Project 2025, Donald Trump’s authoritarian playbook on Christian nationalism, is already in motion. While the media debates Trump’s disingenuous disavowals of the master plan, the real story is the extent to which the Supreme Court has already begun implementing it.
Project 2025 seeks to degrade civil rights nationwide by outlawing abortion, mandating Christianity and reducing LGBT+ citizens to second class status.
But these culture war flashpoints are merely a ruse, a distraction to disguise the real objective: Project 2025 is a massive undertaking financed by fossil fuel wealth to protect fossil fuels, abetted by Supreme Court justices with deep ties to Big Oil.
A compromised Supreme Court advances Project 2025’s agenda
While many pundits have acknowledged the implausibility of Trump’s “lack of knowledge” about Project 2025, few have noted that the Supreme Court has already begun to implement its key objectives:
Bribery: SCOTUS implemented Project 2025’s deference to a strong (and crooked) chief executive in Snyder v. the United States. Republicans on the Supreme Court declared in Snyder that bribing an elected official isn’t bribery if it’s paid to the official after the fact, because then it’s really more of a “gratuity.” Despite (because of?) two justices facing backlash for accepting lavish gifts from donors with cases before the Supreme Court, the majority in Snyder weakened the federal anti-corruption statute, 18 U.S. Code § 666, which made it a crime for officials to corruptly solicit, accept or agree to accept “anything of value intending to be influenced or rewarded in connection with” any business or transaction worth $5,000 or more.
Weakening federal regulations: The Supreme Court continued implementing Project 2025’s goal of killing the administrative state and stopping “the war on oil and gas” in Loper Bright Enterprises vs. Raimondo. In Loper, Republicans on the Court overturned the well-established Chevron doctrine, the law of administrative agencies for the last 40 years, ruling outrageously that judges should not rely on federal experts’ scientific or medical expertise, but should rely instead on their own personal opinion, bias and scientific ignorance in interpreting statutory ambiguities. This ruling, coupled with other recent cases eviscerating the regulatory power of the EPA, will cripple climate initiatives in service to Project 2025 donors for years to come if this rogue court is not stopped.
Advancing Christian nationalism: The Supreme Court helped advance Project 2025’s Christian nationalism in 303 Creative LLC and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. In 303 Creative, the conservative majority designated the right to refuse to do business with gay people not as discriminatory conduct but as “free speech,” and held that requiring web designers to serve same-sex couples was “coercing” them to make “statements” with which their Christian religion disagreed. In Kennedy, the court’s religious bloc ruled that a football coach could lead his team in prayer on a public school football field despite Establishment Clause precedent dating back to the 1940s. Until Kennedy, courts prohibited school prayer because of the coercive pressure it put on atheist, Jewish, Muslim and other non-Christian students to either pray along or be ostracized. In both 303 Creative and Kennedy, the court’s extreme bloc distorted the 1st Amendment’s shield – freedom of religion – into a sword: Christians’ freedom to impose their religion on others.
Abortion: The high court facilitated Project 2025’s anti-abortion goals with the Dobbs decision. In overturning Roe v. Wade after 50 years of protected abortion access, Justice Samuel Alito summarily declared that the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause could no longer protect women’s medical privacy because the Supreme Court previously determined “that a State’s regulation of abortion is not a sex-based classification.” After Roe deemed abortion access a “liberty” protected by the Due Process and Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Alito and his Catholic colleagues ruled that “classification precedent” and ancient common law history were more important.
Each of these cases, endcapped with the shocking presidential immunity ruling to protect Trump, is in lockstep with Project 2025, while the ultimate goal of protecting fossil fuels remains obscured.
These same conflicted justices will stop climate action
Court reform, as embraced by Kamala Harris despite being deemed “dead on arrival” by Trump republicans, must include some combination of term limits and a fair appointment processes that can’t be circumvented on partisan grounds. It also must be matched with the same enforceable code of ethics that requires federal judges to recuse from cases in which they are compromised, found at 28 U.S.C. Sec. 455. This last point will stick because each of the 6 conservative justices is in bed with fossil fuels:
- Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s father was a “highly active and respected member of the American Petroleum Institute for more than two decades.”
- Justice Samuel Alito’s family leases over 100 acres of land for oil and gas private development.
- Justice Clarence Thomas, who has accepted over $4 million in “gifts” from conservative donors, has been in fossil fuel investor Harlan Crow’s pocket for years.
Not only do Coney Barrett, Alito and Thomas have direct, personal ties to fossil fuel wealth, all six conservative justices belong to the Federalist Society, and are backed by the Heritage Foundation. Both organizations are driven and supported by Koch and fossil fuel dark money, and it is no mere coincidence that Big Oil-affiliated Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News amplifies their false messaging.
Although the right and Murdoch’s Fox News use non-stop culture wars to distract the voting public, they and Project 2025 exist largely to advance climate change denial to protect their own formidable, private wealth.
Court reform has now become an election imperative. The media needs to step up and expose the dark money ties between Project 2025, Fox News, Donald Trump, and the 6 conflicted justices defending fossil fuels. Most critically, anyone concerned about rising temperatures and disappearing water sources needs to vote in November as if their lives depend on it.
