The Project 2025 presidency

Did voters choose President Donald Trump because they hoped he would cut spending on Medicaid, lifesaving cancer research, Head Start, and Meals on Wheels? That he would send ICE into schools to terrify immigrant children and citizen children alike? That he would throw into chaos every state and local agency and charity across America that gets federal funding? Of course not. All of these actions are lifted straight from the 900-page Heritage Foundation policy tome known as Project 2025, a plan to effectively destroy most of the federal government. Ahead of the election, Trump swore up and down that he had nothing to do with the document, didn't know who wrote it, and didn't agree with its radical contents. Once he won, though, he appointed many of its authors and contributors to agency and even Cabinet posts. And now, it's his entire governing agenda. Fooled you, America.

Go through Trump's blitz of executive orders, and you'll see that nearly every one was detailed in Project 2025. Nixing the new "diversity, equity, and inclusion" programs and offices created by the Biden administration is in there, and so is overturning many of America's precious civil rights protections dating back 60 years to the Johnson era — as Trump has also done. Sending the U.S. military to assist in immigration enforcement at the southern border is on the Project 2025 wish list, as is a halt to all intake of refugees. Pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, the World Health Organization, and a global pact to tax large multinational companies? Check, check, and check. Trump's shocking proposal to abolish FEMA is in line with the document. So is even his pettiest move of all, the revoking of security clearances and Secret Service protections for appointees who later criticized him, such as Gen. Mark Milley and former national security adviser John Bolton. Still, even the Heritage Foundation didn't dream of something as blatantly unconstitutional as abolishing birthright citizenship. I guess Trump has a few ideas of his own, after all.

This is the editor's letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.

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