A proposed set of conservative policies known as ‘Project 2025’ are gaining more and more attention by the day. So what are the controversial policies that are expected to be implemented if Donald Trump wins a second term as US President?
As the possibility of another Trump presidency increases by the day, the world gets more hints at what Trump plans on doing once in sworn in.
Just this week he and his running-mate James David ‘JD’ Vance were both confirmed as the Republican candidates for the 2024 Presidential Election.
And if they win the election in November, an extreme set of policies outlined in a document called Project 2025: Mandated For Leadership could do irreversible to democracy in America as we know it.
“Project 2025 is super ambitious. It aims to basically reshape not just the American government, but all of American life,” explained Dr Emma Shortis, Senior Researcher in International and Security Affairs at The Australia Institute.
At no risk of overstating — it’s a huge bloody deal with some describing it as Trump’s plan for “retribution” against those who opposed him before.
So here’s everything you need to know about the Republican’s controversial “policy bible”, Project 2025.
What is Project 2025, and why is it different?
Project 2025 is a set of policy proposals launched by a conservative American think tank called the Heritage Foundation in 2023. The 920-page book called Mandated For Leadership: Project 2025 outlines the Republican plan for if Trump returns to the White House.
It proposes an unprecedented restructuring of the US Government that would massively expand President Trump’s power.
At it’s core, Project 2025 would see thousands of government administration employees fired and replaced by tens of thousands of inexperienced Trump loyalists, all with one explicit goal: to destroy the “deep state”, “woke culture warriors”, and the “anti-American Left”.
Now I’ll admit, a bunch of government workers getting fired hardly sounds like the juicy sensationalist political news that we’ve grown accustomed to from Trump.
But as Associate Professor of the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney David Smith pointed out, this is how Trump gets “retribution” for his last time as president.
“What they want to do instead is replace that with Trump loyalists, people who will be prepared to ignore the courts, if necessary to carry out the Trump agenda,” Smith told PEDESTRIAN.TV.
Smith explained that during the previous Trump administration (2017-2021), even his followers were disappointed he failed to get everything done that he promised. So next time around, the only people employed by the government will be certified Trump supporters.
“We have a database with over 10,000 people from all walks of life entering into this, aspiring to serve,” Paul Dans, director of The Heritage Foundation told the ABC.
“We want people who’ve been cancelled, who’ve figuratively given blood for the movement. These are mums who’ve challenged school boards. These are people who’ve stood up in their companies and said, ‘Enough with diversity, equity and inclusion, and the woke agenda.’”
What's the one takeaway people should know about #Project2025?
— Will Ragland (@citizenwillis) July 15, 2024
Paul Dans, P2025 director:
"We need to reintroduce political control over this bureaucracy and that's the importance of Project 2025." pic.twitter.com/bjkD3ItHfO
By hiring these specific people as government employees, Project 2025 would eliminate all the previous obstacles and allow Trump’s government to effortlessly enact whatever right-wing policies it wants.
And it aims to start doing this as soon as Donald Trump is sworn in.
Who and what is being targeted by Project 2025?
Shortis pointed out the social issues that are the targets of Project 2025 are essentially repeats of the culture war topics that Republicans have been pushing for half a century.
“The whole aim is to remake both the government and the United States in the image of far-right conservatism,” Shortis told P.TV.
Reproductive rights, gender identity, and climate change are all targeted by the document as issues that promote “woke propaganda” and need to be destroyed.
“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors,” the document reads.
It then outlines that the following terms and ideas need to be eradicated from all federal legislation and documents:
- sexual orientation,
- gender identity,
- diversity,
- equity,
- inclusion,
- gender,
- gender equality,
- gender equity,
- gender awareness,
- gender-sensitive,
- abortion,
- reproductive health,
- reproductive rights,
- and any other term used to “deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights”.
And that’s not even the beginning. The plan proposed to also take control of or entirely abolish the following government departments:
- Department of Justice.
- Federal Bureau of Investigation (the FBI).
- Department of Commerce.
- Federal Communications Commission.
- Federal Trade Commission.
- Department of Homeland Security.
- Department of Education.
- Federal Reserve System.
Project 2025’s document describes the Department of Education as a “convenient one-stop shop for the woke education cartel”.
“Schools should be responsive to parents, rather than to leftist advocates intent on indoctrination—and the more the federal government is involved in education, the less responsive to parents the public schools will be,” it reads.
Project 2025 has the goal of making the economy rely on the president too, with the intent to abolish the Federal Reserve bank and instate a libertarian model called “free banking”.
It also wants to send as many as 50,000 more military personnel into the Indo-Pacific region in order to be proactive against threats of war from China.
As a cherry on top, Shortis and Smith both pointed out that one of the highest priorities of Project 2025 is to pull the US out of all climate accords and promises, and put the foot on the gas of oil and fossil fuel production.
And who could forget the policy that made Trump so popular back in 2016 — a stricter border, and massive detention camps for immigrants.
Donald Trump hasn’t given his support
One of the biggest shortfalls of Project 2025 however, is the fact that the presidential candidate who it focuses so highly on has actually distanced himself from the proposal.
On his social media site Truth Social, Donald Trump made a post where he claimed that some of the things in Project 2025 were “ridiculous and abyssal”, and that he had “nothing to do” with it.
David Smith told P.TV that this is likely because at its core, the policies proposed by Project 2025 aren’t actually going to win votes in America — the opposite in fact!
“When people actually get into the policy detail of this and publicise it, Trump gets worried because there’s a lot of deeply unpopular stuff in here,” he said.
How will Project 2025 affect Australians?
When it comes to how the actual policy outline of Project 2025 will impact Australia as a country, David Smith believes that there isn’t much in there to be concerned about.
“There’s there are things to worry about in this document if you care about the United States. But if all you’re looking at is how this directly affects Australia, there’s not a lot to worry about,” he assured.
Smith explained that our trade relationship with the US through things like AUKUS means that as long as Australia is buying a buttload of military hardware from America, we have nothing to be concerned about in Project 2025.
Well, except for one small possibility…
“Apart from the fact that they seem pretty keen on war with China, which could drag Australia into it,” Smith added casually.
When it comes to what cultural repercussions that Project 2025 could have in Australia, Emma Shortis showed concern for potential negative effects on the shared democratic values of Australia and the US.
“What would that mean for our relationship? And how would it embolden the far-right elements in Australia as well?” she questioned,
“Some of the right-wing rhetoric here in Australia about attacking trans rights — the similar kind of talk about woke ideology, for example, how does that embolden those elements in Australia? Because I think it already is.”
However, Shortis did have an optimistic point on how Australia doesn’t need to just follow along with the US if we don’t like the direction we see it going in.
“I think our governments often assume that we don’t have any room to stand up to the United States in for our values. But that’s not that’s not the case,” she encouraged.
“We can have a positive influence in America, as well as elsewhere.”
The American Presidential Election ends on November 5, 2024. Currently Donald Trump has been confirmed as the Republican candidate.
Meanwhile the Democrats have not yet officially confirmed Joe Biden as their candidate, with many in the party calling for him to withdraw from the election.
[Image: Getty]
The post Here’s What’s In Project 2025 — The Worrying Conservative Plans For A Second Trump Presidency appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
