Project 2025 and other Plans for a Trump Dictatorship
Project 2025 and other Plans for a Trump Dictatorship
by John M Repp
In 1980, the Heritage Foundation wrote up a plan that Ronald Reagan asked his cabinet members to read and study. The plan helped the Reagan Administration implement its policies of increased defense spending, cutting regulations implemented by executive agencies and departments, and lowering the top tax rate from 73% to just 28% in eight years.
Starting in 2022, Heritage began working on Project 2025, a plan for the next Republican Administration. The plan wants to bypass civil service in the hiring of the employees of the executive agencies and departments. They have been gathering a list of “conservative” employees. They will be tested and trained before starting work. In short, the new Republican president will not have to answer to the 1871 law the Congress passed to set up the civil service. It will massively increase the power of a president.
Normally, a new president appoints about 4000 persons to run the agencies and departments of the executive branch. They are the executives, and the employees are civil servants. Project 2025 hopes to change that so the new President can appoint as many as 50,000 new employees, directly responsible to the President. This change would in effect return us to the “spoils system” that was abolished with the development of civil service. As President, Trump tried to do the same thing with the “Schedule F” executive order, but it did not work the way he wanted. Agency and department heads stood in the way of his wishes. He wants dictatorial power.
Project 2025 proposes to dismantle efforts to reduce the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, an existential threat to our species. It will gut the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration! Project 2025 advocates repealing the Inflation Reduction Act which offers $370 billion for clean technology. On abortion, it proposes to start enforcing the Comstock Act of the 1870’s that makes it illegal to send contraceptives and abortion inducing medicine through the U.S. mail.
The scariest part of the whole plan was revealed by The Washington Post. I quote from the article on Project 2025 in Wikipedia: “Citing an anonymous source, The Washington Post reported in November 2023, prior to the project’s release, that Project 2025 includes immediately invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement and directing the DOJ to pursue Trump adversaries.” (Arnsdorf, Isaac; Barrett, Devlin; Dawsey, Josh (November 5, 2023). “Trump and allies plot revenge, Justice Department control in a second term”. The Washington Post. Archived from the original on November 5, 2023. Retrieved November 5, 2023.)
Plan 2025 executives denied that Washington Post report. But Trump has said he would be a “dictator” only on day one. But do dictators usually give up power willfully once they have achieved it? And this project 2025 tells us that Trump has plenty of allies in his desire to set up a dictatorship that changes policy. Remember, each of the executive agencies and departments was set up by laws passed by Congress to deal with problems such as climate change.
Trump has said more than once that climate change is a hoax, despite more and more people fearing for our collective future as they see the ever more volatile weather.
The Biden Administration has taken more than 300 actions to deal with the climate crisis. Yes, it may be too little too late, but it is a start.
The story of Trump asking for a bribe has shocked much of the establishment press by its boldness. Other people are saying actions like this that Trump takes, blow the cover off of how our government really works. In the past, corrupt politicians would use a wink and a nod when talking with wealthy donors who wanted something. Trump said it out loud in this case. The loyal followers of the Trump cult like this kind of “honesty”.
According to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United case, what Trump did was legal.