You may have heard of Project 2025 and Agenda 47 by now. If you have not, it is important to learn about them, because both propose a dangerous and radical vision for America that takes our country backward. Project 2025 was created by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that has recently taken a hard right turn. Project 2025 has so many highly controversial elements that Donald Trump has recently tried to distance himself from it because he knows he will likely lose running on it. The project calls for a “second American revolution” that will “be bloodless if the left allows it.” As Trump distances himself from Project 2025, even though many in his orbit are still heavily involved with it, Agenda 47 has come to the forefront. It exists as a series of videos and texts on the Trump campaign website. Even though Agenda 47 attempts to tone down the extremist language of Project 2025, it still has many of the same radical elements. Let’s look at a brief summary of both efforts.
Project 2025 Overview
Project 2025 is a plan to implement the far right’s extreme view of America. In this America, there is only one faith, one family structure, and one way of creating policy. These policies include restrictive limits on Medicaid coverage for low-income Americans, repealing the government’s ability to negotiate Medicare drug prices, making sweeping changes to reproductive rights, and removing protections for the LGBTQ+ community.
Project 2025 seeks to consolidate more power under the president, creating an autocracy instead of a Democracy. It is estimated that 100,000 federal employees with decades of knowledge could be replaced by sycophants loyal to the president. Most government agencies will become partisan, privatized, or eliminated. This includes essential agencies such as the Department of Education (supporting public schools), Department of Justice (enforcing laws and protecting rights), Department of Commerce (advancing scientific innovation and economic growth), FBI (combating violence and corruption), and many more.
You will hear from the Trump campaign, “No one will implement Project 2025.” While this might be true in part, recent Supreme Court decisions have already laid the framework for easy implementation of Project 2025, from shifting authority from agency experts to the judicial branch in the Chevron decision to granting sweeping immunity to presidents for any official acts. Upcoming cases in the 2024 session have the possibility of further eroding rights that have long been settled. Trump’s justices would see a victory by Trump as a mandate to push forward.
Agenda 47 Overview
Agenda 47 is the 2024 GOP platform to “Make America Great Again.” It was written by and adopted by the RNC Platform Committee. It is broken into 10 chapters, with a preamble and a “quick guide” of 20 promises. It is being heavily shared by Republican Committees, including the Republican Committee of Chester County.
The preamble attempts to arouse patriotic fervor with a heavy dose of fear-mongering: “But now we are a Nation in SERIOUS DECLINE. Our future, our identity, and our very way of life are under threat like never before.” The main topics of discussion are immigration, manufacturing and trade, energy, the military, and multiple references to witch hunts and the ”deep state.” The preamble ends with a demand for Republican leadership at every level of Government to address the core threats to our very survival. There is some powerful irony (or hypocrisy) at work here, because the very survival of our Republic would be in doubt if Agenda 47 was implemented.
Agenda 47 then presents a “quick list” of 20 promises that pander to the GOP MAGA base, with little substantive information. They include action items such as sealing the border to prevent “migrant crime,” carrying out the largest deportation operation, ending inflation, preventing World War III, canceling the electric vehicle mandate, keeping men out of women’s sports, and cutting federal funding for any school pushing CRT (Critical Race Theory). The last line before the first chapter is, “Today and together, with Love for our Country, Faith in our People, and Trust in God’s Good Grace, we will Make America Great Again!” as a nod to the Christian Nationalists who wrote Project 2025.
Both are a threat to democracy
Both Project 2025 and Agenda 47 actually do voters a great service by “saying the quiet parts out loud.” MAGA looks to take away our rights, establish a repressive government centered on vast presidential power, demolish our system of checks and balances, and capture the Courts in support of these efforts. Our founders believed that the greatest threat to democracy was the damage that could be done by a demagogue. Don’t let it happen. Vote Democrat to move forward with the great experiment of American democracy. Do not be the generation that gives up on what has been built for the past 240 years!
