By Michael Randall
We all have heard about “Project 2025” (call it “P-25”) by now, a detailed road map to change the federal government of the United States. While it pretends merely to want to take the nation in a more conservative direction, that is a ruse. Developed under auspices of the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, P-25 was written by many people, including over 200 hangers-on and veterans from Donald Trump’s past administration.
Laughably, Trump claims he is unaware of Project 2025. Many of P-25’s authors support his election bid, and many of them are deeply devoted to him. But many others see him as a “useful idiot” to advance their autocratic plans.
Conservative columnist David Brooks recently interviewed Steve Bannon, “War Room” motor-mouth and now-imprisoned MAGA martyr. Bannon implies Trump is too liberal on some things. “The MAGA movement, as it gets momentum and builds, is moving much farther to the right than Donald Trump. They (leftists) will look back fondly at Donald Trump. They’ll ask: where’s Trump when we need him?”
MAGA folks should remember one thing: they are voting to turn upside down the very nature of life in the United States, making it more like China and Russia, both of which rule their citizens through intimidation and force.
Recently, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts softly claimed that America’s move toward what he blandly calls a “more conservative” era will be peaceful if the political left allows it. Roberts’ veiled threat no doubt will be confronted, challenged in a thousand ways over a period of many years ahead, should Trump win the coming election. (Thank the lord and pass the ammunition.)
P-25 proposes many dramatic changes, but these three big ones which MAGA folks have cheered for, will no doubt hurt them and their families through the economic damage and inevitable violent conflicts that will follow.
First, Trump says his administration will undertake a massive deportation of perhaps 10,000,000 of our immigrant neighbors, of whom some are US citizens, some have work permits and legal residency, and some are in the US illegally (“foreign-national invaders,” “criminals and rapists,” “poisoning our blood” according to “great leader” Trump).
Last spring, bi-partisan legislation had been worked out in Congress as a solution to the border crisis, but Trump stepped in and told his devoted Republican House members and Senators (terrified disciples of the “great leader”) to kill the legislation, that he wanted the immigration controversy to continue during the presidential campaign so he could use it against Biden. Thousands of people (southern border residents, border patrol officers, desperate migrants) were hurt by his cynical tactic, but Trump cared not a whit about them.
As an outspoken admirer of Russia’s Putin and Hungary’s Victor Orban, the “great leader” plans to construct massive deportation camps along the southern border in which to hold millions of swept-up “foreign-national invaders” prior to their deportation. An unprecedented, nationwide build-up of manpower, equipment, and other resources will be needed. One estimate of the cost of Trump’s purge asserts that more than $110 billion will be spent on the effort over several years.
To get the manpower, Trump likely will invoke the Insurrection Act’s emergency powers to use federal troops, and also deputize National Guard troops from “red” states and send them into “blue” states and sanctuary cities to capture migrants. He will deputize thousands of other enforcers, some regular police officers and some just eager-beaver helpers. There’s absolutely no doubt that many US citizens will be swept up in these raids when some ill-trained, deputized goof-balls think their targets look like “foreign-national invaders.” As for legal protections normally accorded to those who are arrested, in this case we can be certain that there will be none.
But these captures will not be easy, given the massive protests and physical interference that will be exerted by many local citizens to protect their neighbors, and who despise such a ruthless process. Blue state governors may call their own state troopers and National Guard forces into action to confront red states’ units as they try to enter blue states. This is the “great leader’s” recipe for a national disaster.
Did you know that only a few of those “foreign-national invaders” actually are criminals, just like some few of us? But Trump likes to demonize them all, and MAGA folks seem to buy it. Are they fearful of people who look a bit different than them? That fear bleeds over, blooms into resentment, anger, and often violence.
Many of these “invaders” are already US citizens, or are on their way to citizenship. They are our neighbors, and they comprise about 7,000,000 of US workers. They work in the dairy industry and on local farms. They attend college, serve in the US military. Many have set up their own small businesses, or work in schools and restaurants and retail shops. Thousands of small businesses already struggle because of a lack of workers. If Trump is elected and starts these deportations, even greater shortages will badly damage the economies of urban and rural areas throughout the US.
