Project 1984: What Trump's re-election portends for civil and political rights in America

RU

A people-pleasing program

On the eve of the Milwaukee convention, the Republican Party released its official campaign program. Unlike in previous years, this one was written behind closed doors, with no journalists allowed. Even some delegates complained that they were not privy to the discussions.

The text of the program is a set of 20 slogans and 10 short items that fit on 13 pages. By comparison, a similar document in 2016-2020 was nearly seven times as long. This year’s text is littered with exclamation marks and words written in capital letters, indicating the propaganda bias of the program.

Republicans have abandoned their promises of a nationwide ban on abortion (currently outlawed in 14 states), angering many religious conservatives. While the 2016 program mentioned “abortion” more than 20 times, the current document only addresses late-term abortion. Still, support for measures that would allow a complete abortion ban remains. Whereas Republicans support IVF treatment and access to contraception, the program argues that unborn children have a “fundamental right to life” and that they are protected by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which states that no one can be deprived of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

Republicans no longer want to repeal the Obamacare health insurance subsidy program, even though they have promised to do so in every election since 2010. They also stress that they have no intention of cutting programs like Social Security and Medicare. The only reminder of the familiar call to reduce the national debt, which increased by twice as much under Trump as under Biden, is a commitment to fight excessive spending. Behind the promise of tax cuts for “American workers” is the resumption of the 2017 tax reform, which incidentally benefited the wealthiest Americans the most. What the new edition of the Republican program misses is references to traditional marriage between a man and a woman or calls to make the island of Puerto Rico a U.S. state.

Trump has endorsed the program. Rhetorically, Republicans have abandoned many of their unpopular agenda items, including cutting social spending and pushing for an abortion ban. However, the document provides few details as to what exactly Trump and Republicans intend to do if they take power in the next election.

Project 2025: an actionable plan?

Project 2025, a detailed and thorough guide for a future Republican president, can answer that question. The draft was developed by the Heritage Foundation, an influential think tank close to the Republican Party, with contributions from some 100 other conservative organizations. Their joint efforts resulted in the Mandate for Leadership, a 922-page document divided into 30 chapters, each focusing on a different department or agency, with recommendations for reform. The authors of Project 2025 promote a conservative religious agenda and recommend an overhaul of relations between the president and the federal executive branch.

• Control over the executive branch

The authors of the project consider one of the main problems of the United States to be the “deep state,” which allegedly sabotaged Trump's first presidential term. As Russell Vought, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump administration, writes:

“A President today assumes office to find a sprawling federal bureaucracy that all too often is carrying out its own policy plans and preferences — or, worse yet, the policy plans and preferences of a radical, supposedly ‘woke’ faction of the country. The modern conservative President’s task is to limit, control, and direct the executive branch on behalf of the American people.”

The authors of Project 2025 propose to transfer some 40,000 public offices to the category of political appointees. Typically, this category includes about 4,000 officials who rotate with the presidential administration. To fill 40,000 posts with the most loyal candidates, Project 2025 created a special database of potential appointees. As Paul Dans, who headed Trump's Office of Personnel Management, explains, the goal is “to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State.”

Project 2025 proposes to abolish the independence of the Department of Justice by allowing the president to personally order federal prosecutors to bring criminal cases (for instance, against his political opponents) or, conversely, to stop prosecutions. Similarly, Republicans propose monitoring the FBI and the Federal Trade and Communications commissions.

The authors propose that the future president should conduct massive purges at the Department of State, directly oversee personnel policies in the Pentagon and the army, and empower political appointees to manage budget allocation.

According to the project, the new administration should immediately apply the Insurrection Act of 1807, authorizing the use of military force to suppress possible protests. The Department of Justice should be authorized to launch criminal proceedings against educational institutions, private corporations, and state and municipal governments in the event that they practice “positive discrimination” by taking race or ethnicity into account when hiring employees. The department should also terminate all programs of supervision targeting police departments found to have engaged in racial discrimination and civil rights violations against detainees.

• Education

The project proposes dissolving the Department of Education and ending federal oversight of schooling, reducing the federal government's role to collecting statistics. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) federal block grant for students would be shut down along with Head Start, its counterpart for school children and preschoolers, and funding for free school lunches would undergo a drastic cut. The freed-up funds would be used for voucher grants to allow low-income parents to educate their children in private institutions, including religious schools.

• Environment and climate action

The authors of Project 2025 deny the scientific community’s findings regarding climate change and recommend repealing all of President Biden's executive orders related to promoting green energy. They suggest reducing the staff of the Environmental Protection Agency and dissolving the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, characterizing it as a tool of left-wing climate propaganda. They also recommend canceling the largest package of green energy subsidies, worth $370 billion.

