Allies Against Democracy: Trump and Project 2025

Trump is not the mastermind behind Project 2025. It’s worse: The rightwing establishment has radicalized to the point where their plans are entirely in line with his vengeful desires

credit: Last Week Tonight, HBO

This essay is the fourth entry in an ongoing series on Project 2025 and the planning operations for a future rightwing regime. Part I focused on the ideas, ideologies, and grievances fueling the project – the radicalizing siege mentality on the Right. Part II offered a detailed dissection of the concrete policy agenda and strategies to impose a reactionary vision on the country. Part III situated “Project 2025 in the broader context of the Right’s history since the 1930s and explored why a second Trump presidency would be operating under completely different conditions from the first – conditions that make it much more likely for these radical plans to succeed.

The silly denials from Team Trump have been coming fast and furious: They have nothing, absolutely nothing to do with Project 2025! Don’t know anyone over there! Don’t even know what it is, really!

In the past week, we have seen remarkable attempts from Trump world to signal distance from the ongoing planning operation for a future rightwing regime that is led by the Heritage Foundation. On July 5, Donald Trump – or someone with access to his account – took to Truth Social to say: “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s closest advisors, quickly followed his leader in emphasizing that “I have never been involved with Project 2025, not one word.” Miller, of course, is the head of the America First Legal Foundation, which is listed as a member of the Project 2025 Advisory Board, meaning they have officially signed off on this operation. Miller has also, as many people were quick to point out, recorded one of the videos for Project 2025’s “Presidential Administration Academy,” a “training effort” that currently consists of online courses intended to get the people Project 2025 wants to bring into the executive ready to implement the rightwing agenda from day one.

As for Trump’s claim that he doesn’t know anything about Project 2025 or the people behind it, that might be news to the Trump administration alumni who are dominating these plannings, or the high-ranking Trump confidantes who are intimately involved in the proceedings. Trump, it is clear, blatantly lied about Project 2025. Shocking, I know.

But there is something more interesting and revealing going on here than just habitual lying. Miller chiming in means we are looking at a deliberate and coordinated initiative. And it’s not the first time they felt the need to at least pretend there is no connection. Last November, for instance, the Trump campaign tried to mark its territory by releasing a statement that, while acknowledging that “efforts by various non-profit groups are certainly appreciated and can be enormously helpful,” emphasized that “none of these groups or individuals speak for President Trump or his campaign.” Clearly referring to Project 2025, the statement made it clear that “these reports about personnel and policies that are specific to a second Trump Administration are purely speculative and theoretical. Any personnel lists, policy agendas, or government plans published anywhere are merely suggestions.”

So, what exactly is the relationship between Trump and Project 2025? At the risk of saying something that is bound to be taken out of context: Trump is actually not behind these planning efforts – Trump and Project 2025 are not the same.

That is not a reason to relax or be any less concerned about what is going on here, however. On the contrary, the full extent of the Right’s radicalization becomes clear if we grapple with the fact that the reason why MAGA extremists and the conservative establishment that is behind Project 2025 are aligned on personnel, policy, and ideology is not that Trump is orchestrating a massive conspiracy. The main reason is that they are fundamentally in agreement about what it is they want to do to the country and the reactionary vision of “real America” they want to impose on the nation. Moreover, it is a shared desire to punish their “Un-American” enemies that binds them. Project 2025 is evidence of how far the Right has radicalized, how far beyond Trump the problem goes.  

People are talking about Project 2025

“Project 2025,” launched in April 2022 under the leadership of the Heritage Foundation, stands out among the many planning efforts that are currently underway on the Right because it unites much of the conservative movement and the machinery of think tanks as well as activist and lobbying groups behind the goal of installing a more effective, more ruthless rightwing regime. As members of its Advisory Board, “Project 2025” currently lists over 100 organizations and institutions. It’s a Who is Who of rightwing actors – Alliance Defending Freedom, America First Legal Foundation, Center for Renewing America, Claremont Institute, Hillsdale College, Liberty University, Young America’s Foundation, Moms for Liberty, and on and on and on.

