Project 2025 Part 2: Dismantling Democracy

The “Mandate For Leadership” spends a lot of time describing each of the roles that surround the president (first lady/gentleman, Chief of Staff etc.) and then moves on to the various governmental agencies and how they need to be changed in order to fit in to the Project 2025 vision.

It would appear that Project 2025 is happy with the majority of positions that directly surround the President, presumably as it’s the President themselves (with input from The Heritage Foundation/Project 2025 of course) who pick people for these roles. They do, however, have a problem with roles in external agencies over which the President has little or no control.

I have to say that I found this section of the book quite interesting as it goes over in detail what each of the major roles are, how they interact with various departments and what their responsibilities are, where it starts to get a little sinister is where we come to certain departments that Project 2025 have determined are too large, have far too many powers or are not under the President’s direct control.

I won’t cover all of them here as there are far too many but I have cherry-picked some examples that show what they are planning to do.

The “People” & “Preparation” Pillars

The main way that Project 2025 aims to achieve their mandate is through the removal of existing personnel in order to cut the size of Government departments and, where a department can’t be culled completely, install people loyal to the Project 2025 ideology.

They are already recruiting people to their cause by building a database of suitable candidates that they can parachute into a variety of roles on Day One of a Republican presidency. In order to ensure that the people they choose for these roles are up to speed they are setting up a “Presidential Administration Academy” which:

“…provides aspiring appointees with the insight, background knowledge, and expertise in governance to immediately begin rolling back destructive policy and advancing conservative ideas in the federal government.^[1]Project 2025: Presidential Administration Academy”

Unfortunately I’ve not been able to access either the personnel database or training as it’s region locked to the USA and I don’t have a phone number to allow me to access it so I can’t see what the training would entail or any requirements for adding your data to their personnel database. If you’ve taken a look at it please let me know in the comments below.

The “Policy” Pillar

Once they are in power, Project 2025 will begin moving through the various department removing unwanted personnel and replacing key positions with their own handpicked loyalists.

So what departments and existing legislation are they targeting?

Department Of Justice (DoJ)

In order to begin to implement their policies and ensure that their leader can’t be removed from office due to some pesky legal action hanging over their head, one of the first targets for Project 2025 is the DoJ. They state:

When a new President takes office, he will need to decide expeditiously how to handle any major ongoing litigation or other pending legal matters that might present a challenge to his agenda… to handle the pace and volatility of affairs, the Office of White House Counsel must offer measured legal guidance in a timely manner. This often means forgoing law review–style memos about esoteric legal concepts and instead quickly providing high-level yet incisive guidance.^[2]Mandate For Leadership, Page 28

If one was to read into this, you could easily see that on Day One of his Presidency, the Trump Administration could get the DoJ to look into any legal proceedings pending against Trump without necessarily using proper legal routes (such as finding applicable established case law) to back up their claims/findings.

This is a bit concerning as Trump has said he’ll use his first day in office to enact some rather controversial policies such as opening up drilling rights and closing the border, promising not to be a dictator on “Except on Day 1” only^[3]PolitiFact: In Context: Donald Trump was asked if he will be a dictator if reelected. Here’s what he said.

With the Georgia election interference case paused due to legal challenges, the January 6th case stayed waiting on a ruling on Presidential Immunity from the Supreme Court of The United States and the Classified Documents case likely to be pushed back beyond the scheduled start date of 20th May 2024 due to further legal challenges^[4]Time: A Guide to All of Trump’s Indictments—and Where Each Case Stands, it’s quite probable that Trump (if elected of course) could enter the White House with up to 3 Criminal cases still waiting to be heard.

Under Project 2025’s manifesto, on Day One the DoJ would be tasked with getting these charges thrown out on whatever grounds they see fit, meaning that Trump, unlike his fellow Americans, would not have to face a jury of his peers.

Civil Service

The President must set and enforce a plan for the executive branch. Sadly, however, a President today assumes office to find a sprawling federal bureaucracy that all too often is carrying out its own policy plans and preferences—or, worse yet, the policy plans and preferences of a radical, supposedly “woke” faction of the country^[5]Mandate For Leadership, Page 43

Project 2025 claims that Congress delegates it’s law making powers to various agencies filled with un-elected “experts” who, as career civil servants, cannot he held to account.

Project 2025 also argues:

[M]any agencies are not only too big and powerful, but also increasingly weaponized against the public and a President who is elected by the people and empowered by the Constitution to govern^[6]Mandate For Leadership, Page 43

So the main driving force behind many of Project 2025 is reducing the size of the Civil Service, removing “experts” from their positions of power and giving control over laws and statutes back to Congress and The President.

Budgeting

They also state that “the President should reintroduce the concept of administrative pay-as-you-go budgeting, or administrative PAYGO^[7]Mandate For Leadership, Page 43”. This is a process where if Congress votes to pass a law that will increase spending (mainly on entitlement programs), they will need to reduce spending in other areas ^[8]Centre On Budget And Policy Priorities: # Policy Basics: The “Pay-As-You-Go” Budget Rule.

