Retiring Guy's Digest: Project 2025: The eraser of American democracy

Project 2025

Headline: Albany Times-Union, 7/14/2024

Mr. Trump has notably sought to pose lately as a moderate on abortion, even as he boasts of how his three appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court helped overturn federal protections of women’s reproductive rights. Lately, too, he has tried mightily to distance himself from what’s known as Project 2025, a sweeping plan drafted by the conservative Heritage Foundation to serve as a blueprint for Mr. Trump’s administration should he win the election.

The project’s 900-plus-page policy book envisions a massive overhaul of the federal government, including expanding presidential power to bring currently independent entities like the Justice Department under direct presidential control; reclassifying tens of thousands career civil jobs as political appointments (Heritage is also building a database of potential appointees); eliminating the Department of Education and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; reversing national progress on climate change and clean energy; ending federal approval of the widely used abortion pill mifepristone; building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, raising fees on immigrants and eliminating visa categories for victims of crime and human trafficking; and even eliminating certain words and concepts from federal documents, such as “sexual orientation,” “gender equality” and “reproductive rights.” [Emphasis added]