All posts tagged "project 2025"

This startling act suggests Trump might be planning to flee the country in 2028

During his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump disavowed familiarity with Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation plan for autocratic takeover of the US. That disavowal proved as truthful as Trump's promise not to disturb the East Wing of the White House.

Curtis Yarvin, whose philosophy punctuates the main tenets of Project 2025, supported Trump’s campaign because he thought Trump would overthrow democratic institutions and replace the presidency with a “Monarchist CEO,” who would run the country like a for-profit corporation.

Profiting from office like no other president in US history, Trump is well on his way. On Oct. 28, Forbes reported that only ten months into his second term, Trump has nearly tripled his net worth, from $2.5 billion in 2020 to $7.1 billion today, largely from crypto schemes and pay-to-play federal transactions.

Accumulating corruption

Last week, Trump announced a list of 37 wealthy donors funding his 90,000 square foot $300 million gilded ballroom. Donors include several billionaire individuals, along with data-analytics company Palantir, defense contractor Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, YouTube, Apple, Comcast, Amazon, T-Mobile, Chevron, Google, Hard Rock International, and Meta, most of whom have already seen or expect to see a surge in federal contracts.

In The Corruption Chronicles, Issue One compiled a partial list of other ways Trump has monetized the presidency by transforming it into a vehicle for his own private gain. From selling access to his administration to using foreign visits to attract financial support for his own businesses, Trump has officially turned his presidency into a for-profit venture.

Examples of illegal, shady, or ethically suspect activities to date include:

Billionaires can’t directly fund government agencies

After openly soliciting and accepting sums of money the corporate media is reluctant to call bribes, Trump most recently announced a $130 million “gift” to help pay military service members during the government shut down. Timothy Mellon, of the Carnegie-Mellon robber-baron dynasty, wrote the check. Mellon, who donated even more than Elon Musk to get Trump re-elected, is a recluse who opposes immigration and programs for the poor, while he supports deep tax cuts for the rich.

A long-standing federal law prohibits Mellon’s type of “gift” for several reasons. The primary issue is Article I of the Constitution, which directs Congress, not the executive, to control federal spending. Because of Art. I, a president’s ability to spend money or incur debt requires explicit congressional approval. The Antideficiency Act protects the balance of power at the same time it guards against foreign and domestic private influence over federal affairs.

Trump ignored this Constitutional constraint and seems to regard federal assets, including the armed forces, as his personal property. By letting a wealthy heir cut a check for the military, Trump circumvented the Constitutional framework under which both he and Congress are supposed to operate, and permanently sealed his contempt for Congress.

Project 2025 and the roots of Trump’s takeover

The New Yorker reported that Yarvin, the Project 2025 philosopher, proposed “that the U.S. government be replaced with a monarchy led by a ‘CEO-king’ that would have “absolute power, dismantle democratic institutions, and liquidate the existing government bureaucracy.”

But earlier this month, Yarvin lamented on his Substack that Trump hadn’t gone far enough, fast enough.

Perhaps Trump’s unprecedented 13 billionaires serving as his “cabinet” can read Yarvin’s lament and get to the part where he intuits that Democrats’ 2026 midterm blowout will bring a tsunami of legal reckoning. Yarvin is so fearful of what he calls “liberal vengeance” to come that he has publicly revealed plans to leave the country.

There’s also speculation that Trump and his enablers will do the same rather than face legal fire if Republicans can’t rig the 2026 midterms.

What really may be driving Trump’s private ventures abroad is his predator’s sense that his second coup attempt, like his first, will fail.

  • Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

'Guess his memory came back': Internet skewers Trump for leaning into 'Project 2025 fame'

President Donald Trump is leaning heavily into his budget director Russell Vought's "Project 2025" fame as he threatens to make cuts to Democratic spending priorities.

The president called the government shutdown "an unprecedented opportunity" to slash government spending and continue efforts by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency to cut the federal workforce, and he made clear that approved of Vought's role in developing the right-wing blueprint for his second administration.

"I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent," Trump posted Thursday morning on Truth Social. "I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity. They are not stupid people, so maybe this is their way of wanting to, quietly and quickly, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DJT."

Other social media users pointed out that Trump, during last year's re-election campaign, tried to distance himself from the Project 2025 blueprint developed under the leadership of The Heritage Foundation, although his administration has already implemented almost half of the policies listed in the massive document.

"Trump embracing Project 2025 (after distancing himself during campaign) and vowing to implement deep cuts envisioned by Russ Vought amid shutdown," noted CNN's Manu Raju.

"Remember the good ole days where Trump told us he didn’t know what Project 2025 was?" wondered Fox News commentator Jessica Tarlov.

