Here’s Project 2025: Look alive!

We often joke—although it isn’t very funny anymore and it isn’t much of a joke—that the novel The Handmaid’s Tale is a playbook for the Republican Party, most especially the far-right-wing folks who run the show in the GOP. And it’s true that it is kind of their playbook—for the very specific agenda of subjugating women.

But do you know that the conservatives who have already overthrown Roe v Wade and more and brought us horrific Supreme Court rulings lately have a literal guidebook for all their horrors? Yup! It’s called Project 2025, and it’s about 900 pages outlining the high points of their plan to bring us a fascist, christocentric, white male-dominated authoritarian government.

Now, I’m kind of surprised that a lot of people are surprised about Project 2025 and just now talking about it in earnest. I’ve known about it for several weeks. Even my ex-husband—who while he follows plenty of progressive, liberal, and leftist types doesn’t really follow many politically focused folks online—has known about it for two or three weeks. In any case, it’s in the general discussion now. Some have theorized that the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which spearheaded the creation of Project 2025, might take down their site and easy access to the document because growing knowledge of it is beginning to hurt the image of conservative politicians as November elections approach.

It’s potentially bad enough PR that Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from it by saying he doesn’t know anything about it and that he doesn’t agree with it. Kind of hard to disagree with something you claim to have never heard of nor have any knowledge of, but there you are. Also, never mind that a lot of the architects of Project 2025 are people Trump has appointed to various positions or consulted with heavily, or plans to as November approaches and his possible second term begins.

Bear in mind though that there’s also something called Agenda 47—a broad blueprint for Trump’s presidency if he wins—which is directly connected to Project 2025 and other conservative efforts. So, it you want to trust the guy who said he would keep Roe v Wade safe and had no plans to get it off the books then took credit for its reversal, you go right ahead but Project 2025 is very much Trump’s wishlist and the wishlist of every right-wing politician and powerbroker who wants authoritarian, uber-conservative, one-party rule in the United States. 

By the way, that’s not a minority of Republicans. It’s a majority of them who want this. Make no mistake. Even the ones who claim to be moderate Republicans have lined up to support just about every cruel, restrictive, regressive, oppressive, narrow-minded policy brought forth by the right wing.

Just looking at the highlights, what does Project 2025 propose?

Bringing the whole federal bureaucracy under presidential control. Now, you might think it already is given the those offices fall under the executive branch, but some of them like the Department of Justice are independent so that they can be free of politically directed interference in their duties. Also, the bureaucrats are typically non-political experts in their fields—or at least they’re not slavish loyalists to any party. Project 2025 proposes to reclassify many of these government workers so that they no longer have job protection and would be political appointees. That means the agencies we need to be able to trust to do the right and reasonable thing would be stacked with loyalists to the president who will do his whim rather than the jobs they need to do.

It calls for withdrawing the abortion pill mifepristone from the market, even though the medication is used for other purposes and is a safe medication—and no matter how much the GOP cries otherwise, abortions are sometimes medically necessary regardless of what your beliefs are in general about terminating pregnancies. No, it doesn’t call for a federal ban on abortion, but if you think mifepristone isn’t just a starting point for that, you apparently didn’t pay any attention when Supreme Court nominees called Roe v Wade settled law and then overturned it as soon as they were on the bench—and one even wrote in the decision that birth control should probably be targeted too. They are going to move to control every aspect of a woman’s body and reproductive rights. Have no illusions to the contrary.

It proposes eliminating various terms from all laws and federal regulations, including sexual orientation; diversity, equity, and inclusion; gender equality; abortion; and reproductive rights. It proposes to take direct action against “woke propaganda.” Pornography would be banned, and while some of you might like that idea, understand that’s probably not going to be limited to porn films and magazines. It’s going to mean that any of those romance or erotica books you might read will also be in the crosshairs, especially if they even hint at anything gay, trans, or queer.

Environmental protections would be scaled back severely, hastening the end of our ability to survive on this planet. Immigration enforcement efforts that are already draconian would get worse. There is more—so much more—and if you scroll back up to the second and third paragraphs of this post you can hit the links, or do your own searching.

This is not a drill, folks. Conservatives have laid out their goals in writing. They’re bold enough to tell us what they will do because they don’t believe they can be stopped. They want to destroy what’s left of democracy in this country, which is already teetering on the edge of a cliff. If you don’t learn more about Project 2025 and take it seriously and do everything you can to oppose Republicans, we’re all screwed.