(Editor’s note: today Jack Bernard writes part two of a three-part series looking at Project 2025 and what it would mean if this program guided the next Trump Administration. The series will continue next Tuesday.—eeb)
By Jack Bernard
Part two of three
PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. | Today we examine Project 2025 government agencies and programs, including immigration policy.
This is the second in a multi-part series dealing with the specifics of Project 2025, a detailed 920-page document written by Trump allies. But it has been disavowed by Donald Trump because of political concerns. However, given who wrote it, it is a virtual certainty that it will be the basis of a second Trump Administration.
Under Project 2025, the Federal Aviation Administration would be required “to operate more like a business” (Page 664) than a regulatory agency, potentially endangering air travelers. The Department of Homeland Security would be “dismantled” (page 165) and the Department of Justice would be changed dramatically and politicized. It says: “(DOJ) should…enforce federal law against providers and distributors of such (abortion) pills” (page 594).
The conservative plan would do away with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (page 869) which it incorrectly classifies “as a shakedown mechanism to provide unaccountable funding to leftist nonprofits politically aligned with those who spearheaded its creation.” Thus, consumers would be once again left with no advocate for their interests… while big business contributes money to the MAGA campaign.
The Department of Commerce would be gutted and politicized to benefit the extreme right and their big business donors (page 665). Project 2025 advocates that – “political leadership be immediately installed to target the Office of the Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary for Administration. Further, it says: “political appointees receive a mandate to communicate with external partners…at every stage of the budget and appropriations process to “ensure that funds are not being diverted to programs that do not align with Administration priorities.”
Similarly, the Federal Reserve would be completely gone (page 693). Project 2025 advocates “legislation that would ‘effectively abolish the Federal Reserve and replace it with ‘free banking,’ whereby ‘neither interest rates nor the supply of money’ would be ‘controlled by government.’” Such a move would give free reign to self-interest too big to fail financial behemoths, leading to disastrous depressions like the Great Depression of 1929.
Project 2025 makes the incorrect assumption that the Department of Homeland Security is “help(ing) migrants criminally enter our country” (page 8). It opposes any reasonable solution whereby immigration is “mitigated” (i.e., lessened). Instead, the Project unrealistically demands that the “border (be) sealed.”
Project 2025’s plan is to slash the size of the federal workforce (page 20), politicizing it, while hindering its ability to function. This is based on the radical right assumption that there exists a “largely underworked, over-compensated, and unaccountable federal civilian workforce”. Along the same lines, the Trump administration is advised to “fill its ranks with political appointees” who would “overcome the federal government’s obstructionist Human Resources departments.”
But at the same time, it would dramatically increase the number of political appointees. Estimates are that 40,000 right-wing advocates, including many politically connected but inexperienced novices, would be appointed. Extensive efforts are being made now by Heritage people closely allied with the Trump campaign to screen these people so that they could be appointed ASAP after the election.
They would replace skilled government workers. For example, it says Department of Education staff who Project 2025 insists “inject racist, anti-American, ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms” (page 8). Are they supposedly racist for advocating teaching the accurate history of slavery, an issue in several states?
The final column in this series will detail education and government relations plans. Project 2025 spells out several radical proposals for change.
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