In their own parlance, Project 2025 consists of four “pillars”: A policy agenda, spelled out in the 920-page report they published last April, titled: “Mandate for Leadership: A conservative promise” (I); a personnel database, intended to build an army of loyalists (II); a “training effort” that currently consists of online courses they call the “Presidential Administration Academy” to get these loyalists and all political appointees ready to implement the rightwing agenda (III); and, finally, Project 2025 vows to create “a playbook of actions to be taken in the first 180 days of the new Administration to bring quick relief to Americans suffering from the Left’s devastating policies” (IV) – this fourth “pillar” is, at this point, still distinctly vague and seems to exist only in the form of an announcement of future action.

If we zoom out, Project 2025 is a plan to execute what amounts to a comprehensive authoritarian takeover of American government. Broadly speaking, it envisions a vast expansion of presidential power over the executive branch. Moreover, Project 2025 seeks to dismantle certain parts of government, the administrative state, and federal agencies – while simultaneously mobilizing and weaponizing others. Finally, Project 2025 is a promise to purge from government anyone who is not all in on the rightwing project and replace them with loyalists and ideological conformists.

It remains difficult to determine how much awareness for these rightwing planning operations is out there among the broader public. Recent surveys indicate that still only few people have more than a cursory understanding of these plans – at most, they may know that Project 2025 exists and has *something* to do with Trump.

But in recent weeks, Project 2025 has attracted an enormous amount of public and media attention beyond the narrow confines of the political discourse. In mid-June, John Oliver focused on Project 2025 on his HBO show Last Week Tonight: The YouTube clip of the extended segment has been viewed almost seven million times so far. Then, on June 30, Taraji P. Henson emphasized how dangerous Project 2025 was while hosting the BET awards, pleading with the audience to “Pay attention, it’s not a secret – look it up.”

Just one day later, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump was basically immune from criminal prosecution – a disastrous decision that Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts celebrated in an interview on Steve Bannon’s show. Roberts rejoiced that “we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Such bold assertions of dominance and brazen threats of violence channeled yet more attention towards the planning efforts Heritage is spearheading.

And late last week, it apparently got too much for Trump, prompting his Truth Social post publicly signaling distance to the Heritage plans. There certainly is a strategic element to this: Project 2025 has generated devastatingly negative publicity. While it is hard to gauge exactly how much this might hurt Trump’s campaign, it certainly isn’t helping. And there is also an ego component: The coverage has focused so much on Project 2025 that one might get the impression that elite operators like Kevin Roberts are the real leaders on the Right while Trump is merely doing their bidding. Someone like Trump, obsessed with projecting dominance, won’t simply accept that – he probably felt like he needed to re-assert his status.

In a way, Trump has achieved exactly this with his statement. While he sent the Project 2025 coverage into overdrive and caused a never-ending barrage of pieces on why the idea that he didn’t know anything about Project 2025 was a preposterous lie, he’s gotten what he wanted: Most commentators have emphasized how closely intertwined Trump world and Project 2025 are, how much it is his people who are shaping these plans – how much, in effect, he is behind Project 2025.

This perception is neatly captured in a Star Wars-themed meme that has been widely shared and reposted across liberal and Democratic social media. It originated with user @realpalpatine, using a picture of Chancellor Palpatine / Sith Lord Darth Sidious, on Truth Social, stating: “I know nothing about Order 66. I have no idea who is behind it.”

If you’re not into Star Wars, bear with me – I promise there is something really interesting about this diagnostically (and I pre-emptively ask hardcore Star Wars fans, which I am not, to be lenient with me, as I am trying my best to get the story right). Order 66, for those who are not fully versed in Star Wars lore, was a top-secret order given out by Palpatine, a crucial step in his plot to end the Galactic Republic.

Order 66 declared all Jedi, acting as the guardians of the Republic, traitors to be executed immediately. The task of carrying out this order fell to the Republic’s clone troopers who, as part of this plot, had a biochip implanted in their brains that, when activated, brainwashed them. They therefore followed Palpatine’s commands against their will, unable to resist. With the Jedi order effectively eliminated, Palpatine declared himself emperor of the new Galactic Empire. Even though it had taken many years to prepare, almost no one had known about Order 66, just as no one knew about Palpatine’s real identity as Sith Lord Darth Sidious. It was masterfully orchestrated by Sidious with the help of maybe a handful of co-conspirators.

