Former President Donald Trump, nursing personal grievances against “deep state” officials and White House staff who thwarted his plans to stay in power after his 2020 defeat, has made it clear that his second term would be far more dangerous to American democracy than his first.
The Public Eye, Fall 2023/Winter 2024 (Issue 108)
“Democracy Under Attack—And How We Fight Back,” examines antidemocratic forces on the Right and pro-democracy efforts to counter them.
Inform your resistance: Subscribe now!
The presumptive GOP nominee’s 2024 campaign-trail bombast—including promising to be a dictator on “day one,” to “close the border,” and “drill, drill, drill”[1]—is reminiscent of his 2016 campaign’s authoritarian rhetoric. He has also adopted the rhetoric of fascists in denouncing his political opponents as “vermin”[2] and immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country.”[3] At right-wing events and on the campaign trail, he rallies his followers with promises of revenge against elites who ruined their shared dreams of a second Trump term. “I am your warrior. I am your justice,” he thunders. “I am your retribution.”[4] He has vowed to “obliterate the deep state,”[5] throw off “the sick political class that hates our country,” and “come down hard” on media outlets critical of him.[6] In the words of Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an NYU professor and author of a book about strongmen in modern history,[7] “He wants to convert American democracy into some kind of autocracy.”[8]
Project 2025, an unprecedented collaboration[9] among former Trump officials and the Right’s legal and political infrastructure, would enable Trump to make good on his threats, were he to return to power. This should be a cause for alarm. While some commentators dismissed his 2016 campaign statements as hyperbole,[10] as President, Trump willingly cast the Constitution aside and mobilized his followers to political violence to keep him in power after losing the 2020 election.
A plan to ‘Take the reins of government’
Project 2025 was launched in 2022 by the Heritage Foundation,[11] a longtime marketer of conservative ideology that moved sharply into the MAGA camp in the Trump era.[12] That June, Heritage announced[13] it had recruited nearly two dozen organizations to “position the movement to take the reins of government”[14] under the next president, following a presumed Republican victory. By the end of 2023, the Project 2025 advisory board[15] had grown to nearly 90 groups[16] representing Trump loyalists, book banners, Christian nationalists, anti-abortion activists, opponents of LGBTQ rights, vote suppressors, and anti-regulation corporate interests. Participating groups include longtime powerhouses like the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council and the Religious Right legal giant Alliance Defending Freedom. They are accompanied by newer advocacy groups created by former Trump administration officials, including the Center for Renewing America and Stephen Miller’s America First Legal, which alone took in $44 million in 2022.[17]
Project 2025 builds on a tradition started when Heritage presented then President-elect Ronald Reagan with its “Mandate for Leadership” policy wish list.[18] Heritage does not describe Project 2025 as a Trump-specific project, saying it is preparing for “the next conservative administration.”[19] The breadth of coalition partners who have signed on reflects the influential role that Heritage plays; it also indicates a movement-level, ideological shift away from a libertarian mistrust of government power and toward an authoritarian view of government power being used ruthlessly—whether as a righteous force wielded to advance a “biblical worldview” or turned against an “administrative state” supposedly captured by a radical Marxist left. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who endorsed Trump after suspending his own presidential campaign just before the New Hampshire primary, [20] has made an aggressive use of government power his administration’s hallmark. Trump’s authoritarian and anti-deep state rhetoric has also been embraced by GOP presidential contenders like Vivek Ramaswamy,[21] who also endorsed Trump after dropping his bid, [22] and Nikki Haley, who has vowed to “clean house” and “get rid of the deep state.”[23]
To be clear, right-wing movement leaders’ detailed plan, backed by a multimillion-dollar war chest, would enable Trump to wield virtually unchecked power over the executive branch of the federal government and allow him to use it as a weapon against personal enemies, political opponents, and the media. But it doesn’t require that Trump be the one leading the attack.
