Will the Right be able to implement these radical plans? Is Trump on board? What happened to traditional conservatism? Let’s tackle some of the key questions surrounding “Project 2025”
This is a document that only a cold civil war could produce. There is nothing forward thinking about this. No talk of comity. No moving forward together. This is a war document. That alone should be broadcast from the largest megaphone possible. The GOP has given up on governance and is now content with placing revenge front and center because that is what the base so fervently wishes. And that tells us that despair, more than anything, is driving the car. If things cannot be made better what's left is sharing the immiseration.
Even if Trump doesn’t have the discipline to see Project 2025 through, if he wins, his cabinet picks may have that ability. And his health isn’t good; we need to be very worried about who he picks as a VP. While some of those who think they are contenders are buffoons, there are some who are more worrisome. North Dakota governor Doug Burgum is a bit of a dark horse to me but unlike Trump he ran a successful company he then sold to Microsoft and continued there for some time before entering politics. He seems to follow the Heritage Foundation/MAGA party line pretty closely from what little I know of him. I fear a shadow government may leave Trump to his amusements and revenge while others dismantle our democracy behind the scene, even if Trump appears to mostly bluster. And we can never forget the damage he can do with executive orders, with a Supreme Court that may not stop him however far he overreaches with them.
Wasn't the Heritage Foundation behind the old "Agenda 21" globalist scam? Why would Republicans need the liberal Heritage Foundation to help them implement a conservative agenda? I suspect that "Project 2025" his is just a bunch of RINOs trying to pass as constitutional conservatives, but the end result will be more "Farm Welfare", more China-owned farmland, and no hope for our children to own acreage or to move off the suburban ghetto.
Stop The Coup 2025 is a nonpartisan campaign is educating the public and tracking the fight against Project 2025 w easy-to-grasp breakdowns of the key attacks in every gov department and more . Plus resources, strategies to fight back. Www.stopthecoup2025.org. - ac
Trump is the useful idiot to bring along the base vote and the militias waiting in the wings if the rest of us resist our new "Christian" nation. My crazy theory is that once the useful idiot is in power, they (Heritage Foundation, etc) will find a way to get rid of him permanently with some plausible cover accident in order to put a hand picked VP in the top dog spot. The Supreme Court is ready and willing to put a theocracy in place and that theocracy will be radical Catholic in its workings. Yet, Americans go on an on about the radical fundamentalist evangelicals. The evangelicals are the useful idiots of the radical Catholics. These are all my guesses and I hope to God I am wrong on all accounts. I'm glad people are finally paying attention to religious radicals of all stripes. My fear is that we are about ten years too late to this fight.....I'm following any and all people dissecting Project 2025. Better to face reality now than get hit upside the head with it later unaware.
In my opinion, one of the best on Substack in explaining what Christian Nationalists & Evangelicals mean in the points written in Project 2025 is Andra Watkins’ “How Project 2025 Will Ruin Your Life”
Andra was raised in that extreme religion & she “speaks their language” She takes the words in that document & translates them for us. I recommend everyone who can to have a paid subscription to her writing.
I also recommend that everyone watch “Shiny Happy People” a 4 episode series available on Amazon Prime. Those people are scary as shit & they are all over our nation.
The have their army of young men, called the Joshua Generation, ready to infiltrate everything.
Everyone needs to google 7 Mountains & Dominionism, because that’s the vision
If Donald Trump were any more religious, godly, righteous, honest, wise or conservative the educated Southern Baptist hypocrites wouldn't vote for him.
Thank you, Tom, for another excellent piece laying out what's at stake in the upcoming presidential election. You're a Dorothy Thompson for the new millennium!
Like you, I live in DC. As a federal employee, I fear that (much as in 2016) my otherwise very smart and socially conscious colleagues and friends have no idea of the threat that Trump poses, not only to the world, but to their own families, careers, and livelihoods. The naivete, largely instilled by privileged upbringings, scares the shit out me.
I’ve been in panic mode since first learning about Project 2025. After readings the entire published plan and many articles and Op-Ed pieces. I an getting the “we are fuc..ed nightmares.
