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ELECTION 2024 - Isn’t it rich? For two generations, the Presidents, rank and file officials, and hired guns of the Republican Party embraced the label “conservative.” And party operatives paid lip service to “small government” and “local control” as go-to talking points.
But the cult of intolerance, intimidation, and falsehoods that is Donald Trump’s GOP killed that elephant. In its place is a monster clad in extreme “MAGA” trappings that openly lusts for the levers of state authority. With a beholden Republican Party and captured Supreme Court as its vehicles, it aims to impose control over Americans’ lives and choices, to inflict inequality, and to invite retribution, including by vigilante violence, against selected public servants, political opponents, and leaders of egalitarian movements.
Sound Orwellian? Then read “Project 2025” — or at least a summary of its alarming highlights. The 887-page playbook for a new right-wing President it aspires to worship next year is the product of Trump’s truest believers at the Heritage Foundation. It is no accident they promoted the Supreme Court appointments of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, the executioners of Roe v. Wade and women’s self-determination. It is no coincidence the head of the outfit grandiosely called the manual part of a “second American revolution.”
“Project 2025” is the closest thing to a current how-to manual for sabotaging and overthrowing American democracy. Radical, vengeful, and dangerous, it is also political poison. The more it is publicized and discussed, it is likely to backfire on Republican candidates for the cruel, job-killing, environment-destroying, freedom-crushing power-grab against the American people that it threatens.
“Project 2025” eliminates Social Security, ending the reliable earned benefit for seniors and other beneficiaries. The largest and most effective poverty-prevention lifeline in the world would be destroyed after 90 years of success and steady expansion. Tens of millions of contributors could be cut off in order to free up funds for tax cuts for the very wealthy.
“Project 2025” all but declares war on labor unions and union members. Instead of agencies empowered to train workers, prevent workplace injuries, and enable and respect workers’ voice and right to bargain collectively, the Department of Labor and National Labor Relations Board would become tools of union-busting and repression.
Healthcare would be eviscerated under “Project 2025.” The Department of Health and Human Services would be remade as an anti-abortion advocacy bureau called the “Department of Life.” Draconian policies like the Trump Administration’s horrific Denial of Care Rule from 2018 would make a comeback. It authorized withholding treatment or emergency response selectively from injured or sick Americans at their most vulnerable, based on whatever bias a medic, tele-health worker, or clerk might claim is based in religion. Immigrants, women, and LGBTQ+ people stand to bear the brunt. Freakish and lifted from a dystopian novel, right? This is the new normal should Trump prevail and return to the White House to implement “Project 2025.”
Environmental protections and investments in renewable energy and electric vehicles would be all but eliminated. What a coincidence: Trump pledged a dirty “deal” this spring with fossil-fuel executives to end pollution reduction and incentives for solar and wind power in exchange for $1 billion in cash for his campaign. “Project 2025” would reward that staggering, corrupt sellout. It would roll back the clock and accelerate climate destruction at the expense of Americans’ lungs, lives, and millions of livelihoods in clean energy, transit, infrastructure, and green manufacturing.
Public education would be thrown open to privatization, taxpayer-funded religious schools, and school vouchers under “Project 2025.” Censorship of school curricula, rampant discrimination against students and educators, and a full-scale, search-and-destroy mission against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and leaders are the hallmarks of the pro-Trump policy manual.
That even the defeated insurrectionist himself has disclaimed this playbook devised by his own advisers is a signal of its radioactive toxicity. With its overreach and totalitarian stench, “Project 2025” has the potential to sink Republicans and the party’s endorsed candidates in any election, including state Supreme Court contests, throughout the country.
The policy manual for the next Republican Presidency reads like a plot against the rights, well-being, and quality of life for most Americans. Make family, friends, neighbors, and kinship networks aware of this nightmarish scheme to snuff out justice, jobs, health, and the environment. Vote against any Republican who will be pressured to turn it into law next year. Each person who cherishes freedom and fairness can do extra this election: knock doors, make calls, give dollars, volunteer in swing states, send text messages and postcards. That’s how to defeat “Project 2025” and make it backfire in a resounding win for our democracy.
(Hans Johnson is a longtime leader for LGBTQ+ human rights, environmental justice, and public education. His columns appear in national news outlets including USA Today and in top daily news outlets of more than 20 states. A resident of Eagle Rock, he is also president of East Area Progressive Democrats (EAPD), the largest grassroots Democratic club in California, with more than 1,100 members).