The project’s associate director Spencer Chretien told Breitbart News that conservatives “need to use the levers of government and not just get the government out of the way.”[24] Former Trump aide and Project 2025 strategist Russ Vought is more explicit: “There’s a glove of power needed to beat back the administrative state or deep state, and if you’re not willing to put your hand in that glove you will fail, regardless of how much credibility you have with the base.”[25]
Vought calls for the abandonment of a democratic norm that has long been embraced on a bipartisan basis that Department of Justice (DOJ) decision-making regarding investigations and prosecutions should be shielded from political pressure by the White House. In his first term, Trump unsuccessfully pressured DOJ officials to investigate his political opponents and back his efforts to stay in power after his 2020 defeat.[26] His loyalists want to ensure that any future Trump orders will be carried out unquestioningly. “What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” Vought says.[27]
Conservative legal advocates have long pushed a “unitary executive theory” of presidential power, which holds that presidents have virtually dictatorial powers over the executive branch of government.[28] Whether he understands the theory deeply or not, Trump instinctively embraces its core idea. “I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president,” he told cheering supporters in 2019.[29] Project 2025 even sets the stage for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy U.S. military forces against American citizens who protest his actions, as some far-right leaders urged in 2020.[30] It would, as University of Oregon scholar Joseph Lowndes has noted, eliminate “barriers that thwarted many of his authoritarian impulses.”[31]
The project excites far-right operative Steve Bannon, who has called Heritage the MAGA movement’s “Revolutionary Guard”[32] and has repeatedly hosted Project 2025 director Paul Dans on his War Room podcast. Dans, who calls himself “a full-blooded deplorable,”[33] called plans to purge the civil service a “one-in-a-hundred year deep gut renovation.”[34]
“This is a war to the knife!” exulted Bannon during one War Room segment with Dans. “This is called power!”[35]
The ideological purge and installation of loyalists
Trump and his supporters believe his first-term agenda was stymied by resistance from career bureaucrats wielding power they shouldn’t have had in the first place. Project 2025 leaders, dead set on ensuring this doesn’t happen again, are making the professional civil service their first target.
Weeks before the 2020 election, Trump signaled his second-term plans with an executive order[36] to classify thousands of civil service employees as “Schedule F,” expanding his power to fire and replace them with MAGA loyalists.[37] President Biden overturned Trump’s order,[38] but supporters of Trump’s second term count on using it to force federal departments and independent agencies to bend to his will.[39] And Project 2025’s policy agenda promotes it as a weapon to be wielded by any likeminded president.[40]
The degree to which Trump and right-wing officials have made attacks on federal bureaucrats an article of faith for the GOP is reflected in how fully Trump’s anti-deep state rhetoric was embraced by his Republican primary opponents.[41] In other words, even in the seemingly unlikely scenario that Trump does not become the Republican nominee, other GOP contenders are pledged to wage the war he and Project 2025 are calling for against federal agencies.
Central to Project 2025’s strategy for fighting that war is recruiting, vetting, and training thousands of MAGA-minded ideological warriors. In Dans’ words, they are “systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army: aligned, trained, and essentially weaponized conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state.”[42]
The group’s database of potential political appointees includes more than 4,000 names, a start on Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ stated goal of 20,000 vetted true believers ready for a Republican transition team to draw on so that they can “begin dismantling the administrative state from Day 1.”[43] The vetting process, Axios reported, “drills down more on political philosophy than on experience, education or other credentials.”[44]
But for all the talk about devotion to constitutional principles, Trump is still the presumptive nominee, and the vetting process reportedly focuses heavily on personal loyalty. Trump has no interest in hiring lawyers or other staff who are willing to stand up to him.[45] “Immense, intense attention will be given to the social-media histories of anyone being considered for top jobs,” Axios reported. “Those queasy about testing the limits of Trump’s power will get flagged and rejected.”[46]
Considering the prospects for Trump’s “loyalty-first” cabinet, Axios reported that a second-term Trump would “turn to loyalists who share his zeal to punish critics, purge non-believers, and take controversial legal and military action.”[47] One prospect for a high-level national security position is Kash Patel, who has vowed that a Trump administration would target journalists for criminal prosecution.[48]
Another Project 2025 partner, American Moment, is recruiting young foot soldiers to fill low- and mid-level openings.[49] Dans, for his part, has used his appearances on Bannon’s War Room podcast to encourage listeners to enlist in Project 2025, an idea Bannon boosted for those who “want to be in the vanguard of taking down the Leviathan.”[50]
The policy roadmap for a right-wing strongman
Project 2025’s policy agenda runs more than 900 pages, with prescriptions for every U.S. department and scores of agencies.[51] The plan for a far-right transformation of government, law, and society embraces the anti-feminist, anti-choice, and anti-LGBTQ priorities of the Religious Right,[52] calling for “government power” to be deployed to “restore the American family.”[53] It declares that the federal government must protect fertilized eggs from the moment of conception[54] and calls for criminal action against distributors of abortion medication.[55] The plan also decrees that religious business owners should be able to ignore nondiscrimination laws that conflict with their religious beliefs.[56]
