It’s no secret that neither President Joe Biden nor Donald Trump are popular candidates. The reality is, however, we are four months away from the general election and it isn’t feasible for either party to run a viable campaign for a new candidate.
The most important thing for voters to remember, though, is that we don’t just vote for an individual when we vote for president. We are also voting for an entire administration and a plan for what the country will look like over the next four years.
The Republican Party’s vision for America is summed up in Project 2025, a 900-page manual from The Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups for how anti-establishment conservatives will dismantle our democracy from the inside, starting on Day 1 of a Trump presidency.
We first raised the alarm about Project 2025 last year (see the Sept. 8, 2023 editorial). With Biden’s waning popularity, focus has shifted to broadcasting the dangers of Project 2025 — and rightfully so, because it is dangerous. Trump has tried to distance himself from the whole thing, but that’s hard to do when it was written largely by people who worked for his administration or operated in his inner circle during his presidency — and likely will again.
Here’s a small taste of Project 2025’s policy goals: cut funding for Medicare and Medicaid; reverse FDA approval of abortion medications; enforce “biblically based” definitions of marriage and family; criminalize all pornography; downsize or eliminate the NOAA; eliminate the Department of Education; dismantle the Department of Homeland Security; cut corporate taxes and get rid of the Federal Reserve; place most, if not all, federal agencies — including the Department of Justice, FBI, Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission — under direct presidential control; institute internment camps and mass deportations; and eliminate free school meal and Headstart programs.
Less bureaucracy may sound good, but these agencies and programs do important work. For example, NOAA tracks and warns us about severe weather events; and the Department of Education oversees not just public schools, but vocational schools, adult learning programs and student loans.
But Project 2025 doesn’t necessarily need Trump. It needs someone in the White House who will make a few key appointments and sign a couple of executive orders to get the ball rolling. From there, Project 2025 takes care of itself — mostly through Schedule F.
In October 2020, Trump signed an executive order implementing Schedule F, which reclassifies thousands of federal employees as “at will” and allows them to be replaced with political appointees. At that time, Trump’s appointed officials, such as Jim McEntee at the White House Presidential Personnel Office, called employees in for questioning or provided questionnaires to test employees’ loyalty to Trump and his ideals. Expertise and experience didn’t matter — only unquestioning allegiance to the president and his agenda.
Biden nixed Schedule F when he came into office, but Trump is likely to revive it. And Project 2025 is ready: It has been compiling a database of loyalists who could be installed almost instantly into those thousands of civil service positions across dozens of federal agencies — from the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Trump wouldn’t need to directly oversee Project 2025’s schemes; the vetted “conservative warriors” he installs will do it for him.
With many lower courts and the Supreme Court stacked in Trump’s favor, the Republican Party backing Trump without question and the implementation of Schedule F, virtually none of the guardrails that kept Trump from destroying our democracy will be in place anymore. He will have empowered the executive branch to near absolute authority and dismantled the checks and balances that prevent a president from becoming a dictator.
Come November, remember you’re voting for an administration that values public services for public good, separation of church and state and expertise over blind loyalty. Or you are voting for Project 2025.