The first thing, I noticed is that many of the components will directly and more severely impact, the poor, people of color, single parents, recent immigrants, people who live in poorer rural areas, the LGBTQ community, and people who for some reason wind up on a “hit list.”
The financial social services will be easiest to implement as local, state and federal programs will lose a significant portion of their budgets. Deny them food, rent subsidies, medical care, employment and training opportunities and you can. Bringing people to their knees pretty damn fast? And that control makes people desperate and easier to conquer. Add in eligibility restrictions related to race, marital status, and religious requirements and people will be standing in line begging.
Our country will be devastated as good people will be sharing what they have with those who have not. Conditions will feel like during the peak of the pandemic. These actions won’t need Trump’s ok, but will help him segregate our citizen and immigrant populations. Easier to ship the “undesirable” to “work camp” aka concentration camps.
Our legal system is sagging now because of the bias right judiciary. Finding relief through the courts will be a long bard, crapshoot. SCOTUS will be able to keep their bribe commitments.
I could rant for hours but my belief’s are in a nutshell.
The general population will be gobbedsmacked as they will be uninformed and deluded.
Many of the people throughout levels of government will be in agreement.
Only bits and pieces of the plan need to be working immediately to destabilize the country.
Our military and police have already been infiltrated by the various hate groups i.e. MAGA.
Once Trump’s new evil advisors will be able to point out the advantages for him personally.
Evangelical churches will continue to be weaponized.
MSM will be taken over (or surrendered?).
Resources will become government property (water, electricity, etc.) under the guise of “protecting” it.
I sure sound dark and without hope. But America is not without experience in the horrible ways Fascism and Authoritarianism works. We even imprisoned Japanese Americans by one of the best presidents ever. The racism of the south will rear its ugly head and “Northerners” be divided by it.
This could be possible and we must not let the Plan divide us any more to “normalize, evil.
Good people will stand up and there is a lot of us.
What you point out about the military & all branches of Law Enforcement & the judiciary being infiltrated by maga & religious extremists, is a really concerning & horrifying fact.
A news program (60Minutes, I think) recently reported on this & asked upper management what they were doing to weed them out of the military. The answer was that they are working on it, but admitted that it was not happening fast enough.
Is Donald Trump on board? Trump doesn't need to be on board with anything. He is merely a useful distraction (who came about by chance) for this plan, a plan Paul Weyrich clearly laid out back in 2001. "Project 2025" in its current iteration is not new. It is 24 years old. The problem is that people who should know more about the real game being played do not know. In attempting to maintain their Establishment credentials, they think the system is still viable. The American political system is broken, and it has been broken by design by both political parties.
Yes, agreed. Collapse of ‘Western Civilization as we knew it’ is well underway and these fascist storylines along the path are just the inevitable manifestations of reactionary micro-logic. ‘Nothing new under the sun’ comes to mind as the elite glob of money-power keeps on trucking, ever enlarging and protecting their wealth and power. With true environmental limits now in full view (and believe me the elite glob knows this), this war will inevitably take new forms, but in truth, it is much the same as it always has been. We, the people, fight back, win a skirmish now and again, and the war wages on. Sad that humanity never seems to learn or evolve.
What anti-Christian bias? When has a Christian ever been denied a job or housing or a loan because of their religion? When have they been illegally surveilled in their churches? When have they been barred from flights because they have a "Christian-sounding" name? When have they been targeted with harassment and violence just because they happen to "look Christian"? What laws have been passed to keep any and all aspects of "Biblical law" from becoming part of juris prudence?
What bias are they actually experiencing? How can they even make that claim, and so strongly that they engage in histrionics of this level?
You are correct that anti Christian bias is not real, but they are great at inventing grievances & convincing themselves that they are being persecuted; & that’s all it takes, the belief that they are being persecuted & discriminated against.
They are very much ready to commit extreme violence.
You're right: The government's prejudice is against the uneducated working class. That's why they're always thinking of new was to keep the little guy working for someone else.
Thank you Professor Zimmer, absolutely the best breakdown of the 2025 Plan I’ve read yet. I’m grateful for your thoughtful insights. It’s helped me solidify my plans to get the Dem vote out in November.