This new version of Mandate for Leadership reflects the participation of the book-banning Moms for Liberty, whose call for legislation to enshrine “parental rights” also insists that parents have no right to support their trans kids’ identity.[57] The project wraps itself in the flag of freedom while calling for what they define as pornography to be outlawed and for librarians who “purvey” it to be classified as sex offenders.[58]
It turns out that “freedom” for Project 2025 activists is only freedom to live in alignment with their religious worldview: “When the Founders spoke of ‘pursuit of Happiness,’ what they meant might be understood today as in essence ‘pursuit of Blessedness,’” the report declares, adding, “That is, an individual must be free to live as his Creator ordained—to flourish. Our Constitution grants each of us the liberty to do not what we want, but what we ought.”[59]
Project 2025’s agenda also reflects the MAGA movement’s obsession with critical race theory[60] and its framing of public and private efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion as illegal discrimination against White men. It calls for a prohibition on collecting data on racial classifications and says the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division should use “the full force of federal prosecutorial resources to investigate and prosecute all state and local governments, institutions of higher education, corporations, and any other private employers who are engaged in discrimination in violation of constitutional and legal requirements.”[61]
And it takes up the fossil fuel industry’s campaign against policies to protect the climate, declaring that environmentalism “is not a political cause, but a pseudo-religion meant to baptize liberals’ ruthless pursuit of absolute power in the holy water of environmental virtue.”[62] Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch calls the Project 2025 climate agenda a “blueprint for destroying the planet.”[63]
Although it is separate from the Trump campaign’s own published “Agenda 47,”[64] Project 2025’s policy roadmap aligns with its authoritarian plans, which include seizing the endowments of top universities to fund the creation of a massive “American Academy” offering free and ideologically pure online education—no “wokeness” allowed.[65]
Trump and former aide Stephen Miller are also pledging aggressive anti-immigrant policies, including massive camps, roundups, and deportations. “Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” Miller told the New York Times, adding, “The immigration legal activists won’t know what’s happening.”[66]
The far-right’s far-reaching revolution
As Project 2025 envisions Trump or another MAGA-minded president maximizing presidential power and dominating the executive branch with an iron fist, its agenda converges with the long-term right-wing goal of diminishing and dismantling the federal government’s ability to address social issues like poverty, education, and access to health care. Project 2025’s policy opus calls for abolishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and ending “tyrannical” funding of public radio and television;[67] eliminating the Department of Education[68] and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau;[69] dismantling and partially privatizing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration;[70] phasing out Title I funding for schools in low-income communities;[71] eliminating Head Start;[72] and ending Medicare’s ability to negotiate lower prescription drug prices.[73]
Project 2025 leaders are not shy about the transformative impact they seek. At a September 2023 gathering held by the far-right America First Policy Institute, former Trump adviser and Institute president Brooke Rollins celebrated the “revolutionary” plan: “What we’re doing is ideologically revolutionary—an America First takeover of the administrative state; operationally revolutionary—an America First confrontation against anti-conservative institutions; and strategically revolutionary—seizing control of a century of labor on behalf of the American people.”[74]
John McEntee, a former Trump aide and loyalty enforcer[75] who is involved in Project 2025 planning, says “The president’s plan should be to fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn’t been done since F.D.R.’s New Deal.”[76] Project 2025 director Dans also mentioned the New Deal and Great Society social net programs in telling Bannon that the administrative state is “completely unrooted in the Constitution.”[77]
Such comments are reminders that Project 2025 is part of a larger, decades-long effort to reverse more than a century of progressive change in the United States. Other elements of that broader project include:
- the Supreme Court’s capture by the Federalist Society and its allies, who envision a right-wing judiciary declaring the New Deal[78] and other social safety net programs unconstitutional[79] and dismantling the administrative state. Overturning Roe v. Wade[80] was one of many “generational wins”[81] sought by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Project 2025 participant. A dark money network run by the judicial takeover’s architect, activist and Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo, was recently given $1.6 billion to broaden his impact on society at large.[82]
- the campaign[83] to get state legislatures to call an Article V convention[84] for the purpose of rewriting the U.S. Constitution to restrict the scope and authority of the federal government and “reverse 115 years of progressivism.”[85] The effort is backed by House Speaker Mike Johnson and many of the groups supporting Project 2025. It may not be needed if Trump’s Supreme Court majority—or one with future nominees even further to the Right—uses its demonstrated willingness to overturn decades of precedent to adopt right-wing theories about presidential power, federalism, and the administrative state.
