In essence, this is a playbook for dramatically reforming the federal government if the Republicans take power. Technically, it was put out by the Heritage Foundation, not a Republican presidential campaign, allowing Trump to claim he knows as little as the average confused Google user. “Don’t fall for it.” Catherine Rampell Project 2025 and the MAGA Organization are inextricably linked, with hundreds of Trump administration officials involved in the project.
What’s the plan? Let’s take a look:
- Project 2025 would drastically cut Medicaid funding and take medication abortions off the market.
- The bill would shut down LGBTQ+ health programs, have the government declare heterosexual couples the superior family structure, and ban the term “sexual orientation” from federal law.
- The bill would also eliminate the Deferred Action for Deportation program for young immigrants that allows “Dreamers” to stay in the U.S. and lower limits on legal immigration.
- This would put the FBI under direct presidential control and abolish the Department of Education.
- This would halt the expansion of the power grid for wind and solar energy.
- It would make pornography illegal and imprison people who produce it.
- This would officially recognize the Sabbath and instill Judeo-Christian values throughout the government.
- And it shows how a president can oust nonpartisan civil servants and install loyal civil servants who accomplish all of this.
But don’t worry: Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, promises that the revolution will be “bloodless” if the left agrees.
It is not surprising, Editorial Committee Trump has written that he wants the official Republican platform to be “as innocuous and vague as possible,” but that’s not what he intends at all.
Katherine acknowledges that Trump may not know some of the details of Project 2025. “Few would mistake him for a policy maven.” But even if he did, it would be just as dangerous: Trump delegated key decisions to subordinates last time, and he will do so again this time.
My subordinates writing Project 2025.
Chaser: President Biden has said he will “do everything in our power” to stop this from happening. Alexandra Petri The question is, would we accept the same for the pilots who land our planes?
From a political strategist Lake Selinda and Justin Zorn An op-ed about the crisis of trust in government. The article is packed with statistics showing not only that Americans are increasingly distrustful, but that Republicans have little faith in a system that is entirely different from the one Democrats support.
But most importantly, things can get better.
Lake and Zorn note that because personalist skepticism is central to the conservative message, “Republicans have a strategic advantage in an age of distrust,” but that doesn’t mean Democrats can’t adapt to the political culture.
The authors lay out a plan to do just that, including “efforts to redefine voting and political participation not simply as a civic duty but as a means to attack the power of lobbyists and transform entrenched systems.”
Chaser: Matt Bye If Biden really wants to continue campaigning, he offers some guidance on how to run the campaign: No more “bridge” presidents. He needs to be a way out for the baby boomers.”
Further politics
Robert Herr deserves his reputation restored.
Hmm, Chuck Lane As the column reminds us, the special counsel who compiled a report on Biden’s retention of classified documents after he left office as vice president in 2017 went out of his way to comment on the president’s age-related memory decline.
Many observers condemned Heo’s book at the time, with reporters at the Post Opinion calling it variously “gross abuse” and “political smear.”
Or was it simply “an honest report from an objective outsider” (to put it a bit dramatically)? Chuck asked, adding that “if Democrats had taken the Har report as a warning rather than rejecting it so vehemently, they might not be in the predicament they are in today.”
The smartest and the fastest
- Robert Wright The term “progressive realism” has now been adopted and slightly refined by the UK’s new Foreign Secretary. But what does progressive realism actually mean?
- Jason Rezaian Our “Tastes Like Home” series continues with a visit to a restaurant, starting with Burek, that’s ready to reintroduce Balkan cuisine.
- Netflix has lured us out of the mall and onto the couch. Mark Fisher Looking at the streamer’s new brick-and-mortar project, it makes you wonder: Will it be able to lure us back in?
It’s goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s… “goodbye.”
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