Though I read this good essay in its entirety, it is a bit long and repetitive. The word “reactionary” was used 14 times, by my rough count. What is described here is better termed “American Fascism v2.0”. It has been the fever dream going back 100 years as v1.0, back when the KKK held strong political influence in the South and even in major northern cities such as New York and even where I live, Denver.
Nowhere in this essay is the word “fascism” used, nor is “racism” charged. Nor is “bigotry” mentioned. Finally, it would be helpful as describing the Project 2025 movement as one to enhance oligarchy and wealth concentration via militant use of rightwing culture wars. The working class white conservatives are fooled into voting against their interests in this manner.
In that light, swing voters could see this essay as a clarion call and warning that America is lurching toward an autocratic fascist state, one that should make every reasonable American shudder. Trumpism turned into Fascism is what’s in store for the second half of the 2020’s and beyond, unless the swing voters in swing states prevent it.
The fascists are in the minority on the right, the majority are reactionaries. It's a partnership just as it was in Germany in the 1930's. The reactionaries gave Hitler the chancellorship because they hated the Left more than they hated the Nazis. American reactionaries want to take back the country to the way it was one hundred and fifty years ago, but they need the Fascists to burn down the present system, just as the Nazis, under Hitler destroyed the Weimar Republic.
The only hope I hold out is that republicans are incapable of agreeing on almost everything except tax cuts and abortion. After they have been completely incapable of governing.
Trump will do only what’s good for Trump, aka revenge and revenue replenishment
Whew! It's exhausting but necessary to discus this. Project 2025 is something we absolutely have to stand against as, at its core, it's anti-democratic. US democracy is not perfect, it is insufficient since it doesn't really include everyone, but we have to work to make it broader and stronger. Keep fighting the good fight with your essays.
This is a document that only a cold civil war could produce. There is nothing forward thinking about this. No talk of comity. No moving forward together. This is a war document. That alone should be broadcast from the largest megaphone possible. The GOP has given up on governance and is now content with placing revenge front and center because that is what the base so fervently wishes. And that tells us that despair, more than anything, is driving the car. If things cannot be made better what's left is sharing the immiseration.
Even if Trump doesn’t have the discipline to see Project 2025 through, if he wins, his cabinet picks may have that ability. And his health isn’t good; we need to be very worried about who he picks as a VP. While some of those who think they are contenders are buffoons, there are some who are more worrisome. North Dakota governor Doug Burgum is a bit of a dark horse to me but unlike Trump he ran a successful company he then sold to Microsoft and continued there for some time before entering politics. He seems to follow the Heritage Foundation/MAGA party line pretty closely from what little I know of him. I fear a shadow government may leave Trump to his amusements and revenge while others dismantle our democracy behind the scene, even if Trump appears to mostly bluster. And we can never forget the damage he can do with executive orders, with a Supreme Court that may not stop him however far he overreaches with them.
Wasn't the Heritage Foundation behind the old "Agenda 21" globalist scam? Why would Republicans need the liberal Heritage Foundation to help them implement a conservative agenda? I suspect that "Project 2025" his is just a bunch of RINOs trying to pass as constitutional conservatives, but the end result will be more "Farm Welfare", more China-owned farmland, and no hope for our children to own acreage or to move off the suburban ghetto.
“Liberal” Heritage Foundation?? Why don’t you go find another place to amuse your trolling self?
Heritage Foundation is an ultra~right conservative organization. There dozens of similar organizations aimed at turning us into a Christian society
Stop The Coup 2025 is a nonpartisan campaign is educating the public and tracking the fight against Project 2025 w easy-to-grasp breakdowns of the key attacks in every gov department and more . Plus resources, strategies to fight back. Www.stopthecoup2025.org. - ac
Did no one ever teach him not to point. Mom
Told us that when we were children.
