People didn’t vote for Project 2025 because Trump disowned it on the campaign trail saying he had nothing to do with it and that it was too extreme. We knew he was lying but his campaign was concerned enough about it to have him go out and lie. (Not that he doesn’t do that reflexively anyway.) He knew it was toxic to his chances.
Paul Dans was director of Project 2025 for the Heritage Foundation, the hard-right group which has produced such policy plans for more than 40 years.
Project 2025 alarmed progressives with its advocacy of slashing government staffing and budgets and attacking protections for LGBTQ+ Americans; efforts to ensure diversity, equity and inclusion throughout government; attempts to tackle the climate crisis; and more.
Democratic attacks proved effective enough for Trump to claim he had “nothing to do” with the project. In July, as the Trump campaign scrambled to limit damage, Dans was forced out of his Heritage role.
Now, with Trump back in power, the president and his chief donor and ally, the Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk, have mounted an assault on the federal government that has already led to thousands of firings, a bonfire of climate regulations, attacks on DEI initiatives real and imagined and much more.
“It’s actually way beyond my wildest dreams,” Dans told Politico. “It’s not going to be the easiest road to hoe going forward. The deep state is going to get its breath back here, but the way that they’ve been able to move and kind of upset the orthodoxy, and at the same time really capture the imagination of the people, I think portends a great four years.”
Dans told Politico that even though he was the sacrificial lamb who the campaign tossed aside and he called their distancing from Project 2025 “malpractice.” But he’s so thrilled at how they are enacting it almost to the letter that he says now that he would be thrilled to be asked to join the administration. Why not? Nobody who matters (Republicans who are willingly making themselves human sacrifices for their Daddy) will care.
In reality, Trump is not only enacting Project 2025, he is going farther with his inane tariffs, destroying the world order, and allowing DOGE to run through the federal government with a chainsaw randomly cutting anything that gets in its way without even a review. It’s Project 2025 on steroids.