The Daily Item
October 1, 2024
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is a 900-page plan that was tailor-made for a possible Donald Trump administration. More than 140 former Trump administration officials worked on it, including six Cabinet secretaries. It is designed, among other things, to vastly increase his power. Trump has lavishly praised the Heritage Foundation and has said that it is “going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”
The Project 2025 blueprint for a Trump administration would increase the number of political appointees from approximately 4,000 to more than 50,000, whose primary allegiance would be to Donald Trump. They would be drawn from a massive database of Trump loyalists that is being constructed by the Heritage Foundation. If he is elected, those Trump foot soldiers would take almost complete control of the U.S. government. Donald Trump would become by far the most powerful president in American history.
This is especially troubling because Trump has repeatedly expressed admiration for the most oppressive world leaders. He has been recorded saying that when North Korean dictator Kim Jun Un talks, “his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” The former president has repeatedly praised Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, including for his invasion of the independent nation of Ukraine. Trump views Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán as a role model.
Project 2025 also calls for increasing the use of the U.S. armed forces to intervene in domestic law enforcement. It also would politicize the Justice Department, giving a future president more power to pursue his enemies. In addition, it increases taxes on Americans earning less than $170,000, hugely raises taxes on those earning less than $75,000, dismantles worker protections, and rolls back efforts to fight climate change. These are radical ideas — and most of the American people oppose them.
Because of public opposition to Project 2025, Trump recently announced that he disavowed the document that was written by his former senior employees, stating that “some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” Then, the former president claimed, “I’m not going to read it.”
The former president’s assertion that he has had nothing to do with Project 2025 is highly likely to be false. In an interview with The Washington Post, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, the leader of Project 2025, previously said, “I have talked to President Trump about Project 2025.”
There is nothing to stop Trump from performing another 180 if he is elected president. While Project 2025 is unpopular with the American people, it aligns neatly with Trump’s most cherished objectives — such as wielding power like the world’s most despotic leaders.
We, as responsible American voters, can stop Project 2025 on Nov. 5 by casting our vote for Kamala Harris.
Rick Thomas
Lewisburg