Even with over seven months until November, it is all but confirmed that the 2024 presidential election will be a rematch between former President Trump and President Biden. In the event of a Trump victory, a conservative coalition, Project 2025, has released their proposed actions to provide an “effective” presidential transition for the next conservative administration.
The Heritage Foundation, founded by conservative activists in the 1980s, is led by Kevin D. Roberts, who is also the founder of Project 2025. The group is dedicated to “institutionalizing Trumpism,” according to Roberts. Among other goals, it hopes to reduce the influence of the federal bureaucracy by restoring the Trump era policy of “Schedule F”— an executive order that increased the amount of federal workers that the president could fire from 4,000 to 20,000 employees. President Biden later rescinded that order.
During a potential Trump second term, Project 2025 wants to reorganize the executive branch as we know it. The group subscribes to the unitary theory of the executive branch, which states that the founding fathers intended to give the president total control over the executive branch, including the Department of Justice. Currently, the DOJ is a component of the executive branch, yet operates as a separate entity to ensure that the top legal office in the country is not used for political purposes.
The “Transitional Project” hopes to further Trump’s potential power by working to give him full control over the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). This would give the former president the ability to create rules and regulate companies and news organizations that have opposed him in the past.
The Hill has also reported that Trump, alongside his political allies, have been discussing a potential national 16-week abortion ban — which Mr. Trump reportedly “likes the idea” of. Democrats are hoping to use this development to paint both Trump and Project 2025 as supporting extreme restrictions on women’s rights to choose.
Sasha Buchert, an advocate for non-binary and transgender Rights for Lambda Legal, has condemned Project 2025 because of its “dehumanizing language” towards LGBTQ+ Americans and for referring to transgender and gay individuals as being members of some sort of “ideology” or “ism.” Roberts wrote that “children suffer [from] the toxic normalization of transgenderism” and that it “[has] no claim to first amendment protection”.
The coalition further stated that it would “direct agencies to rescind regulations interpreting sex discrimination provisions” as a way to take away protections of people’s “sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status” and “sex characteristics.”
The New York Times reported that Roberts and Trump additionally plan to “revive [Trump’s] first term border policies.” This would include “banning entry by people from certain Muslim-majority nations,” and reimposing his Covid-19 era policy of “refusing asylum claims.”
Trump recently announced at a rally in Iowa that he would follow “the Eisenhower model” to “carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” The former president also intends to cancel any visas of foreign students who participated in protests related to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
All of these actions have been detailed extensively in Project 2025’s 920-page manifesto, which is dedicated to enshrining conservative beliefs for decades to come.