- a brazen and underreported effort now under way by religious-right groups[86] to demand that any future conservative Supreme Court nominees be subject to a de facto religious test that would be blatantly unconstitutional if imposed by the government.[87] Led by the American Family Association’s Center for Judicial Renewal, the coalition is already lobbying Republican presidential candidates[88] and working to derail potential conservative nominees who fail to meet the group’s “biblical worldview” standard. [89] The project’s endorsers include several leaders of groups on Project 2025’s advisory board.
A moment of truth, a time for action
The Trump-enhanced right-wing majority on the Supreme Court, which is already blazing a destructive path through Americans’ constitutional rights and legal protections,[90] is in place to provide air cover for the war on progressive governance. With Project 2025, the religious, political, and legal infrastructure built by the Right over the past 50 years has coalesced around a detailed battle plan to reverse decades of social progress. It is, as University of Pennsylvania Professor Anthea Butler said at a December 2023 town hall meeting sponsored by critics of Project 2025, a “culmination” of the right-wing movement’s work since even before the election of Ronald Reagan.[91] And now poised to take power as never before, the movement’s leaders are counting on the 2024 elections to enable them to “take the reins of government.”
In short, Project 2025 is an opportunistic plan by far-right strategists to take advantage of the MAGA movement’s grassroots energy and Trump’s thirst for vengeance. If Trump is elected, he’ll have right-wing leaders’ blessing to impose his will on federal agencies and use them to punish former allies, political opponents, and media that report unfavorably on him. A returning President Trump or any president who adopts the Project 2025 agenda would undermine the ability of the federal government to regulate corporate behavior, promote worker safety and shared prosperity, protect the environment, and more. If the vision of Project 2025 is embraced by the next president, endorsed by the right-wing Supreme Court majority, and empowered by potential Republican-majority houses of Congress, Americans could soon find themselves living in a country where states’ rights further eclipse civil rights and voting rights, governments strictly enforce “traditional” family structures and gender roles, and corporations are freer to run roughshod over individuals and communities.
That prospect should focus the attention of left-leaning, centrist, and even conservative Americans who do not share the Right’s antidemocratic vision.
Progressive strategists must develop and deliver compelling messaging about the danger that unchecked power in the hands of a right-wing president poses to already eroding freedoms and legal protections. More creative, plain-spoken media and social media products explaining what a successful war on the “deep state” and the dismantling of federal agencies could mean for people, families, and communities are urgently needed.
Individuals can spread the word by sharing information about Project 2025 as it is reported by media and advocacy organizations. “The more you tell people exactly what they will lose, the more they understand what is at stake,” Butler told activists in December.[92]
Funders must back pro-democracy and rights-supporting organizations that are developing both messaging and organizing strategies to counter the right-wing juggernaut.
This threat to U.S. democratic governance and a century of progressive gains merits more than our attention; it calls for action to help Americans understand just how dramatically right-wing reactionaries intend to transform American society, and how to effectively mobilize resistance to their well-funded schemes.
Endnotes
[1] Jill Covan and Bill Barrow, “Trump vow to only be a dictator on ‘day one’ follows growing worry over his authoritarian rhetoric,” Associated Press, December 7, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/trump-hannity-dictator-authoritarian-presidential-election-f27e7e9d7c13fabbe3ae7dd7f1235c72.