"Every journalist who published a piece about how nothing linked Trump to Project 2025 needs to lose a job," posted Bluesky user Aubrey Gillaran.

"Remember Trump told the news that he didn’t know what Project 2025 was and that a lot of it seemed crazy to him and the media was like ok sounds good," agreed Bluesky user Brendel.

"Huh," sighed historian Stephen West, adding a quote from Trump telling Kamala Harris during their debate that he had "nothing to do" with Project 2025 and had no interest in learning about it.

"Everyone should question what else Trump lied about, from the risk of a deadly airborne disease to (vanishingly rare) election fraud to the Russian interfering in our elections," posted Bluesky user Alexander Howard.

"He’s following the Project 2025 plan, and he’s not hiding it anymore," argued geopolitical analyst Joni Askola.

"My most vivid memory from the 2024 election is CNN anchors desperately tripping over themselves to stress that 'Trump has disavowed Project 2025' every time it was mentioned," recalled scholar Gabriel Lonsberry.

"There are many things we need to talk about, but one of them is why anyone was willing to run with the outright lie that Trump didn't know about Project 2025," said social media strategist Sara Lang. "He clearly did. There was no plausible deniability, and yet too many political press were willing to go along with the charade."

"Remember when Trump pretended he knew ‘nothing about Project 2025’? Cute," posted the Voter Protection Project. "Now he’s huddling with its author to slash government agencies. Guess his memory came back."

This sinister rightwing group won — totalitarian rule is here

I had the opportunity to engage the author of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, Paul Dans, last Saturday on BBC World News Radio. The essential question was whether Project 2025 was a document of totalitarian rule.

Dans, who was fired from the Heritage Foundation during the presidential campaign for linking Donald Trump to the fascist playbook, has returned in full force as a MAGA Senate candidate in South Carolina. He is a conservative committed to attacking democratic institutions, although he would claim that Project 2025 centers on returning the federal government to the hands of the people.

According to various trackers, the Project 2025 agenda has been nearly 50 percent completed. The assault on the federal system is well in hand. But is this totalitarianism?

Yes, it is.

I have written earlier about totalitarianism in the science policy of the White House. The totalitarian model extends further, up and down from the White House to the reactionary Supreme Court and especially to MAGAlytes in Congress. MAGA is devotion to a single-party system, a charismatic leader, closed political culture, and war on civic society.

First, recall that Project 2025 is a 900-page cornucopia of conservative delights.

It calls for the replacement of merit-based federal civil service workers with people loyal to Trump and for taking partisan control of such critical law-enforcement agencies as the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). It promotes the closing of the Department of Education and the restructuring of museums, foundations, and even private universities to challenge fact-based institutions in their primary missions.

In the economy, Project 2025 institutionalizes trickle-down economics: It reduces taxes on corporations, cuts social welfare and medical programs, draws financial and communications firms into the totalitarian fold, and rewards wealthy collaborators and industrialists as Hitler did in Nazi Germany with access to the halls of power.

It promotes anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination; it ends Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs. In fact, Project 2025 does not rein in the administrative state, its major stated goal, but gives additional tools to weaponize the corrupt Trump presidency.

Hence, Project 2025 reflects totalitarian political culture, in particular the persistence of a one-party system with an authoritarian leader who uses extra-legislative means to achieve his goals.

For example, Trump created the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to root out “inefficiency” in government, but he in fact directed the faux department to emasculate agencies he and Project 2025 adherents disliked. In subservience to the president, MAGA Republicans in Congress allowed DOGE to usurp their oversight. Further, while railing against executive orders (EOs) of past presidents, Trump has used them in fact to replace policy making. Trump averaged 55 EOs annually his first term; by mid-2025 he was averaging 330 per year with the goal to drown the courts and Congress in executive branch power.

Like in Hitler or Stalin who created a cult of personality, Trump has bullied MAGA to ensure allegiance to him as the all-powerful leader. This leader is the promoter of disorder, the arbitrator of conflict, the omniscient problem solver, the stager of domestic military sweeps and other Jeffrey Epstein flyovers to distract the populace, the organizer of state dinners and cabinet meetings in which his MAGAlytes sickeningly faun for him. He is the Department of War lobbyist for the Nobel Peace Prize and the UFC organizer for a wrestling event on the White House Lawn. One senses he is jealous that Russian President Vladimir Putin miraculously scored eight goals in a charity hockey exhibition game (no one checked him, strangely). He is certainly angry that Kim Jong-Il shot a 38 will 11 holes-in-one, while the president must cheat at his golf game at his courses to win trophies.

