Project 2025 Is Something Different

In partnership with United for Democracy. 

For those of us who remember the time before the pandemic upended our lives (and our capacity for long-term memory), the first Trump term was a chaotic, unpredictable, unhinged mess. Every day it felt like we were hurtling towards some new catastrophe, with our lives hinging on Trump’s Twitter feed and our government in shambles as his incompetent administration tried to implement policies that seemed developed on a whim without consideration or care for the consequences. There were his efforts to ban Muslims from entering the country, which was largely successful thanks to a ruling from the right-wing Supreme Court. There was the family separation policy at the border, designed to inflict maximum pain on asylum-seeking refugees by tearing apart parents and children. There was the absolute nightmare of Trump’s COVID response, which might go down as one of the most egregious examples of a leader killing large swathes of his own population through sheer incompetence. And, of course, we can’t forget his appointments of Neil Gorscuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett  — three hard-right, Supreme Court justices (and loyalists) who went on to cast the deciding votes to overturn Roe v. Wade and set our nation’s abortion laws into complete chaos.

But even remembering all of that, I can say with absolutely no hesitation whatsoever, that a second Trump term would be so, so much worse than the first. Because while Trump’s first term was full of flailing and failing, this next one would be coming in with a brutal, focused, and horrifying plan — and nothing to stand in his way to implement it.

Yes, I’m talking about Project 2025.

You’re likely already familiar with Project 2025’s crown jewel: Its attacks on reproductive health and abortion access. From the earliest pages, Project 2025 demonstrates an obsession with government-mandated, religiously-based family structure. It focuses heavily on providing the federal government unheard-of powers to control women, forcing birth and preventing autonomy in ways that would send us back centuries (literally). Under the next Trump administration, states would be forced to provide information on pregnancy outcomes in strict detail to get basic federal funding. The FDA would end its approval of medication abortion, making the safe and effective treatment for early pregnancy termination illegal, and would revive the Comstock Act, a law passed in *1873*, that would make it a crime to mail anything related to abortion — pills, medical equipment, or even just information. In a matter of months, having a uterus would be criminalized if we don’t use it to just make babies.

But there is even more to this ready-to-implement policy agenda. Despite Trump’s claims that he has nothing to do with Project 2025, the 900+ page policy bible compiled by dozens of his former and current campaign officials is a perfect reflection of all of his worst impulses and existing policies — multiplied by 1000. Project 2025 provides a detailed roadmap for how to transform the federal government in all of the worst ways: Demanding the obliteration of the guardrails that separate powers between the three branches, outlining ways the president can unilaterally overrule or ignore Congress, and endorsed by the Supreme Court’s recent decision that granted the president broad immunity from criminal prosecution, effectively turning the president into a king. Chapter after chapter, subsection after subsection, Project 2025 reveals the plans to turn the United States of America from a republic ruled by its people to a fiefdom run by a despot.

There won’t be much to stop him either, not with the broad powers granted to him by the Supreme Court. Not only did the Trump Justices give him a pass for his insurrectionist lawbreaking on January 6, 2021, but they set him up to run a future administration without consequences as long as he’s acting in an “official capacity.” The resulting decision allows Trump to illegally terminate lifelong civil servants, committed regulators and scientists, and whistleblowers, and install his dedicated flunkies to run the government without issue. As it turns out, it doesn’t matter if you break the law as long as you’re a Republican president who has appointed the majority of the Supreme Court.

Project 2025 outlines in explicit detail how the next Trump administration will activate a massive police action to target people he identifies as undesirables — starting with immigrants. For those of us who remain, Project 2025 promises to cut FEMA funding and will require states to manage their own budgets for emergency preparation, while gutting climate science and the weather services that enable us to anticipate disasters. And if we somehow survive that, the next Trump administration will make sure that the federal government does nothing at all to regulate pollution, labor violations, or consumer safety. This will allow companies large and small to contaminate our air, water, and soil and further contribute to the climate crisis, not to mention undermine labor protections, exploit workers, and scam customers without consequences.

If Trump takes the presidential oath again, Project 2025 will immediately unleash a political purge the likes of which we have never seen. A Trump presidency would reinstate rules that allow him to fire the thousands of subject matter experts across the federal government for no reason other than insufficient loyalty to him. Trump will target experts who — overseeing critical issues like food safety, environmental regulation, consumer protection, and the rule of law — and replace them with partisan political appointees who will implement his will regardless of legality or the well-being of our citizens. The government will shift from implementing the rules and regulations that Congress requires to doing the bidding of whoever sits in the Oval Office — which, under Trump, would mean rejecting diversity initiatives, denying mandatory vaccinations for infectious diseases, and ending the career of anyone who resists or disagrees.

Project 2025 is the promise that we, the people, will never be in charge of our government or ourselves again. It’s the plan that will remake the government to serve the few, not the many. And it’s the framework that will ensure that Trump’s second term will break us in ways that we won’t be able to fix with an election. 

But here’s the thing — we have the power to stop him. All you’ve got to do is vote. So whether you cast your ballot today, this weekend, or on November 5, use your voice to send a message to Trump and his enablers that we the people get to decide our future. And that future is one free of Trump and Project 2025.