project 2025’s totalitarian nightmare.
This article appears in September 27 • 2024.
