What is Project 2025 and is it a blueprint for a Donald Trump presidency?
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Could a plot to dismantle the US government be the blueprint for a potential Donald Trump presidency?
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In brief…
- Project 2025 is a 920-page document proposing a major overhaul of state departments, calling for tens of thousands of civil servants to be replaced by political appointees, and a host of other proposals previously floated by Trump.
- Many have claimed Project 2025 is a blueprint for a potential Trump presidency that would dismantle the state bureaucracy and give him wide reaching, dictator-like powers.
- Trump has distanced himself from the project, but the document was written by dozens of his former staffers.
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What’s the story?
Project 2025 is a 920-page document unveiled in April 2023 which essentially proposes that the US government be dismantled in favour of a new conservative vision.
It was drafted by the Heritage foundation, a right-wing think tank based in Washington DC led by many former Donald Trump administration officials.
It purports to be “a broad coalition of over 70 conservative organisations” that will pave the way for an “effective conservative administration” and take the country from the hands of the “radical Left”.
Dozens of former Trump staffers have contributed to the document. That includes Paul Dans, who was Trump’s chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management. He is the former director of Project 2025.
Spencer Chretien, former special assistant to Trump, is the project's associate director.
Despite this, the Republican has distanced himself from Project 2025, which Jon Sopel believes is a deliberate campaign move.
“I think that Donald Trump is recognising that his campaign has gone too far in one direction and needs to tack back,” he says. “JD Vance is part of that, Project '25 is the other part of that.”
Trump’s distancing from Project 2025 may seem strange, given that he previously pushed many of the proposals within the document.
And this is why it is viewed as a potential “blueprint” for his presidency should the Republican nominee win the election in November, Jon points out on The News Agents.
What are Project 2025’s key proposals?
- State bureaucracy should be placed under direct presidential control, including independent agencies like the Department of Justice.
- Around 50,000 federal employees who don’t align with the president’s vision should be removed and replaced by political appointees.
- The Department of Education should be scrapped entirely.
- A drastic overhaul of the FBI and many other state departments.
- Increased funding for a wall on the US-Mexico border.
- The removal of an abortion pill from the market.
- The Health and Human Services Department should "maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family."
- Mass deportation of more than 11 million illegal immigrants.
- A major overhaul of regulations protecting LQBTQ+ rights.
What have The News Agents heard?
In the latest episode of The News Agents, Emily, Jon and Lewis discuss Project 2025 with journalist and author Gabriel Gatehouse.
Gatehouse explains that in the US, the Democrats represent the party wanting to conserve the system, the order, and the establishment.
On the other side of the coin, you have Trump and MAGA, who he says “think that the system is so rotten because of these conspiracy theories that they want to tear it all down.”
“Project 2025, is part of that idea, to dismantle the administrative state”, he adds.
Jon puts to Gatehouse that Project 2025 proposes that “If you want to work in the White House or the Pentagon or the Homeland Security, you owe your loyalty to the President and can be sacked at a moment's notice if you don't do exactly what that President says.”
This would turn the president into an “almost all knowing, all powerful, who doesn't answer to anybody”, Jon says.
This is not the first time this radical conservative vision has been discussed on the podcast.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told The News Agents last month: “What they're proposing with Project 2025 is so undermining of how we meet the needs of the American people.
“if you read it, it's almost 900 pages of how to take down a society, how to take down fairness in the economy, how to destroy the vision of what America is.”
Gatehouse asks Jon: "What does that sound like to you?"
“It sounds like dictatorship”, Jon replies.
Listen in full on The News Agents