[2] Marianne LeVine, “Trump calls political enemies ‘vermin,’ echoing dictators Hitler, Mussolini,” The Washington Post, November 12, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/12/trump-rally-vermin-political-opponents/.
[3] Kate Sullivan, “Trump’s anti-immigrant comments draw rebuke,” CNN, October 6, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/06/politics/trump-anti-immigrant-comments/index.html.
[4] Isaac Arnsdorf and Jeff Stein, “Trump touts authoritarian vision for second term: ‘I am your justice,’” The Washington Post, April 21, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2023/04/21/trump-agenda-policies-2024/.
[5] Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman, “The Radical Strategy Behind Trump’s Promise to ‘Go After’ Biden,” The New York Times, June 15, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/15/us/politics/trump-indictment-justice-department.html.
[6] Zachary Basu, “Trump unleashes grievances, warnings in wild 24 hours on Truth Social,” Axios, November 29, 2023, https://www.axios.com/2023/11/29/trump-truth-social-posts.
[7] Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, (W. W Norton, 2021).
[8] David Jackson, “Retribution or ‘remarkably vindictive’? Why Trump’s push for more presidential power alarms his foes,” USA Today, October 26, 2023, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2023/10/26/donald-trump-presidential-power/71255801007/.
[9] Lisa Mascaro, “Conservatives aim to restructure U.S. government and replace it with Trump’s vision,” Associated Press, August 29, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/election-2024-conservatives-trump-heritage-857eb794e505f1c6710eb03fd5b58981.
[10] Todd Graham, “Debate coach: Trump’s constant hyperbole is starting to work against him,” CNN, October 10, 2016, https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/10/opinions/debate-coach-grading-the-town-hall-debate-graham/index.html.
[11] Heritage Foundation, “Heritage Announces Presidential Transition Project, Hiring of Paul Dans to Direct New Initiative,” Heritage Foundation, April 14, 2022, https://www.heritage.org/press/heritage-announces-2025-presidential-transition-project-hiring-paul-dans-direct-new.
[12] Peter Montgomery, “6 Ways the Heritage Foundation Makes America Less Free, Less Just, and Less Safe,” Right Wing Watch, April 21, 2023, https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/6-ways-the-heritage-foundation-makes-america-less-free-less-just-and-less-safe/.
[13] Heritage Foundation , “2025 Presidential Transition Project Forms Advisory Board with Leading Conservative Partners,” Heritage Foundation, June 24, 2022, https://www.heritage.org/press/2025-presidential-transition-project-forms-advisory-board-leading-conservative-partners.
[14] Peter Montgomery, “Supreme Court in Hand, Far Right Wing Prepares to ‘Take the Reins of Government,” Right Wing Watch, June 27, 2022, https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/supreme-court-in-hand-far-right-wing-prepares-to-take-the-reins-of-government/.
[15] “Advisory Board,” Project 2025, https://www.project2025.org/about/advisory-board/.
[16] Katherine Doyle, “Donations have surged to groups linked to conservative Project 2025,” NBC News, November 17, 2023, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/donations-surged-groups-linked-conservative-project-2025-rcna125638.
[17] Emily Birnbaum, “Trump Adviser Stephen Miller’s Legal Group Rakes in $44 Million,” Bloomberg, November 17, 2023, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-17/stephen-miller-s-america-first-legal-group-raises-44-million?embedded-checkout=true.
[18] Heritage Foundation, “Project 2025 Publishes Comprehensive Policy Guide ‘Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,’” Heritage Foundation, April 21, 2023, https://www.heritage.org/press/project-2025-publishes-comprehensive-policy-guide-mandate-leadership-the-conservative-promise.
[19] Heritage Foundation, ”2025 Presidential.”
[20] Steve Peoples, Thomas Beaumont, and Holly Ramer, “DeSantis drops out of presidential race, leaving Trump and Haley to face off in New Hampshire,” Associated Press, January 21, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/ron-desantis-250c8ed4b49843350e258f0c2754c8ba.
[21] Nick Corasaniti, “Defending Trump, Ramaswamy Rattles Off Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories,” The New York Times, December 6, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/06/us/politics/vivek-trump-conspiracy-theories.html.
