2024-11-06 23:35:04
Donald Trump just took the U.S. presidency, and the blueprint for his second term is about as bleak as you might expect.
In case you somehow missed it, Project 2025 is a 900-page federal policy agenda drafted by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative D.C. think tank headed up by far-right lobbyist and alleged dog murderer Kevin Roberts.
While Trump himself has never publicly endorsed the initiative, widely described as a Republican “wish list” for his second term, at least 18 of its 40 authors and editors were part of his first administration, with almost 150 of its 260-plus contributors previously working either under him at the White House or as part of his campaign and transition teams.
Vice President-elect JD Vance also has historic ties to the Heritage Foundation, having written the introduction not only to a 2017 collection of right-wing essays published by the organization but also a forthcoming book written by Roberts.
So, what does the document actually tell us about what a second Trump government might look like?
A supreme leader
The federal bureaucracy—or “Deep State,” as it’s known in MAGA world—has long been the target of various disinformation narratives pushed by far-right pundits and influencers, who believe U.S. civil servants systematically conspired to frustrate Trump’s previous legislative agenda and return to office.
Project 2025 proposes putting an end to that imaginary threat by realigning the entirety of the federal bureaucracy under Trump’s direct control, replacing thousands of government employees with political appointees.
It’s worth noting that would include the Department of Justice, which is presently prosecuting Trump on a raft of criminal charges over alleged offenses ranging from the concealment of classified documents to his role in the Capitol riot.
Axing reproductive rights
Throughout its 900 pages, Project 2025 mentions abortion roughly 200 times—hardly surprising, given the issue has been one of the Heritage Foundation’s biggest bugbears since the organization’s founding in 1973.
The agenda doesn’t go so far as to propose an outright ban on abortion at the federal level, something Trump himself has said he would not sign into law while leaving the door open for further restrictions to be brought at the state level.
It nevertheless calls for bolstered data collection on terminated pregnancies, and for mifepristone, a widely used abortion pill, to be withdrawn from the market. It also advocates for the revival of an obscure 19th-century law, known as the Comstock Act, to ban any abortion medications or medical equipment and materials from being sent through the country’s Postal Service.
That is all in line with the document’s broader push for the federal Department of Health and Human Services to “maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family,” as part of a wider effort to combat the perceived threat of “woke extremism” from within the federal bureaucracy.
Mass deportations
Project 2025 advocates for finishing the U.S.-Mexico border wall—the same one expected to cost upward of $22 billion and which previously prompted a government shutdown and state of national emergency, as well as seeing Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon indicted on mail fraud and money-laundering charges.
Against a further backdrop of the Republican campaign’s promises for “the largest deportation program in American history,” further proposals include eliminating the Department of Homeland Security and transferring its personnel and resources to other agencies to create a more unified and militant border policing force.
Visa categories for some of the most vulnerable migrants, including victims of transnational crime and human trafficking, would also be eradicated, with a hike in application fees and a premium “fast track” option for migrants with financial means.
Ending the ‘war on oil and gas’
All the money invested by the Biden administration in combating the acceleration in global warming goes out the window.
The Heritage Foundation envisages slashes across the board to federal spending on investment and research into renewable energy sources, replacing carbon-reduction targets with increased energy production and security goals.
Experts have warned that such initiatives threaten to introduce 2.7 billion extra tons of extra carbon, roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of India, into the atmosphere by 2030, effectively torpedoing U.S. climate pledges under the Paris Agreement and spelling an end to more than a million clean energy jobs.
No more porn
Yes, the Heritage Foundation also has banning PornHub in its sights, claiming pornography is “as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime,” and that the purveyors of explicit content are exclusively “child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women.”
Whether that’s an item that’ll make its way onto the Republican legislative agenda remains to be seen, given the incoming president has faced repeated scrutiny over his relationship with the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, been accused of sexual harassment by no fewer than 26 women, and been convicted of paying hush money to a porn star to keep details of their alleged affair out of the limelight ahead of the 2016 election.
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