The authors of the project propose prohibiting states from imposing their own environmental standards for vehicles. In this scenario, California would not be able to continue its actions to gradually ban internal combustion engines. Proposing to deregulate the extraction of oil, gas, and other fossil fuels, the Project team also suggests blocking initiatives to expand the power grid through renewable projects. Furthermore, they propose abolishing greenhouse gas emission standards.

• Health care and abortion

In the health sector, according to Project 2025, the government should promote the image of the traditional family. Federal insurance companies are being advised to ban coverage of gender-affirmative procedures and emergency contraception, and the Food and Drug Administration is being recommended to revoke licenses for the abortion drug mifepristone (which accounts for about half of all abortions).

Project 2025 also recommends utilizing the Comstock Act of 1873, which prohibits the use of the mail to send pornography, obscene material, and abortifacients, in the prosecution of companies and individuals offering mail-order abortion drugs. Under threat of federal funding withdrawal, state authorities are expected to disclose statistics on all abortion procedures, including patients’ place of residence, in order to curb “abortion tourism” to states where the procedure is legal.

The federal government is encouraged to promote private health insurance, cut spending on the Medicaid insurance program, and tighten qualification criteria. Medical organizations that are not included in the patient’s insurance package would be allowed to substantially overcharge them for healthcare services.

• Taxes

On the economic front, Project 2025 proposes even more tax cuts than Trump's 2017 reform, which expires precisely in 2025. The Project recommends cutting the corporate income tax from 20% to 18% (Trump's reform cut it from 35%) and the capital gains tax from 20% to 15%. It also proposes eliminating the investment income tax altogether.

In the proposed scenario, income tax would be divided into two categories, with rates of 15% and 30% instead of the current seven brackets ranging from 10% to 37%. The authors believe that the U.S. should shift toward a more regressive tax system in which the rate decreases with the increase of revenue, a move that would affect customs duties, sales, and cash circulation taxes, among others. As a result, the tax burden on wealthy Americans would decrease, while low-income and middle-class Americans would pay more in taxes.

• Immigration

The authors of Project 2025 insist that the U.S. authorities conduct the largest operation in the country's history to detain and deport illegal immigrants. According to the Pew Research Center, more than 10 million people are living in the U.S. without a legal status. Many have been in the country for years, and approximately 1 million are married to U.S. citizens. Project 2025 proposes involving the army in implementing the mass deportations while requiring state and municipal law enforcement to assist. Conservatives also want to roll out a network of “temporary detention camps” in Texas and other states.

They also look to complicate the asylum application process and introduce a fee for filing the application. Project 2025 also calls for the repeal of the DACA program — which granted residency to the children of undocumented migrants who came to the U.S. at a young age — potentially affecting 500,000 people. Another proposed restriction is a ban on federal housing subsidies for citizens sheltering illegal aliens. States and municipalities are expected to inform the federal government about the immigration status of taxpayers and driver's license recipients as a condition of receiving funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Legal migration would also be subjected to restrictions: conservatives seek to expand the list of countries whose residents are ineligible for U.S. visas. A temporary moratorium would be imposed on several visa categories due to a “large backlog of applications.” The issuance of temporary H-2A and H-2B work visas, which are used for seasonal workers in agriculture, for instance, would also be significantly limited.

• Pornography

The authors of Project 2025 paid special attention to pornography. In the foreword, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts writes that pornography is “manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children,” defining the concept much more broadly than is commonly accepted. Such interpretation easily translates to a call to outlaw any mention of transgenderism.

Project 2025 serves not only as a program but also as a potential talent pool of loyal conservatives. In a podcast interview earlier this month, Roberts said the country is on the cusp of “the Second American Revolution” — one that “will be bloodless if the left allows.”

In recent months, journalists have written extensively about the radical ideology behind Project 2025. Democrats have also begun using the document to criticize Republicans. Biden's campaign website even features a separate section devoted to Project 2025. Amidst the hype, Trump distanced himself from the project, saying he knew nothing about its creators. However, speaking at a 2022 Heritage Foundation event, Trump announced that its proposals would form the basis of his administration. Still, the foundation has been updating its Mandate for Leadership every few years, and Project 2025 wasn't officially launched until 2023, when Trump was not yet the Republicans’ official nominee. Nevertheless, few will be convinced by Trump’s assurances that he has nothing to do with the team behind Project 2025. In 2016, it was the Heritage Foundation that largely handled his administration's staffing choices. About 140 members of the Trump administration, along with members of his campaign staff and entourage, contributed to Project 2025. Many potential Project 2025 contributors have been recruited by John McEntee, former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office under Trump.