[22] Alexandra Ulmer, “Entrepreneur Ramaswamy drops out of White House race, endorses Trump,” Reuters, January 17, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/entrepreneur-ramaswamy-drops-out-white-house-race-endorses-trump-2024-01-16/.
[23] Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley), John Kerry’s sister was the first person we fired when we got to the UN. We’ve got to clean house, get rid of the deep state, and make sure government works for the people – not the other way around,” post on X (Twitter), August 15, 2023, https://x.com/NikkiHaley/status/1691480209315221506?s=20.
[24] Breccan F. Thies, “Exclusive: Conservatives to ‘Use the Levers of Government,’ Dismantle ‘Permanent D.C.’ in 2025,” Breitbart, February 2, 2023, https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/02/02/exclusive-conservatives-to-use-levers-government-dismantle-permanent-d-c-2025/.
[25] Arnsdorf and Stein, ““Trump touts.”
[26] Swan, Savage, and Haberman, “Radical Strategy.”
[27] Swan, Savage, and Haberman, “Radical Strategy.”
[28] Swan, Savage, and Haberman, “Radical Strategy.”
[29] Michael Brice-Saddler, “While bemoaning Mueller probe, Trump falsely says the Constitution gives him ‘the right to do whatever I want,” The Washington Post, July 23, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/07/23/trump-falsely-tells-auditorium-full-teens-constitution-gives-him-right-do-whatever-i-want/. Article II of the U.S. Constitution establishes the Executive Branch of the government and describes the powers and duties of the president.
[30] Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Devlin Barrett, “Trump and allies plot revenge, Justice Department control in a second term,” The Washington Post, November 6, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/05/trump-revenge-second-term/.
[31] Joseph Lowndes, “Trump wants no limits on presidential power. That’s not new for the GOP,” The Washington Post, July 27, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2023/07/27/presidential-power-republicans-trump-authoritarianism/.
[32] Paul Dans, “Paul Dans Walks Through What It’ll Take To Take Down the Administrative State,” interview by Steve Bannon, War Room, Rumble, November 2023, https://rumble.com/v3vgxtd-paul-dans-walks-through-what-itll-take-to-take-down-the-administrative-stat.html.
[33] Paul Dans, “Paul Dans Walks Through Project ‘25, The Plan to Dismantle The Admin. State,” interview by Steve Bannon, War Room, Rumble, September 2023, https://rumble.com/v3dwpoi-paul-dans-walks-through-project-25-the-plan-to-dismantle-the-admin.-state.html.
[34] “Paul Dans Walks Through Project ’25,” 7:55.
[35] Paul Dans, “Paul Dans: America’s President Can Only Remove 1% of the Administrative State,” interview by Steve Bannon, War Room, Rumble, September 2023, https://rumble.com/v3i71t8-paul-dans-americas-president-can-only-remove-1-of-the-administrative-state.html.
[36] President Donald Trump, “Executive Order on Creating Schedule F in The Excepted Service,” WhiteHouse.gov, October 21, 2020, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-creating-schedule-f-excepted-service/.
[37] Lisa Rein, Josh Dawsey, and Toluse Olorunnipa, “Trump’s Historic Assault on the Civil Service Was Four Years in the Making,” The Washington Post, October 23, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-federal-civil-service/2020/10/23/02fbf05c-1549-11eb-ba42-ec6a580836ed_story.html.
[38] Nicole Ogrysko, “Biden repeals Schedule F, overturns Trump workforce policies with new executive order,” Federal News Network, January 22, 2021, https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2021/01/biden-to-repeal-schedule-f-overturn-trump-workforce-policies-with-new-executive-order/.
[39] Jonathan Swan, “A radical plan for Trump’s second term,” Axios, July 22, 2022, https://www.axios.com/2022/07/22/trump-2025-radical-plan-second-term.
[40] The Heritage Foundation, “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” The Heritage Foundation, 2023, https://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf. See for example 271, 524, and 535.
[41] Robin Bravender and Timothy Cama, “Debate Takeaways: GOP bashes, ‘deep state,’ climate law,” Greenwire, August 24, 2023, https://www.eenews.net/articles/debate-takeaways-gop-bashes-deep-state-climate-law/.