Totalitarian governments bathe the public sphere with propaganda; the Soviets were masters at misinformation. Putin has reestablished state control of all media. For his totalitarian push, Trump promotes branded presidential newspeak on his own channel, Truth Social. Such loyal media outlets as Fox help him spread false claims. Indeed, totalitarians want to control the medium and the message, not educate the public; destroy expert independence in government agencies, not encourage it; and in general to sully data, not analyze them. The complete weaponization of government comes in the selective assault of academic and intellectual freedom in the Trump administration attack on universities, law firms, and other private businesses.

The totalitarian state embraces the veneer of legality, but engages extrajudicial confiscation of power. Like the Stalin Constitution of 1936 or Nazi laws of the 1930s, MAGAlytes treat the US Constitution as vaguely important when its language fits their plans. Otherwise, they rely on executive branch overreach and on specious interpretation of congressional laws (the Enemy Aliens Act 1798; Posse Comitatus Act of 1878) to end due process and deploy military troops in blue states.

Partnering with such mega-MAGA-communications magnates as Peter Thiel, they deploy AI to create a surveillance state. DOGE sought personal information of US citizens to build a surveillance regime.

A signal action of totalitarian regimes is the identification of external and internal enemies, heavily colored with homophobia and xenophobia. AG Pam Bondi and FBI Director Patel are aggressively prosecuting people who crossed the president: former adviser John Bolton, prosecutors, judges, and even congresspeople.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other unidentified government police, their faces covered, their uniforms obscured, their racism barely concealed, resemble Stalin’s NKVD in their black overcoats as they round up, subdue, and cart enemies away to secret facilities. The major enemies are undocumented immigrants, which the Supreme Court has now okayed to arrest on the basis of skin color alone. Recall that so fearful are the Trumpisti of immigrants that they have separated children from their parents to secret them out of the country; Putin, another authoritarian ruler, approves the kidnapping of Ukrainian children.

Project 2025 harps on the fear of internal enemies over alleged supposed additional rights given to individuals based on gender and color (“DEI”). In fact, like the Nazi prosecution of homosexuals or the Putinite illegalization of LGBTQ+ public existence, so the Trump administration has set forth a litany of enemies to be deprived of rights. They include Venezuelan gangs, lesbians, gays, people of color, Democrats, and trans individuals, the last who may be denied the Second Amendment right to bear arms by a finding that they are insane (“mentally ill”).

Totalitarian states claim to give individual rights priority, but they seek control over private morality. Women’s rights are anathema to the conservatives of Project 2025 who mention abortion over 200 times in the 900-page document. They claim to be pro-life and pro-family, but they pursue regressive natalism and forced pregnancy such as that imposed on women in socialist Romania under Nicolae Ceausescu. More and more gerrymandered states are following the examples of Texas and Florida to criminalize women and their personal physicians for not carrying fetuses full term — no matter the circumstances (rape, insist, mortal risk to the mother).

It's all there in Program 2025. And it’s all there in the White House.

  • Paul Josephson is professor emeritus of history at Colby College and the author of 15 books, with 40 years of experience working in archives in Russia, Europe, and the U.S. on the political history of modern science.

Project 2025's next plan shocks other Heritage Foundation members

The conservative group behind the Project 2025 is about to propose a sweeping change to domestic economic policy to explicitly encourage married heterosexual couples to have more children.

The right-wing Heritage Foundation will ask lawmakers to steer money away from Head Start and other child care programs to fund government-seeded savings accounts specifically meant to encourage parents to stay home and raise children, reported the Washington Post.

“For family policy to succeed, old orthodoxies must be re-examined and innovative approaches embraced, but more than that, we need to mobilize a nation to meet this moment,” states a draft of the paper, which was sent to Heritage police experts by the think tank's domestic policy vice president, Roger Severino.

A five-page summary of the forthcoming position paper titled “We Must Save the American Family" calls for “Manhattan Project to restore the nuclear family,” which represents a major break away from its longstanding ideals of limited government and free-market conservatism and toward the "pronatalist" movement supported by Vice President JD Vance and Heritage President Kevin Roberts.

"I want more babies in the United States of America," Vance said in his first public speech in office.

“It’s time for policymakers to elevate family authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority and even use government power, including through the tax code, to restore the American family," Roberts wrote in the introduction to Project 2025, which has served as a blueprint for President Donald Trump's second term.

The apparent shift in priorities has caught some at the institute off guard, with one person comparing the policies to "eugenics" and another calling the policies "'social engineering' that would reverse a half century of progress toward gender equality."