Against this background, the implication of the meme that has been making the rounds on social media is easy enough to decipher: Trump is Palpatine, they are the masters behind these evil plans. But the analogy doesn’t really work. Trump is not pulling the strings behind Project 2025, and this operation isn’t being conducted in secret at all. This isn’t the work of a handful of henchmen doing their dark lord’s bidding, but an effort that has united much of the American Right’s elite machinery. And there is absolutely no brainwashing or coercion involved: The people behind Project 2025 are true believers in their extremely reactionary vision for America. Project 2025 should not be conceptualized as a plot designed by an all-powerful evil overseeing everything in the background. Instead, Project 2025 crystallizes the self-mobilization of a rightwing elite that has radicalized to the point where their plans are entirely in line with Donald Trump’s vengeful desires and the fever dreams of the extremist fringe.

Different factions, but lots of personal / personnel connections

A variety of rightwing groups and organizations are in the process of channeling their vision for America’s future into blueprints for a second Trump presidency. That starts with the Right’s undisputed leader himself. There is not only what Trump is threatening to do in his deranged speeches, but also the slightly more formalized “Agenda 47” his campaign is working on. So far, they have released 46 proposals published in the form of video announcements on the campaign website.

Beyond Trump and his inner campaign operation, there is, for instance, the “America First Institute,” another decidedly Trumpian outfit that was founded in 2021 by Trump administration alumni: They are working on what they call “Pathway to 2025.” Meanwhile, the “Center for Renewing America,” a conservative think tank founded by Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget (more on him in a moment), officially hides behind a maybe somewhat innocuously sounding mission “to renew a consensus of America as a nation under God with unique interests worthy of defending that flow from its people, institutions, and history, where individuals’ enjoyment of freedom is predicated on just laws and healthy communities.” But this Center is actually an aggressively Christian nationalist operation that dreams of entrenching its vision of a white Christian America by an extremely restrictive immigration policy and staunchly authoritarian measures, including the invocation of the Insurrection Act, to suppress protest and dissent. All of these groups, just like Project 2025, are operating out in the open.

Additionally, there is also a lot going on below the surface. In early March, for instance, Talking Points Memo reported on the so-called “Society for American Civic Renewal” – a secret society of white male theocrats who hope to use their combined political influence and financial power to overthrow pluralistic democracy and take the country back to at least the late nineteenth century, to before the Progressive Era supposedly alienated America from the natural order of wealthy white male Christian domination.

While there is undoubtedly overlap between these different factions, they are not all the same, and we should expect quite a bit of rivalry over who gets to hold power – in the shape of formalized positions in the next rightwing regime or as measured by proximity to the leader – should Trump return to the White House.

As several people have been pointing out in the wake of Trump’s “I know nothing” lie, however, there are many personal / personnel connections between Trump world and Project 2025. Trump administration alumni, many of which the Heritage Foundation brought on board precisely for this purpose, and people from Trump’s current inner circle are shaping Project 2025. That starts with Paul Dans, the director of Project 2025, who, before joining Heritage, occupied a variety of White House and executive posts during Trump’s first presidency. Spencer Chretien, one of two associate directors, was a special assistant to Trump and associate director of presidential personnel.

Many of the contributors to “Mandate for Leadership,” the Project 2025 policy report, are Trump alumni. Among them, for instance, are Ben Carson, who wrote the chapter on the Department of Housing and Urban Development; Ken Cuccinelli, who was responsible for the chapter on the Department of Homeland Security; and Roger Severino, who authored the part on the Department of Health and Human Services. Overall, more than two thirds of the contributors were part of the Trump administration.