[42] Martin Pengelly, “US hard-right policy group condemned for ‘dehumanising’ anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric,” The Guardian, September 15, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/15/project-2025-policy-manifesto-lgbtq-rights.
[43] Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, “Heritage Foundation Makes Plans to Staff Next G.O.P. Administration,” The New York Times, April 20, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/20/us/politics/republican-president-2024-heritage-foundation.html.
[44] Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, “Behind the Curtain: Trump allies pre-screen loyalists for unprecedented power grab,” Axios, November 13, 2023, https://www.axios.com/2023/11/13/trump-loyalists-2024-presidential-election.
[45] Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman, “If Trump Wins, His Allies Want Lawyers Who Will Bless a More Radical Agenda,” The New York Times, November 1, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/01/us/politics/trump-2025-lawyers.html.
[46] Swan, Savage, and Haberman, “If Trump Wins.”
[47] Swan, Savage, and Haberman, “If Trump Wins.”
[48] Lalee Ibssa and Soo Rin Kim, “Kash Patel tells members of media, government: ‘We’re going to come after you’ in Trump’s 2nd term,” ABC News, December 6, 2023, https://abcnews.go.com/US/kash-patel-tells-members-media-government-after-trumps/story?id=105432592.
[49] Ian Ward, “The Brash Group of Young Conservatives Getting Ready for the Next Trump Administration,” Politico Magazine, November 3, 2023, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/11/03/american-moment-conservative-00124178.
[50] Paul Dans, “Paul Dans: America’s President Can Only Remove 1% of the Administrative State,” interview by Steve Bannon, War Room, Rumble, September 2023, https://rumble.com/v3i71t8-paul-dans-americas-president-can-only-remove-1-of-the-administrative-state.html.
[51] The Heritage Foundation, “Mandate for Leadership.”
[52] Sarah Posner, “This conservative ‘mandate’ is a terrifying preview of Christianized government,” MSNBC, December 13, 2023, https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-second-term-heritage-foundation-christian-nationalism-rcna129359.
[53] The Heritage Foundation, “Mandate for Leadership,” 4.
[54] Roger Severino, chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services, “Mandate for Leadership,” 449.
[55] The Heritage Foundation, “Mandate for Leadership,” 562.
[56] The Heritage Foundation, “Mandate for Leadership,” 586.
[57] The Heritage Foundation, “Mandate for Leadership,” 5.
[58] The Heritage Foundation, “Mandate for Leadership,” 5.
[59] The Heritage Foundation, “Mandate for Leadership,” 13.
[60] The Heritage Foundation, “Mandate for Leadership,” 582–583.
[61] The Heritage Foundation, “Mandate for Leadership,” 562.
[62] The Heritage Foundation, “Mandate for Leadership,” 10.
[63] Will Bunch, “Project 2025 is GOPers’ blueprint for destroying the planet. It must be stopped,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 30, 2023, https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/project-2025-gop-plan-climate-change-20230730.html#loaded.
[64] “Agenda 47,” Donald J. Trump for President 2024, https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47.
[65] Donald Trump, “Agenda47: The American Academy,” Donald J. Trump for President 2024, November 1, 2023, https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47/agenda47-the-american-academy.
[66] Charlie Savage, Maggie Haberman, and Jonathan Swan, “Sweeping Raids, Giant Camps and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 Immigration Plans,” The New York Times, November 11, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/11/us/politics/trump-2025-immigration-agenda.html?unlocked_article_code=1.9kw.UOlp.p34arIyCA4G7&smid=tw-share.
[67] The Heritage Foundation, “Mandate for Leadership,” 246–247.
[68] The Heritage Foundation, “Mandate for Leadership,” 285.
[69] The Heritage Foundation, “Mandate for Leadership,” 839.
[70] The Heritage Foundation, “Mandate for Leadership,” 664, 674–676.
[71] The Heritage Foundation, “Mandate for Leadership,” 350.
[72] The Heritage Foundation, “Mandate for Leadership,” 482.
[73] The Heritage Foundation, “Mandate for Leadership,” 465.