In addition, some of the Project 2025 theses deviate from the traditional Heritage position but coincide with Trump's own stance, once again corroborating the thesis of his team’s involvement in the drafting of the document. For example, the Heritage Foundation has always recommended cutting social programs like Social Security and Medicare, but Project 2025 does not mention such proposals. Trump, on the other hand, has publicly opposed such cuts. The trade policy chapter features a suggestion to impose duties on foreign goods — a Trumpian proposal that contradicts the traditional Republican calls for free trade. Trump has already announced plans to impose trade duties of up to 60% on Chinese goods and 10% on imports from other countries.

Congress, courts, municipalities. Who can stop Trump if he comes to power?

Will Trump be able to bring the Project 2025 proposals to life if he returns to the White House? It remains an open question. First and foremost, he will need the support of Congress on budget and tax issues, which are the exclusive prerogative of the legislature. Thus, much will depend on which party controls Congress — especially the Senate, which is responsible for confirming the president's judicial and executive appointees. Right now, Republicans have a slight edge in the House of Representatives and Democrats have a slight edge in the Senate.

Even if Congress blocks the president's decisions, the White House will still have room for maneuver. In 2019, for example, Democratic threats of a government shutdown temporarily stopped Trump from spending budget funds to build a wall on the border with Mexico. In response, the Trump administration declared a national emergency, suspended construction of 127 military facilities, and allocated $10 billion from the Pentagon's budget to build the wall. The Supreme Court later found these actions to be legal.

On some issues, the Project 2025 agenda could find resistance from states and municipalities. For instance, local governments could refuse to share abortion statistics with the White House, even under the threat of forfeiting federal funds. Similarly, they may refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Thirteen states already have “sanctuary” status, meaning that they do not inquire about the immigration status of public service recipients, do not report them to immigration authorities, and do not facilitate deportation. Dozens of counties and cities across the country have declared the same status.

However, the most powerful obstacle the conservative project may face is the judiciary. During Trump's first term, federal courts blocked measures introduced by his administration in the areas of immigration, health care, environmental protection, and others more than 70 times. Such decisions have been handed down by judges appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents.

The president above the law

However, the final arbiter in the U.S. judicial system is the Supreme Court, which already features a conservative majority that is favorable to Trump, as he was the one to appoint three of the nine current justices. Many of them favor the idea of expanding presidential powers.

One of the most notable judicial precedents in 2024 was Smith v. Trump, in which Trump’s lawyers demanded that the criminal case against him for attempting to illegally hold power be dismissed based on the legal theory that he was entitled to immunity from such prosecutions. The court eventually agreed with most of the Trump legal team’s arguments and ruled in late May that U.S. presidents, including former presidents, have substantial judicial immunity.

In their ruling, the justices relied on the idea that “the Framers designed the Presidency to provide for a ‘vigorous’ and ‘energetic’ Executive” that would carry out its duties “fearlessly.” In their opinion, this is not possible without immunity — otherwise the president would be overly fearful of facing criminal prosecution for actions taken while in office.

It follows from this decision that the President's actions under the powers granted to him by the Constitution are “conclusive and preclusive,” and therefore must enjoy absolute immunity. Thus, the President cannot be held liable for pardoning anyone for any reason, as the Constitution expressly gives him the power to do so. Even if he decides to pardon someone in exchange for a one-million-dollar bribe, it would be impossible to prosecute him. Liberal justices strongly disagreed with this logic. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her opinion:

“From this day forward, Presidents of tomorrow will be free to exercise the Commander-in-Chief powers, the foreign-affairs powers, and all the vast law enforcement powers enshrined in Article II however they please — including in ways that Congress has deemed criminal and that have potentially grave consequences for the rights and liberties of Americans.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor believes the Supreme Court has put the president above the law with its decision:

“The long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark. The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding. ... When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune.”

Leveraging the “immunity principle,” Trump's attorneys have secured a delay in the Sep. 18 sentencing announcement in the case involving their client’s falsification of business records in order to conceal payments to pornographic actress Stormy Daniels — a case in which Trump has already been found guilty. They insist that the conviction should now be overturned altogether. On Jul. 15, Trump’s defense used the Supreme Court’s arguments to close the criminal case involving illegal storage of classified documents. The fate of the remaining criminal cases against Trump also remains uncertain.

Once in office, Donald Trump could order the Department of Justice to close federal cases against himself — or use the pardon power in response to any judge’s conviction. If he does so, the doctrine of presidential immunity will reliably protect him from any accusations of abuse of power or violations of the law. And that’s before any of the other conservative wishes on the Project 2025 list are granted.