On the personnel level, the connections are not confined to past involvement with Trump. Some of the people who are actively working on Project 2025 are also very much in Trump’s inner orbit today. That is true for both Russell Vought and John McEntee, for instance, who might have become household names since John Oliver focused on them in the segment for his show. Vought served in Trump’s Cabinet as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. After the end of the Trump regime, he founded the aforementioned Christian nationalist Center for Renewing America. In May, the RNC named Vought policy director for the Republican 2024 platform committee – a move Trump enthusiastically approved and embraced. The platform hast just been published: A collection of righting talking points presented in a distinctly Trumpian idiom and, fittingly, in ALL CAPS. Vought is very close to Trump’s campaign. According to reporting, he is the favorite to become Trump’s Chief of Staff. Vought has also authored the chapter on the Executive Office of the President in the Project 2025 policy agenda. And he is rumored to be playing a key role in drafting the so-called “Playbook,” Project 2025’s road map for the first 180 days in office, which has not been published yet.

If Vought represents the camp of committed ideologues in Trump’s coalition, John McEntee is the racist, sexist frat boy who is attracted to Trumpism because it is predicated on the idea that guys like him should rule the world with impunity. By the end of the Trump presidency, he was Director of the Presidential Personnel Office. He had started as Trump’s bag man and was actually fired from that job for failing to disclose income before Trump brought him back in January 2020. Just like Vought, McEntee is expected to play a key role in a second Trump administration. Right now, he serves as a kind of liaison between Trump and Project 2025: He is close to the Right’s leader, and Heritage also named him senior advisor to Project 2025 a little over a year ago, where he is working on the Presidential Personnel Database and is involved in the headhunting operation in some major way.

Beyond personal connections: Trump and Project 2025 as allies

The extensive personnel ties between Team Trump and Project 2025 have rightfully been presented as conclusive evidence for why Trump’s attempts to distance himself from these plans should be immediately dismissed. But in crucial ways, the exact relationship between Trump and Project 2025, between the inner circle of MAGA world on the one hand and the institutional and intellectual elites of American conservatism on the other, is not only defined by shared personnel. It is also, and at least as importantly, an alliance based on a deep ideological affinity, compatibility of plans and policies, a shared reactionary vision for the country, and a shared desire to exclude the “Un-American” enemy from the body politic.

From Trump’s perspective, the general thrust of Project 2025 is entirely in line with what he wants to do with power. Purge dissenters from government, replace them with loyalists; expand presidential power and make the executive into a tool for whatever the regime wants to do: It doesn’t take much sophisticated analysis to explain why such plans appeal to Trump. He wants power, impunity, and the ability to plunder. He will certainly not sit down and read through all 920 pages of “Mandate for Leadership.” But Donald Trump, someone with aggressively autocratic instincts and sensibilities, will also certainly not object to such a vision.

From the perspective of Project 2025, conversely, Trump is, in some way, a less-than-ideal vessel for the kinds of ambitious, comprehensive plans that are emanating on the Right. He is erratic, lazy, volatile, and he is certainly not sitting down to read extensive policy memos. And yet, in another way, he is especially suited to lead the kind of crusade Project 2025 envisions. Trump is animated by a spirit of vengefulness and grievance. He is extreme, he isn’t restrained by norms or forbearance. That is precisely why the Right united behind Trump in 2016: They didn’t want a “normal” Republican, but someone who would take the gloves off, be willing to do whatever it takes. They wanted someone who would certainly not reject Project 2025 because he thought it was going too far or because he had qualms about questions of legality and precedent. It takes a radical president in the White House to implement such extremist plans. That’s Trump.

Concrete plans and policies

To the extent Trump has announced anything close to concrete policy proposals, a very similar dynamic emerges: They are not identical with what Project 2025 proposes, but the plans are highly compatible and very much complementary. In a speech at the annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) in Nashville in late February, for instance, Trump promised to create “a new federal task force on fighting anti-Christian bias”; to take “historic action to defeat the toxic poison of gender ideology and restore the timeless truth that God created two genders, male and female”; and to sign an executive order to “cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto our children” (Robert P. Jones provided an excellent write-up and contextualization of the speech in his newsletter).