[74] Kyle Mantyla, “Revolutionary: The Far-Right Plan to ‘Seize Control of the Administrative State,’” Right Wing Watch, October 2, 2023, https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/revolutionary-the-far-right-plan-to-seize-control-of-the-administrative-state/.
[75] Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage, and Maggie Haberman, “Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025,” The New York Times, July 17, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/17/us/politics/trump-plans-2025.html.
[76] Swan, Savage, and Haberman, “Trump and Allies.”
[77] Dans, “Paul Dans Walks.”
[78] Elliot Mincberg, “How Trump Judges Are Trying to Repeal the New Deal,” People For the American Way, December 20, 2019, https://www.pfaw.org/blog-posts/how-trump-judges-are-trying-to-repeal-the-new-deal/.
[79] Peter Montgomery, “’Rome Wasn’t Burned in a Day’: Right-Wing Plans for SCOTUS to Dismantle the Safety Net,” Right Wing Watch, July 24, 2018, https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/a-trumped-up-judiciary-threatens-social-security-medicare-and-the-rest-of-the-20th-century-social-safety-net/.
[80] Peter Montgomery, “Overturning Roe is Just the Beginning,” Right Wing Watch, May 4, 2022, https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/overturning-roe-is-just-the-beginning/.
[81] “What is a Generational Win?” Alliance Defending Freedom, July 10, 2020, revised Sept. 26, 2023, https://adflegal.org/article/what-generational-win.
[82] Andy Kroll, Andrea Bernstein, and Nick Surgey, “Inside the ‘Private and Confidential’ Conservative Group That Promises to ‘Crush Liberal Dominance,’” ProPublica with Documented, March 9, 2023, https://www.propublica.org/article/leonard-leo-teneo-videos-documents.
[83] Georgia Logothetis, “Article V: The danger to democracy you may not know about,” Common Cause, September 30, 2021, https://www.commoncause.org/illinois/democracy-wire/article-v-the-danger-to-democracy-you-may-not-know-about/.
[84] Peter Montgomery, “Will Corporations, The Christian Right and the Tea Party Get to Rewrite the Constitution?” The Public Eye, October 16, 2017, https://politicalresearch.org/2017/10/16/will-corporations-the-christian-right-and-the-tea-party-get-to-rewrite-the-constitution.
[85] Peter Montgomery, “Convention of States Leaders Says Goal Is ‘To Reverse 115 Years of Progressivism,” Right Wing Watch, August 23, 2018, https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/convention-of-states-leader-says-goal-is-to-reverse-115-years-of-progressivism/.
[86] Sarah Posner, “The Christian right’s wish list for Trump is worse than you think,” MSNBC, September 21, 2023, https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-christian-right-judges-2024-election-rcna111340.
[87] Peter Montgomery, “Religious Right Leaders Demand Next GOP SCOTUS Nominees Meet ‘Biblical Worldview’ Standard,” Right Wing Watch, September 18, 2023, https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/religious-right-leaders-demand-next-gop-scotus-nominees-meet-biblical-worldview-standard/.
[88] “Your Role in Identifying Our Next Supreme Court Justices,” presentation by Center for Judicial Renewal Director Phillip Jauregui at Family Research Council’s Pray Vote Stand conference, Sept. 16, 2023. See also “16 Leaders Supporting the Presidential Pledge to Nominate Constitutionalist Judges,” AFA Action, https://afaaction.net/cjr.
[89] Center for Judicial Renewal, “Prospective Judges,” AFA Action, https://afaaction.net/cjr/confirmation-status/prospective/. See page declaring some potential judicial nominees as unacceptable with a label indicating “a prospect that fails to meet the ten principles of a constitutional judge.”
[90] Paul Gordon, “Turning Back the Clock: How the Supreme Court’s 2022-2023 Term Upends Decades of Progress,” People For the American Way, July 17, 2023, https://www.pfaw.org/report/turning-back-the-clock-how-the-supreme-courts-2022-23-term-upends-decades-of-progress/.
[91] Anthea Butler, remarks at Stop the Coup 2025 Town Hall, December 17, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWo9hMYUU98 at 17 minutes.
[92] Butler, Stop the Coup remarks.
