AUTHORITARIANISM WILL COME TO THE U.S. IF TRUMP IS ELECTED

There’s a detailed, written plan for the Trump administration, if he’s elected in 2024, to turn our democracy into an authoritarian dictatorship. Project 2025 is a detailed presidential transition plan that identifies policies and personnel to accomplish this transformation. It was developed by a Heritage Foundation-led coalition with a $22 million budget.

(Note: If you find my posts too long to read on occasion, please just skim the bolded portions. Thanks for reading my blog!)

It becomes clearer by the day that the plan for the next Trump presidency is for an authoritarian dictatorship. This is not just Trump making crazy off-the-cuff statements; it’s a written plan that right-wing organizations and people are advancing every day.

Project 2025 is a detailed presidential transition plan that identifies policies and personnel to transform our democracy into an authoritarian Trump presidency in 2025. It was developed by a Heritage Foundation-led coalition of over 65 right-wing organizations with a $22 million budget. The Heritage Foundation, founded in 1973, a formerly conservative and now revolutionary think tank, has played a leading role in shaping Republican policies since 1980. It’s part of the well-funded network of right-wing groups that have transformed the Republican Party and the Supreme Court. [1]

Project 2025 lays out specific plans to transform the presidency, the executive branch of government, and all our democratic institutions into an authoritarian, strongman-led government. (See this previous post for more details.) If Trump is elected, its authors and supporters will aggressively implement the plan. As Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation said, “[T]he Trump administration [in 2016], with the best of intentions, simply got a slow start. And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated.” [2]

I used to regard the Heritage Foundation as a very conservative but thoughtful contributor to policy debates. This is no longer true. The dramatic change came when Kevin Roberts was appointed its president in 2021. It abruptly changed; for example, it shifted from supporting Ukraine against Russia’s invasion to supporting Russia. Some staff members resigned because of this and other changes. It’s now fully embracing authoritarianism, ending our democracy, and “institutionalizing Trumpism.”

You probably know that Hungarian authoritarian Prime Minister Victor Orban recently visited former president Trump at Mar-a-Lago. And you probably know that Orban upended Hungarian democracy, replacing it with authoritarianism, including gutting civil service and filling government positions with his loyalists, taking over businesses to benefit friends and family, and attacking the rights of immigrants, women, and LGBTQ+ people.

What you may not have heard is that Orban also visited Washington, D.C. Despite being Hungary’s Prime Minister, he did not meet with any government officials. Instead, he met privately with right-wing luminaries and politicians at the headquarters of the Heritage Foundation. Its president, Kevin Roberts, is a big fan of Orban’s and the Heritage Foundation has established a formal partnership with the Hungarian Danube Institute, which is basically a government-funded front for Orban’s propaganda. The Danube Institute has given grants to right-wing entities in the U.S. It’s not known if the Heritage Foundation is one of those entities, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if it was.

There’s an in-depth article on the Project 2025 plan for a Trump presidency in The American Prospect magazine. [3] For example, the Justice Department would be used to prosecute Trump’s political and civilian adversaries. The Insurrection Act would be invoked so the military could be used to crush any protests. The plan includes a long list of enemies and how to target them, including everyone from federal civil servants to business and environmental regulators to union leaders to safety net beneficiaries.

Project 2025 includes a key strategy for quickly implementing the plan: immediately install loyal Deputy Directors (who don’t require Senate confirmation) across the federal bureaucracy and fire all the senior managers who require Senate confirmation. Under federal law, the deputies then become acting heads of the agencies.

Project 2025 states that the Department of Defense (DOD) “has emphasized leftist politics over military readiness” and that the DOD needs to “eliminate Marxist indoctrination.” It encourages rigorous review of all senior officers, i.e., generals and admirals, to ensure they “prioritize the core roles and responsibilities of the military over social engineering and non-defense matters.” This sounds like the implementation of an ideological purity test for military leaders.

Project 2025 would increase economic inequality by favoring the wealthy and large corporations. It calls for cutting taxes on unearned income, i.e., capital gains and dividend income. It calls for lowering the corporate tax rate (which has already been reduced by the 2017 Trump / Republican tax cut bill), privatizing every government function possible, and deregulating every industry. It would incentivize corporations to limit employee benefits by capping the amount that could be treated as an expense to $12,000. It would end congressional approval of arms sales to foreign countries. It would basically eliminate scientists and scientific studies from any role in policy making except for studies of “the risks and complications of abortion.” It would put Christian nationalism at the center of all policy-making and government activities.

Project 2025 would gut current environmental and climate change policies. It would repeal the tax credits for clean-energy companies and ensure climate change deniers are appointed to all relevant agencies and bodies, including the EPA’s Science Advisory Board. It would support the fossil fuel industry while cutting funding for improvements to the electric grid that are necessary for using renewable energy sources. [4]

Even if Trump himself is incompetent and mercurial, Project 2025 would put in place bureaucrats and procedures in all executive branch agencies that would be focused on and effective at implementing the authoritarian government it envisions. The complete Project 2025 plan itself is here, but at close to 1,000 pages it’s a lot to wade through.

[1]      Swan, J., Savage, C., & Haberman, M., 7/17/23, “Trump and allies forged plans to increase presidential power in 2025,” The New York Times

[2]      Richardson, H. C., 3/17/24, “Letters from an American blog,” (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-17-2024)

[3]      Meyerson, H., 11/27/23, “The blueprint,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/politics/2023-11-27-far-right-blueprint-america/)

[4]      Noor, D., 7/27/23, “ ‘Project 2025’: plan to dismantle US climate policy for the next Republican president,” The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/27/project-2025-dismantle-us-climate-policy-next-republican-president)