“That paper is not a compromise between the limited government folks and the big government folks,” said that person. “It is an outright steamrolling of the limited government folks.”

“Going back 50 years?” the person added. “I wouldn’t want to go back 50 years.”

'Fire him': Trump urged to 'immediately' axe official over eyebrow-raising crack

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) demanded the White House fire budget director Russ Vought over a crack he made at a breakfast Thursday morning, according to Politico.

Vought is the controversial author of Project 2025, which Democrats have called a "right-wing plot to undermine democracy."

Vought told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast that the government funding process should be "less bipartisan," according to the report.

“Donald Trump should fire Russell Vought immediately before he destroys our democracy,” Schumer said, adding that if the White House attempted to "walk back" Vought's comments because they believed they were wrong, "all the more reason they should fire him.”

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) posted about the incident to social media, writing, "Trump's budget chief, Russ Vought, has said he wants the appropriations process to be LESS bipartisan. This is a man who ignores our laws and flaunts it. My message to my Republican colleagues this afternoon? STAND UP for Congress as a co-equal branch of government."

Read the Politico piece here.

Senate Dems hatch plan for all-nighter to oppose a Project 2025 architect

Senate Democrats are planning a full night of speeches in opposition to Russell Vought's nomination to head up the Office of Management and Budget.

Vought, who was instrumental in creating the right-wing to-do list "Project 2025," is expected to be confirmed in a vote Thursday evening. Democrats hope to stall the confirmation, however, by planning a marathon of speeches explaining why Vought is "dangerously unfit" for the job.

The all-nighter is being led by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), as well as Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Patty Murray (D-WA), Gary Peters (D-MI), and Brian Schatz (D-HI). The speeches got underway shortly after 2:15 p.m. on Wednesday.

According to a Senate release posted online by journalist David Corn, "As the architect of the radical Project 2025, Vought's proposals to slash federal funding will threaten Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. Vought will also continue to carry out President Donald Trump's illegal federal funding cuts, stopping taxpayer dollars from supporting local schools, police departments, community health centers, food pantries, firefighters, and other vital programs."

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Sen. Murray posted a video to social media making her case against Vought.

"Russ Vought—Trump's nominee to manage our nation's budget—is an abortion abolitionist, meaning he supports *prosecuting abortion as homicide and putting women in prison* even in cases of rape or when the mother's life is at risk. He's an extremist who has NO place in government," Murray said.

CNN reported, "Democrats have been sounding the alarm on Vought’s ties to Project 2025, and his insistence that the 2020 election was 'rigged,' for weeks, but their calls for Trump to pull his nomination only grew after OMB released a memo last week freezing federal funding. This memo was eventually rescinded, but Democrats called it a warning sign for how Vought would run the office. OMB plays a key role in enacting the president’s agenda."

'Some voters feel betrayed' as Trump gives 'middle finger' to campaign promises: analyst

Donald Trump promised during his presidential campaign that he had nothing to do with Project 2025, and wanted nothing to do with it, but his embrace of figures close to the conservative plan to overhaul the federal government could be upsetting some of his voters, according to a political analyst.

Alexi McCammond, who serves as an opinion editor for the Washington Post and has previously commented on Trump's relationship to the MAGA base, appeared on MSNBC on Saturday. The host, Alex Witt, asked about Trump appointing those with close ties to Project 2025.

"Several of the latest picks, they have direct ties to Project 2025, in spite of Trump distancing himself, saying he didn't know what it was about during the campaign," Witt said. "I'm curious your interpretation and could this all be theoretical as some Republicans say? I mean, not even to be specifically applied."

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"No, I mean, it's remarkable because I feel like at least some voters might feel betrayed by this," McCammond replied. "As you mentioned, Donald Trump straight up said on the campaign trail many times, like I have no idea what Project 2025 is, I have nothing to do with that, that is not my campaign. So he created a healthy amount of distance between himself and his campaign between Project 2025 even though folks had known the ties that existed between the personnel and policy and ideology behind the things laid out was obviously informed by Donald Trump and his Republican brand of politics."

She continued, saying Trump is "continuing to, I think, Mike and Jim and Axios put it this way, give people the middle finger in choosing folks that are controversial picks or that go directly against what he said time and again on the trail because he will do what he wants at the end of the day. And if there's something we all know well, especially after winning the presidency again and facing federal criminal charges and more allegations of assault from different women among many other things, Trump only feels more emboldened to do what he wants to do. It's worth noting Russ Vought who you put on the screen said we're living in a post constitutional society. So that's kind of alarming."

Watch below or click the link here.

'We told you so': Trump team scouring Project 2025 database for political appointees

Donald Trump's transition team has been using the Project 2025 database to begin filling the ranks of its political appointees for the next administration, according to a new report Friday.