PAYGO would mean that if Congress voted to increase spending on Medicare prescription drugs, they would need to cut the same amount from another program. Congress can waive PAYGO on certain bills as long as they have the support of 60 senators and the majority of the House.

The CIA And FBI

This is where things start to get very concerning. Currently the Directory of the CIA is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, the Deputy Director is chosen by the President on advice from the Director. Project 2025 state:

Deputy Director who, without needing Senate confirmation, can immediately begin to implement the President’s agenda. This includes halting all current hiring to prevent the “burrowing in”” of outgoing political personnel. Additional appointees should be placed within the agency as needed to assist the Director in supervising its functioning^[9]Mandate For Leadership, Page 208.

And

The CIA must find creative ways to align mission requirements with hiring needs, recruit diverse sets of individuals with unique backgrounds, and become more open to hiring private-sector experts directly into senior positions^[10]Mandate For Leadership, Page 209.

So essentially, anyone that Trump likes can be placed in the role of Deputy Director of the CIA and the Deputy can then further stack the department with Trump loyalists all while only focusing on the “intelligence” gathering that Trump is interested rather than being what is the best focus for good of the country.

The document also accuses the FBI of being overly political:

When seeking surveillance of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, for example, the FBI and the Department of Justice concealed vital information from a specialized court and submitted applications that were riddled with errors. An incoming conservative President should consider reforms designed to prevent future partisan abuses of national security authority^[11]Mandate For Leadership, Page 215.

Some of the reforms include “Tighter controls on otherwise lawful intercepts that also collect the communications of domestic political figures” and “express prohibition on politically motivated use of intelligence authorities^[12]Mandate For Leadership, Page 216.” which would mean that Trump couldn’t be investigated even if there was proof he was doing something illegal.

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) And The CDC

The HHS is responsible in Project 2025’s words for “Promoting Stable and Flourishing Married Families^[13]Mandate For Leadership, Page 451” and that a family that is “comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society”.

They go on to say that the Biden Administration is too inclusive, pushes the LGBTQIA+ agenda, encourages single mothers, and discourages people to work. Project 2025 argues that you should focus on the promotion of the “nuclear family^[14]Britannica: nuclear family”.

They also argue that HHS mishandled the response to COVID-19 saying that “basic human rights, medical choice, and the doctor–patient relationship were trampled without scientific justification^[15]Mandate For Leadership Page 451” and that there were “Excess deaths, not due to COVID-19, skyrocketed because of forced lockdowns, isolation [and] vaccine-related mass firings”.

The Center For Disease Control (CDC) doesn’t fare much better with Project 2025 stating:

Unaccountable bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci should never again have such broad, unchecked power to issue health “guidelines” that will certainly be the basis for federal and state mandates. Never again should public health bureaucrats be allowed to hide information, ignore information, or mislead the public concerning the efficacy or dangers associated with any recommended health interventions because they believe it may lead to hesitancy on the part of the public….

COVID-19 exposed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as perhaps the most incompetent and arrogant agency in the federal government^[16]Mandate For Leadership, Page 452.

They also go on to say

The CDC oversaw and funded the development and testing of the COVID-19 vaccines with aborted fetal cell lines, insensitive to the consciences of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people who objected to taking a vaccine with such a link to abortion^[17]Mandate For Leadership, Page 455.

And while fetal cells were used in the development of COVID vaccines, these cells were grown in a laboratory and were derived from cells harvested over THIRTY years ago^[18]National Geographic: Here are the facts about fetal cell lines and COVID-19 vaccines so Project 2025 isn’t getting basic facts right but is including rhetoric that will inflame the right-wingers this document is aimed at.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) & Green Agenda

Project 2025 consider the EPA to be one of the most overreaching and wasteful of all the government departments:

[W]e see the return of costly, job-killing regulations that serve to depress the economy and grow the bureaucracy but do little to address, much less resolve, complex environmental problems….

The EPA has been a breeding ground for expansion of the federal government’s influence and control across the economy. Embedded activists have sought to evade legal restraints in pursuit of a global, climate-themed agenda^[19]Mandate For Leadership, Page 418.

They plan on dismantling it completely, removing some of the legislation that was introduced such as control over vehicle emissions and let that be controlled by the Department of Transport.

They also plan on ending the focus on climate change by removing subsidies for decarbonising a variety of business sectors. They also want to “Eliminate energy efficiency standards for appliances”^[20]Mandate For Leadership, Page 378, further indicating their backing away from any form of climate change policies.

Of course, Project 2025’s policies are much more in-depth than I’ve been able to cover above but I hope that this part of the series has given you enough of an overview to see what their plans for the government are, how they will affect everyone in the United States and how concerning these policies truly are.

In Part 3, I’ll take a look at what Project 2025’s plans for health care, the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid are.

Katy Whitton

Katy is the editor-in-chief of FlippingHeck.com a blog about Self-Improvement, Productivity and Small Business Tips. When she’s not working, she enjoys gaming, making music and Reviewing Things.

www.katywhitton.co.uk