Friends:
We would all do well to inform ourselves on Project 2025. It is authoritarian libertarianism on steroids. It represents the culmination of efforts orchestrated by the Heritage Foundation together with at least 75 other groups to take the entire country toward an anti-democratic path that would, as Dr. Nancy MacLean has been saying, "put democracy in chains."
This agenda is clearly an urgent matter for Jeffrey Clark who is spearheading Project 2025 as he is one of "six unnamed co-conspirators whose actions are described in Trump’s indictment in the federal election interference case."
We should further heed Liz Cheney's words that "a Republican House majority in 2025 would present a ‘threat’ to the country." Why? Because the Republican part of today "has not chosen the Constitution."
If anything, Project 2025 is precisely about undermining the U.S. Constitution. Read it for yourselves.
This dystopian vision is no less fully workshopped, strategically planned, and well-funded. We, the people, must not allow this to come to fruition under any name.
-Angela Valenzuela
Reference
MacLean, N. (2017). Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America. Penguin.
Advisers have also discussed deploying the military to quell potential unrest on Inauguration Day. Critics have called the ideas under consideration dangerous and unconstitutional.
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| Former president Donald Trump at the courthouse in Manhattan on Oct. 17. (John Taggart for The Washington Post) |
In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, according to people who have talked to him, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump has also talked of prosecuting officials at the FBI and Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said.
In public, Trump has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family. The former president has frequently made corruption accusations against them that are not supported by available evidence.
To facilitate Trump’s ability to direct Justice Department actions, his associates have been drafting plans to dispense with 50 years of policy and practice intended to shield criminal prosecutions from political considerations. Critics have called such ideas dangerous and unconstitutional.
“It would resemble a banana republic if people came into office and started going after their opponents willy-nilly,” said Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional law professor at the University of Virginia who studies executive power. “It’s hardly something we should aspire to.”
Much of the planning for a second term has been unofficially outsourced to a partnership of right-wing think tanks in Washington. Dubbed “Project 2025,” the group is developing a plan, to include draft executive orders, that would deploy the military domestically under the Insurrection Act, according to a person involved in those conversations and internal communications reviewed by The Washington Post. The law, last updated in 1871, authorizes the president to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement.
The proposal was identified in internal discussions as an immediate priority, the communications showed. In the final year of his presidency, some of Trump’s supporters urged him to invoke the Insurrection Act to put down unrest after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, but he never did it. Trump has publicly expressed regret about not deploying more federal force and said he would not hesitate to do so in the future.
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| Supporters listen during the national anthem before Trump arrives to speak at a campaign event at the Kingswood Arts Center on Oct. 9 in Wolfeboro, NH. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) |
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung did not answer questions about specific actions under discussion. “President Trump is focused on crushing his opponents in the primary election and then going on to beat Crooked Joe Biden,” Cheung said. “President Trump has always stood for law and order, and protecting the Constitution.”
The discussions underway reflect Trump’s determination to harness the power of the presidency to exact revenge on those who have challenged or criticized him if he returns to the White House. The former president has frequently threatened to take punitive steps against his perceived enemies, arguing that doing so would be justified by the current prosecutions against him. Trump has claimed without evidence that the criminal charges he is facing — a total of 91 across four state and federal indictments — were made up to damage him politically.
“This is third-world-country stuff, ‘arrest your opponent,’” Trump said at a campaign stop in New Hampshire in October. “And that means I can do that, too.”
Special counsel Jack Smith, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Biden have all said that Smith’s prosecution decisions were made independently of the White House, in accordance with department rules on special counsels.
Trump, the clear polling leader in the GOP race, has made “retribution” a central theme of his campaign, seeking to intertwine his own legal defense with a call for payback against perceived slights and offenses to right-wing Americans. He repeatedly tells his supporters that he is being persecuted on their behalf and holds out a 2024 victory as a shared redemption at their enemies’ expense.