Second, Trump has complained about the “deep state” for years. He calls those civil servants who clarify the details of new laws and carry out government policies “enemies of the people.” These employees are easily demonized, given the need for them to create regulations that allow Congress’ laws to be made specific and enforceable.
Currently, and for many decades past, civil service hiring has been a competitive process based on job applicants’ merits and skills, not on their political allegiance to some party or elected official. They can only be fired for just cause. Trump does not like this. He prefers that all such people yield to his wishes and demands.
Under the old “spoils system” which Trump plans to reinstate, people will be hired based on their loyalty to him. Under the spoils system, average citizens’ needs for services are not a priority. Those services are doled out primarily to political allies, while requests for help are ignored or refused when sought by political opponents. The result is intimidation, an effort to solidify a system of coercion and force, to make people behave loyally to the powers that be. Many thousands of current civil service employees will be terminated and replaced by Trump loyalists. If MAGA folks review the P-25 plan document, they will find a section where they can actually apply now for one of these positions.
Third, Trump claims he has been badly “victimized” by the Biden administration’s Justice Department and in Democrat judges’ courtrooms. If elected in November, he plans a massive retribution against the Justice Department and other of his enemies. Let’s look at the source of a few of his past legal problems (forget his current ones that temporarily have been set aside for the election). The following felony convictions and lawsuit settlements look unfair to the “great leader?”
(1) A jury of his peers (12 average citizens) convicted him of 34 felonies for falsifying business records. (2) Over two dozen women have accused him of sexual assault, and a jury (again, average citizens) made Trump pay one woman, E. Jean Carroll, $88.3 million dollars for sexual assault and defamation. (3) Trump paid $25,000,000 to settle three law suits related to “Trump University’s” illegal business practices, and to allegations that he defrauded students. The conservative “National Review” magazine called his “Trump University” a “massive scam.” (4) He attempted to overcome his election loss in 2020 by making false claims that the election was rigged. He illegally encouraged others to create false electors, for which the law is now punishing them. (5) Will he evade prosecution for illegally attempting to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s election on January 6, 2021? (6) He was impeached twice, once for the January 6 riot/insurrection, once for the attempt to extort Ukraine. (7) His business bankruptcies protected his fortunes, but damaged or ruined many small businesses and their employees who had done work on his various development projects.
How do Trump’s disciples overlook all this dishonesty, chronic lying, and cruelty? Merely for his own profit, he misuses many people, folks who are quite similar to his followers. And how can they keep a straight face when he says that HE is the victim in all these matters? They keep sending him money for his legal bills; they don’t seem to understand that he manipulates and uses them like puppets.
When the “great leader” fires all the Justice Department’s career attorneys and investigators, then staffs that department with his personal loyalists, will MAGA folks feel America’s justice system is being well-served?
The only case for hope in the face of another Trump administration is that people will fight his attempted changes in the courts, in Congress, in state legislatures, and on the streets. The changes he wants to make are inherently chaotic, violent, and will come at a huge human and financial cost. If successful, they will change the United States from an admittedly flawed, inefficient democratic republic devoted to personal liberty and freedom, to one that is authoritarian, even dictatorial in nature, and one that serves the interests of very few.
Trump’s supporters may think he has their interests and those of the nation at heart, but that is a tragic self-deception. The Heritage Foundation’s P-25 plans, plus those of people like Steve Bannon, give the lie to that claim. A governing process will begin which, more and more, will serve Trump and those who likely will follow him, a government corrupt and full of menace, intimidation, and the threat of violence.
We Americans are pretty spoiled. With many exceptions throughout our history, most of us have lived in a free society. Many have not really experienced, or even considered, what many people elsewhere in the world are made to suffer by their “great leaders.” And now this lack of experience lulls us into a dangerous sleepwalk toward election day, yet so many people seem not to see it.
MAGA folks should remember one thing: if they vote for Trump in November, they’re voting for a person who tried to overturn the outcome of a national election so that he could stay in power (like Putin, Xi Jin Ping, and other dictators). If he loses against Kamala Harris this November, he certainly will do his oft-repeated, election-denying dog tricks again.
If he does win in November, he won’t want to leave in four years. By then, his well-positioned lackeys in the federal bureaucracy may have gathered enough power to say that national elections are no longer important in the US.
Remember the old song lyrics: “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”
