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Project 2025 is a blueprint for the government should the Republican Party come back into power in the 2024 election. This treatise was created by the Heritage Foundation and is sometimes called the Presidential Transition Project. This plan is recommended to be implemented immediately upon the inauguration of a Republican president on Jan. 20, 2025.
The main proposal of Project 2025 is what is called the Unitary Executive Theory. This would give the President power over all the other areas of the US government. Bye bye, checks and balances!
The Project would replace ALL federal civil servants with those selected solely for their "adherence to conservative principles". Anyone not willing to do exactly what they are instructed to do by the President would be replaced by someone who would. This is heralded as the elimination of the "deep state".
The Project would eliminate or severely restrict the following departments: Justice, Education, Homeland Security, the FBI, Commerce, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission among others.
Under this plan, abortion would be completely eliminated in every state and access to contraception would be severely restricted. The Heritage Foundation says, "The radical Left hates families" and "wants to eliminate the family and replace it with the state." The government would be infused with elements of Christianity. Pornography would be considered a criminal offense. So much for the separation of church and state!
Affirmative action and DEI programs (diversity, equity and inclusion) would be eliminated. Protections against discrimination based on sexual or gender identity would be removed.
The doctrine recommends that the US become more like North Korea and other totalitarian countries. It's understandable why many critics feel the Project would turn the US into an authoritarian state.
According to Wikipedia: "The Project advises the future president to immediately deploy the military for domestic law enforcement and to direct the DOJ to pursue Donald Trump's adversaries by invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. It recommends the arrest, detention, and deportation of undocumented immigrants across the country. It promotes capital punishment and the speedy 'finality' of such sentences."
Project director Paul Dans, a former Trump administration official, says that Project 2025 is "systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army [of] aligned, trained, and essentially weaponized conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state." Although he admits that it may seem contradictory to recruit so many people to join the government in order to shrink it, he contends it is necessary for the future President to "regain control" of the federal government.
Although the Project does not promote a specific presidential candidate, many contributors have close ties to Donald Trump. If you check some of the campaign promises Mr. Trump has made, you may notice how they align with the Project. For instance he has pledged to build concentration camps for immigrants and who knows what other factions that he may not agree with.
Critics of Project 2025 are not limited to Democrats and liberals. Some conservatives and Republicans also criticize the plan for centralizing power and its effects on climate change and foreign trade.
At the end of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a lady asked Benjamin Franklin, "What do we have, a republic or a monarchy?" Franklin replied, "A republic, if you can keep it." A republic is a state in which supreme power is held by the people who elect their representatives and the president. Project 2025 would take supreme power from the people and give it to the "president". I put this in quotes because this leader would then, for all practical purposes, become the monarch.
Verna Caruso, a Muncy native, is a former staff member at Inc. magazine and past chair of the Lycoming County Democratic Committee.