The former president and his allies attempted to distance themselves from the politically toxic blueprint for a right-wing restructure the federal government, but he has already tapped several of the plan's architects to serve in key roles and, according to a source, looked into filling lower-profile positions with its recommended appointees, reported NBC News.

“There’s a lot of positions to fill and we continue to send names over, including ones from the database as they are conservative, qualified and vetted,” said the source, who worked on Project 2025. “Hard to find 4,000 solid people so we are happy to help.”

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That person said officials overseeing plans for some departments and agencies have been reaching out to potential hires who were identified in the Project 2025 database, which officials have described as a conservative LinkedIn to help staff the next Republican administration.

“The transition is working to ensure great people are in position to deliver the promises made through president Trump’s common sense agenda and overwhelming victory on Election Day," said a Trump transition official when asked about the database.

Plenty of Trump policies overlapped with Project 2025 recommendations – including mass deportations and drastic cuts to the federal bureaucracy – but the blueprint's call to ban pornography and break up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration differed from the campaign messaging.

“Very, very conservative,” Trump said at a campaign event in July. “Sort of the opposite of the radical left. You have the radical left and the radical right. They came up with this. I don’t know what it is. … Then you read some of these things and they are seriously extreme. But I don’t know anything about it. I don’t want to know anything about it.”

Solid majorities of voters consistently expressed negative views of the Heritage Foundation project, while almost none said they viewed it positively, but Democrats say voters are getting the government they warned about before the election.

“It’s easy to say ‘we told you so,’ but more importantly, we now know what they’re going to do, so it’s on Democrats to decide how to fight back,” said Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow. “Which is exactly what I’m doing.”

Trump appoints Project 2025 author to be chairman of the FCC

Donald Trump on Sunday announced that he has nominated a Project 2025 author to be the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

Trump, who earlier in the day sought an investigation into a political pollster, said in a statement that he has chosen Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the FCC, to be its head.

"Commissioner Carr is a warrior for Free Speech, and has fought against the regulatory Lawfare that has stifled Americans' Freedoms, and held back our economy," Trump said. "He will end the regulatory onslaught that has been crippling America's Job Creators and Innovators, and ensure that the FCC delivers for rural America."

ALSO READ: Why Trump voters should be held accountable for their choice

Trump's statement does not mention Carr's connection to Project 2025, the governance plan from which the former and incoming president has tried to distance himself since polls showed it was highly unpopular.

"Carr also wrote the FCC section of Project 2025, the agenda that the conservative Heritage Foundation sketched out for a second Trump term," according to NPR. "Trump disavowed it during the campaign but its themes have dovetailed with his public pronouncements since the election. (A call by House Democrats for Carr to be investigated for engaging in partisan activity over the report did not result in formal action. Carr said he had secured approval from FCC ethics officials to do so in his personal capacity.)"

Republicans against Trump responded to the news, simply saying, "Shocking."

'They need to be burned': Project 2025 chief calls for destruction of Boy Scouts

Kevin Roberts, the architect of the controversial Project 2025, writes in his soon-to-be-released book that he wants to conduct a "slow burn" of multiple American institutions.

The Guardian has obtained a copy of the book, which is titled "Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America," and calls for setting presumably metaphorical fire to a wide variety of institutions that are insufficiently right wing.

"Many of America’s institutions have been completely hollowed out," Roberts contends. "Decadent and rootless, these institutions serve only as shelter for our corrupt elite. Meanwhile, they block out the light and suck up the nutrients necessary for new American institutions to grow. For America to flourish again, they don’t need to be reformed; they need to be burned."

Roberts's list of institutions in need of a fiery cleanse includes both traditional conservative bogeymen such as the media and Ivy League universities but also some institutions that were once seen as staunchly conservative, including the FBI, "80% of ‘Catholic’ higher education," and even "The Boy Scouts of America."

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Also on Roberts's list is the asset management firm BlackRock, which The Guardian notes "has been a key investor in Trump Media & Technology Group, the president-elect’s social media company."

The Guardian also says that Roberts's obsession with fire is evident throughout the entire book, as he offers philosophical musings on the virtues of burning things.

"That’s the funny thing about fire. It is so fleeting, a flame flickering from moment to moment, yet in its evanescence, it is eternal," he writes at one point. "Of all the elements, fire is most associated with transformation, renewal, and change. You can’t have a blaze without some kind of sacrificial transformation of fuel into fire. Yet precisely for this reason, fire demands an attention to continuity. Unlike any of the other elements, fire dies … a fire must be continually tended.”

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