Trump is the useful idiot to bring along the base vote and the militias waiting in the wings if the rest of us resist our new "Christian" nation. My crazy theory is that once the useful idiot is in power, they (Heritage Foundation, etc) will find a way to get rid of him permanently with some plausible cover accident in order to put a hand picked VP in the top dog spot. The Supreme Court is ready and willing to put a theocracy in place and that theocracy will be radical Catholic in its workings. Yet, Americans go on an on about the radical fundamentalist evangelicals. The evangelicals are the useful idiots of the radical Catholics. These are all my guesses and I hope to God I am wrong on all accounts. I'm glad people are finally paying attention to religious radicals of all stripes. My fear is that we are about ten years too late to this fight.....I'm following any and all people dissecting Project 2025. Better to face reality now than get hit upside the head with it later unaware.
In my opinion, one of the best on Substack in explaining what Christian Nationalists & Evangelicals mean in the points written in Project 2025 is Andra Watkins’ “How Project 2025 Will Ruin Your Life”
Andra was raised in that extreme religion & she “speaks their language” She takes the words in that document & translates them for us. I recommend everyone who can to have a paid subscription to her writing.
I also recommend that everyone watch “Shiny Happy People” a 4 episode series available on Amazon Prime. Those people are scary as shit & they are all over our nation.
The have their army of young men, called the Joshua Generation, ready to infiltrate everything.
Everyone needs to google 7 Mountains & Dominionism, because that’s the vision
If Donald Trump were any more religious, godly, righteous, honest, wise or conservative the educated Southern Baptist hypocrites wouldn't vote for him.
Thank you, Tom, for another excellent piece laying out what's at stake in the upcoming presidential election. You're a Dorothy Thompson for the new millennium!
Like you, I live in DC. As a federal employee, I fear that (much as in 2016) my otherwise very smart and socially conscious colleagues and friends have no idea of the threat that Trump poses, not only to the world, but to their own families, careers, and livelihoods. The naivete, largely instilled by privileged upbringings, scares the shit out me.
I’ve been in panic mode since first learning about Project 2025. After readings the entire published plan and many articles and Op-Ed pieces. I an getting the “we are fuc..ed nightmares.
The first thing, I noticed is that many of the components will directly and more severely impact, the poor, people of color, single parents, recent immigrants, people who live in poorer rural areas, the LGBTQ community, and people who for some reason wind up on a “hit list.”
The financial social services will be easiest to implement as local, state and federal programs will lose a significant portion of their budgets. Deny them food, rent subsidies, medical care, employment and training opportunities and you can. Bringing people to their knees pretty damn fast? And that control makes people desperate and easier to conquer. Add in eligibility restrictions related to race, marital status, and religious requirements and people will be standing in line begging.
Our country will be devastated as good people will be sharing what they have with those who have not. Conditions will feel like during the peak of the pandemic. These actions won’t need Trump’s ok, but will help him segregate our citizen and immigrant populations. Easier to ship the “undesirable” to “work camp” aka concentration camps.
Our legal system is sagging now because of the bias right judiciary. Finding relief through the courts will be a long bard, crapshoot. SCOTUS will be able to keep their bribe commitments.
I could rant for hours but my belief’s are in a nutshell.
The general population will be gobbedsmacked as they will be uninformed and deluded.
Many of the people throughout levels of government will be in agreement.
Only bits and pieces of the plan need to be working immediately to destabilize the country.
Our military and police have already been infiltrated by the various hate groups i.e. MAGA.
Once Trump’s new evil advisors will be able to point out the advantages for him personally.
Evangelical churches will continue to be weaponized.
MSM will be taken over (or surrendered?).
Resources will become government property (water, electricity, etc.) under the guise of “protecting” it.
I sure sound dark and without hope. But America is not without experience in the horrible ways Fascism and Authoritarianism works. We even imprisoned Japanese Americans by one of the best presidents ever. The racism of the south will rear its ugly head and “Northerners” be divided by it.
This could be possible and we must not let the Plan divide us any more to “normalize, evil.
Good people will stand up and there is a lot of us.
What you point out about the military & all branches of Law Enforcement & the judiciary being infiltrated by maga & religious extremists, is a really concerning & horrifying fact.
A news program (60Minutes, I think) recently reported on this & asked upper management what they were doing to weed them out of the military. The answer was that they are working on it, but admitted that it was not happening fast enough.