All of that sounds like it could be coming straight out of Project 2025, which promises to restore former national glory by purging enemies and deviants from the nation. Look anywhere in the policy report, and what you’ll find is visceral disdain for any kind of pluralism and diversity channeled into a policy agenda aiming to extinguish it. “Mandate for Leadership” talks about “eliminating politicization” – only to then present the whole laundry list of rightwing culture war grievances. DEI! CRT! Trans people! It is a policy agenda aligning entirely with the Christopher Rufo canon of reactionary white male moral panics. The people behind Project 2025 see themselves as noble defenders of “real America” against a totalitarian “woke,” “globalist” assault. This is their declaration of war on multiracial pluralism.

The field of immigration policy offers an instructive example of how Trump’s plans and those outlined in Project 2025 complement each other. Project 2025 demands an extremely restrictionist approach. They want to institute a system that resembles the immigration regime of the 1920s through 60s, when the desirability of immigrants was determined by openly racist criteria. Project 2025 proposes an extreme version of deterrence by cruelty. Remember Trump’s family separation policy? The people behind Project 2025 believe that was a good start, only it didn’t go far enough, which is why they want to make it easier to detain children under horrible conditions. In general, they seek to dramatically curtail legal immigration, gut asylum, and potentially rescind the legal status of hundreds of thousands of people who are in the United States, but lack permanent status.

As inhumane and despicable as all of this is, there is nothing in Project 2025 that quite reaches the level of extremism and depravity that Trump and Stephen Miller are openly promising. They have announced to immediately start deporting something like 15 million people, which would necessitate creating a deportation force larger than the U.S. military. Project 2025 is certainly not content with the status quo and also imagines a stand-alone border and immigration agency with at least 100,000 employees, which they believe would be a much more ruthless institution than the Department of Homeland Security and therefore much better suited to enforcing the draconian immigration regime they want to implement. But they don’t quite go to what Trump and Miller are threatening.

However, both sides obviously share a goal of ending immigration of non-white people, based on an underlying vision of restoring white Christian dominance. And the only way to realize what Trump and Miller want is to suspend all the rules and regulations intended to protect the humanity and human rights of migrants. Project 2025 is right there with them on that: They desire to get rid of all the pesky lawyers who, during Trump’s first presidency, had qualms about what the regime was trying to do.

Speaking of lawyers: A comparison of how Trump and Project 2025 see the Department of Justice and how they intend to use it as a blunt instrument against their enemies is equally instructive. Trump himself is apparently frustrated that people around him talked him out of using the Insurrection Act to deploy troops against the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020. He is now looking for lawyers who, the next time around, will be fully on board and provide pseudo-legal justifications for whatever the regime leader wants to do. Moreover, Trump is outraged that “his” DoJ dared to investigate his abuse of power – while supposedly not doing nearly enough to go after his opponents. In Trump’s warped perspective, the Department of Justice is supposed to both shield him from his enemies and function as an offensive weapon he can deploy against them at will. And Project 2025 very much agrees: According to their plans, there would be no more autonomy for the Department of Justice, which they envision as directly subservient to the president. Project 2025 imagines a DoJ that is not committed to upholding the rule of law, but to enacting the regime’s agenda – and they want a law enforcement apparatus for the exact same purpose, a tool in the hands of the rightwing regime.

Enemies everywhere, and “real America” under siege

Maybe the most striking feature that both Trump and Project 2025 exhibit is a sense of grievance, a feeling of having been deprived of their rightful place at the top, of being under siege.

Much of Trump’s appeal to the base stems from the fact that he is consumed by this sense of grievance himself – that is the “authenticity” his followers sense and admire. He is aggrieved as a *white man* who is convinced he has been wronged as he is being denied the constant reverence and subservience to which he believes he is entitled. And Trump is also eager to emphasize that he is being wronged as a *white Christian* as well. In that same speech at the annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) in Nashville I have already mentioned above, Trump also framed his vision for America and his personal mission in aggressively Christian nationalist terms, tapping into the sense of victimization that is pervasive among conservative white Christians. He presented himself as a Christ-like figure who was sacrificing himself in this struggle against “the radical left Democrats, Marxists, communist, and fascists.” Against those evil forces who “want to tear down crosses where they can and cover them up with social justice flags,” Trump promised to mobilize the enormous power of the American government: “I get in there, you’re gonna be using that power at a level that you’ve never used it before.” The people behind “Project 2025,” the “Center for Renewing America,” and the “Society for American Civil Renewal” will hear this and rejoice.