That is a really terrifying situation.
Is Donald Trump on board? Trump doesn't need to be on board with anything. He is merely a useful distraction (who came about by chance) for this plan, a plan Paul Weyrich clearly laid out back in 2001. "Project 2025" in its current iteration is not new. It is 24 years old. The problem is that people who should know more about the real game being played do not know. In attempting to maintain their Establishment credentials, they think the system is still viable. The American political system is broken, and it has been broken by design by both political parties.
Yes, agreed. Collapse of ‘Western Civilization as we knew it’ is well underway and these fascist storylines along the path are just the inevitable manifestations of reactionary micro-logic. ‘Nothing new under the sun’ comes to mind as the elite glob of money-power keeps on trucking, ever enlarging and protecting their wealth and power. With true environmental limits now in full view (and believe me the elite glob knows this), this war will inevitably take new forms, but in truth, it is much the same as it always has been. We, the people, fight back, win a skirmish now and again, and the war wages on. Sad that humanity never seems to learn or evolve.
What anti-Christian bias? When has a Christian ever been denied a job or housing or a loan because of their religion? When have they been illegally surveilled in their churches? When have they been barred from flights because they have a "Christian-sounding" name? When have they been targeted with harassment and violence just because they happen to "look Christian"? What laws have been passed to keep any and all aspects of "Biblical law" from becoming part of juris prudence?
What bias are they actually experiencing? How can they even make that claim, and so strongly that they engage in histrionics of this level?
I just...I just don't get it.
You are correct that anti Christian bias is not real, but they are great at inventing grievances & convincing themselves that they are being persecuted; & that’s all it takes, the belief that they are being persecuted & discriminated against.
They are very much ready to commit extreme violence.
You're right: The government's prejudice is against the uneducated working class. That's why they're always thinking of new was to keep the little guy working for someone else.
You are right but they have invented grievances. They want Bibles in schools. The government to pay for religious education.
I know and you're right but I just can't understand the mentality of these people.
Thank you Professor Zimmer, absolutely the best breakdown of the 2025 Plan I’ve read yet. I’m grateful for your thoughtful insights. It’s helped me solidify my plans to get the Dem vote out in November.
Another excellent article. Thank you!
Though I read this good essay in its entirety, it is a bit long and repetitive. The word “reactionary” was used 14 times, by my rough count. What is described here is better termed “American Fascism v2.0”. It has been the fever dream going back 100 years as v1.0, back when the KKK held strong political influence in the South and even in major northern cities such as New York and even where I live, Denver.
Nowhere in this essay is the word “fascism” used, nor is “racism” charged. Nor is “bigotry” mentioned. Finally, it would be helpful as describing the Project 2025 movement as one to enhance oligarchy and wealth concentration via militant use of rightwing culture wars. The working class white conservatives are fooled into voting against their interests in this manner.
In that light, swing voters could see this essay as a clarion call and warning that America is lurching toward an autocratic fascist state, one that should make every reasonable American shudder. Trumpism turned into Fascism is what’s in store for the second half of the 2020’s and beyond, unless the swing voters in swing states prevent it.
The fascists are in the minority on the right, the majority are reactionaries. It's a partnership just as it was in Germany in the 1930's. The reactionaries gave Hitler the chancellorship because they hated the Left more than they hated the Nazis. American reactionaries want to take back the country to the way it was one hundred and fifty years ago, but they need the Fascists to burn down the present system, just as the Nazis, under Hitler destroyed the Weimar Republic.
Right: Look for a legalistic "night of long knives" within the Democrat party this year.
The only hope I hold out is that republicans are incapable of agreeing on almost everything except tax cuts and abortion. After they have been completely incapable of governing.
Trump will do only what’s good for Trump, aka revenge and revenue replenishment
You talk like a welfare recipient.
Reading comprehension an issue for you?
Whew! It's exhausting but necessary to discus this. Project 2025 is something we absolutely have to stand against as, at its core, it's anti-democratic. US democracy is not perfect, it is insufficient since it doesn't really include everyone, but we have to work to make it broader and stronger. Keep fighting the good fight with your essays.