“We” represent “real” or “authentic” (read: conservative white Christian) America, and “We” are surrounded by enemies within and without – that type of escalating siege mentality is also what is fueling Project 2025. “Mandate for Leadership” starts with a short note by director Paul Dans who sets the tone for the whole endeavor: “The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before.”

Heritage president Kevin Roberts, in his foreword, expresses the same diagnosis: The nation is on the brink as the enemies of “real America” have been gaining power. Those enemies are referred to as “the anti-American Left” or as a sinister “ruling and cultural elite.” Roberts doesn’t define those terms, nor is there a substantiation of what, exactly, makes someone part of the “elite” anywhere else in the report. And yet, Roberts can be certain that everyone on the Right agrees with this assessment. The “globalist,” “woke,” leftwing “elite” has quickly emerged as the new consensus enemy against which Republican politicians, rightwing activists, and reactionary intellectuals will rage incessantly. This is what we get here: So. Many. Enemies. They are everywhere, they are in charge of the most powerful institutions, and they are out to destroy the country.

What is to be done about it? “Donald Trump thinks he’s identified a crucial mistake of his first term: He was too nice.” That’s how Time Magazine, in late April, opened an extensive feature based on two interviews with Trump. No more pulling punches, Trump emphasized. A similar spirit is animating those who are behind Project 2025. In his foreword to the “Mandate for Leadership,” Kevin Roberts explains that there is no more room for moderation, no justification for restraint. There is only the urgent need to come up with a much more radical response that is commensurate with the threats the nation faces from both the enemy without and the enemy within:

“The solution to all of the above problems is not to tinker with this or that government program, to replace this or that bureaucrat. … We solve them not by trimming and reshaping the leaves but by ripping out the trees – root and branch. International organizations and agreements that erode our Constitution, rule of law, or popular sovereignty should not be reformed: They should be abandoned. Illegal immigration should be ended, not mitigated; the border sealed, not reprioritized. Economic engagement with China should be ended, not rethought.”

Roberts ends with an urgent warning: “Every hour the Left directs federal policy and elite institutions, our sovereignty, our Constitution, our families, and our freedom are a step closer to disappearing. Conservatives have just two years and one shot to get this right. With enemies at home and abroad, there is no margin for error.”

Rarely will you get such a clear view of the heightened version of the type of siege mentality and self-victimization that underlie and explain so much of what has been happening on the Right. Their plans for a return to power are driven by a desperate sense that nothing short of a reactionary counter-revolution will suffice to save the nation from the onslaught of anti-American “woke,” “globalist” forces – and that there is very little time left to pull it off.  “Time is running short. If we fail, the fight for the very idea of America may be lost.” 2024, according to Roberts, is the “last opportunity to save our republic.”

An alliance against pluralism and democracy

Project 2025 is not secretly orchestrated by a cunning evil in the shadows. It is not Trump who is behind it. It is the manifestation of a comprehensive mobilization of a radicalizing rightwing establishment, intelligentsia, think tank world, and moneyed interest. The people who are responsible for it have not been brainwashed, they aren’t merely scared of Trump or the base, and they certainly aren’t helpless marionettes or pawns in a game. They are willingly, enthusiastically planning to take over the American government and transform it into a machine that serves only two purposes: exacting revenge on what they call the “woke”, leftist, globalist enemy and imposing a minoritarian reactionary vision of white Christian patriarchal order on society.

Trumpism’s rise and Project 2025 are both manifestations of the same underlying radicalization of long-stranding anti-democratic tendencies and impulses on the Right. Both Trump and Project 2025 are unlikely to succeed at implementing their grandiose authoritarian designs exactly as they are promising them. But the election in November could put extremists in charge – from the Trump campaign, the ranks of Project 2025, or other rightwing factions – who are fully committed to the radically anti-democratic, openly authoritarian vision that is outlined here. And they would have the power, the plans, and the personnel to cause enormous harm in their crusade to re-entrench white Christian patriarchal dominance in all spheres of American life.